The Beginning

I'm Patricia Basquill, the founder of Trackers International, and a 1960's unmarried mother.

There was no sex education in 1961 when I got pregnant. Single women were denied contraceptives in an era when abortion was illegal even for rape victims.

I was put into an Unmarried Mothers Home and assigned a Moral Welfare Worker who told me I had no legal rights, no entitlement to State Benefits or housing, and couldn't afford to keep my baby - she would be adopted. I fought for five months to keep my baby and lost her to forced adoption.

The pain of losing her was unbearable, and 40 years later I still have nightmares, hearing her screams mingle with mine as she was pulled from my arms.

I survived by throwing myself into work. I joined the Civil Services, spent several years in Germany, and founded Trackers International after learning the painstaking art of research.

I found my daughter, and worked with the renowned Scottish Researcher Moira McGoriarty, a personal friend until her death.

I continued in-depth research and found disturbing evidence of corruption and conspiracy - an adoption conspiracy of holocaust proportions involving hundreds of thousands of babies. The Law was ignored, human rights systematically denied, coercion and duress used to secure babies for the Adoption Industry, to cure infertility within marriage and create instant families for the childless.

Social Workers and Moral Welfare Workers justified infant adoption on the emotive pretext 'adoption is in baby's best interests', but adoption was never in the 'best interests' of a baby that was loved and cared for by its own mother, nor was it in the 'best interests ' of a mother who had not abused, abandoned or neglected her baby and whose right to keep it was established in Law and endorsed by the Government in 1948, when it gave unmarried mothers the same State benefits as young widowed mothers, (with additional entitlements and rent- and rate-free housing).

The only beneficieries of infant adoption were adopters, and although some adopted a baby out of a genuine love of children many more had unhealthy or ulteria motives. Mentally unfit, emotionally disturbed, childless married women were also allowed to adopt.

The phrase 'adoption is in baby's best interests' was only applied to normal, healthy, white babies, it was never used in the context of coloured, mixed-race, physically or mentally handicapped babies - they were virtually unadoptable.

The realisation that if my baby had been non-white, unhealthy or handicapped, I would have been allowed to keep her was devastating.

To establish the treatment of unmarried mothers during 1950-1975, Trackers International conducted 'Survey 1000'; the most comprehensive survey of UK unmarried mothers ever conducted.

The results are extremely disturbing and Trackers International is dedicated to address, challenge and expose one of the darkest episodes in British adoption history.

I have appeared on television;
A guest on Sir David Frost's Millennium programme 'The Debate of a Life Time'.
In the BBC Documentary 'Keeping Mum'.
In the Nick Ross BBC programme 'The Search' .

As guest speaker on BBC Radio Manchester, Cumbria, Yorkshire, Merseyside, and Newcastle debating the treatment of unmarried mothers and forced adoption.

I have been in newspapers and magazines; The Observer, Woman's Own, The Big Issue, Life Magazine, Newcastle Evening Chronicle, The Northern Echo, Manchester Evening News, Sunday Sun, Birmingham Evening Mail and Stockport Times.

PATRICIA - 1967, in Burscough

PATRICIA BASQUILL - 15 years old, and 7 months pregnant

Copyright © Patricia Basquill, 2002 - 2010