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Fresh scandal erupts over Irish children sold to America for adoption

New investigative report reveals how Irish nuns profited from child adoption scheme

JAMES O'SHEA,

Irish Voice Reporter

Published Wednesday, September 5, 2012, 7:29 AM

Updated Wednesday, September 5, 2012, 10:19 AM

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Fresh scandal erupts over Irish children sold to America for adoption

Photo by Banishedbabies-ireland.com

Irish nuns who sent and essentially sold orphans to America during the fifties and sixties benefited by up to $50 million in today’s money, a new investigative report and book has claimed.

The report published in The Sunday Business Post also stated that many of the parents chosen had been turned down by other adoption agents, and some children were sent directly to pedophiles.

The shocking new investigation was carried out by Mike Milotte, who has published his finding in a new book entitled Banished Babies.

Milotte also reported that over 2,000 babies born to unwed mothers were “exported to America in a highly-secretive adoption scheme.”

Milotte is calling for a major investigation by the Irish Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, who went on the record calling for such an inquiry in 1996 as an opposition spokesman when first reports leaked out.

Milotte highlights the case of Mary Monaghan, adopted from Sacred Heart Convent in Westmeath by Bill O’Brien, a brutal pedophile who began abusing her from the age of two.

The organization responsible for the adoption, Catholic Charities of California, had never even interviewed O’Brien or combed over his past.

On the Irish end Archbishop John McQuaid of Dublin, who oversaw the adoptions, insisted only that the adoptive parents be Catholic and that the Catholic Charities organizations across America take charge of the adoption details.

All O’Brien had to do was give proof he was a Catholic in good standing and that he didn’t use birth control.

Irish politician Dr. Noel Browne tried to stop the adoption process when he was minister for health, stating that adoption passports were being given to “persons turned down as adopters in their own country.”

After, Browne stated that an investigative report by the St. Louis Globe newspaper revealed that many parents who adopted Irish children had been turned down by American agencies.
However, Archbishop McQuaid refused to radically change any of the procedures.

Problems escalated when a Monsignor John O’Grady of Catholic Charities in New York wrote that he was “more and more convinced that many of the homes in which children were placed are undesirable.”

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19 Comments

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brenda801 | Sep 17, 2012, 02:14 PM EDT

I'm looking for my brother who was born and put up for adoption during this time. my mother has died,but she NEVER forgot him!!! need help on how to try to find him. ANY suggestions I would grately appreciate!!!

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bignevermo | Sep 07, 2012, 11:59 AM EDT

I was adopted in 1957 to a family in Minneapolis...I wonder if i am one of those babies! :O!...I sure was not abused though...well nowadays they would consider it abuse...but not in the 50's and60's(corporal punishment)...things that make ya go HMMMMMM..

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EphraimKibbey | Sep 06, 2012, 01:15 AM EDT

Was this brought up again now because Spanish authorities have recently arrested a doctor and some RCC/hospital people (including at least one nun) in a similar baby selling ring there? The scam there apparently was to tell new, non RC, parents that their baby had died and then to sell it to childless RC couples so that the child could be brought up in a CORRECT home. Are the criminals in Ireland being tried for their crimes as they are in Spain?

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sirpeter | Sep 05, 2012, 11:12 PM EDT

redhand32.People here are a hopeless case.They are stupid at the best of times and thick ignorant most of the time.The articles just touch a nerve to their own sensitive feelings.A transference of their own bitter failings in life.You won't find much intelligence.

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brendan gillen | Sep 05, 2012, 08:44 PM EDT

This is very sad. I grew up in Ireland in the 40 and 50 and early 60s and I am glad I went to London.

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redhand32 | Sep 05, 2012, 08:10 PM EDT

Mara66, I think you fell out of the stupid tree and hoit every branch on the way down. "Adoption...the worst transaction in the history of the human race" ? My wife and I have a 29 year old adopted son college graduate is about to leave for boot camp in the US Navy. After 1 year on a waiting list we adopted thru Catholic Charities. He came to us a t 3 months old. The fee was a modest $1500 which was based entirely on ability to pay. The alleged sordid "adoptions" in this article are to be condemned as one of the worst transactions" imagined. But, in our case, please don't throw out the baby with the bath water [no pun]. There are 1000s of adoptive parents whose lives were made whole and children who received loving parents and a home where there was none in sight because of adoption. Grow a brain.

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Mara66 | Sep 05, 2012, 05:20 PM EDT

ADOPTION...When will the world wake up to this EVIL EXCHANGE...Adoption is the worst transaction in the history of the human race. Religious organisations are selling babies, for the'Rich Man's gold.' and they, the organisation, and their pier's are getting rich in the process, all this under the guise of Christianity. How dispicable is that.(Portia, I have been looking for Portia, that wrote on Forgotten Mothers U.K. Just wondering Portia, if you are that Portia? would be great to get in contact if you are)

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Portia777 | Sep 05, 2012, 11:40 AM EDT

hermitTalker...so what do you know of this man?You best research this dark entity a bit more. How can you aid and abet a cult that sold and raped children? Cognitive dissonance is wonderful way to deny responsibility, so back to bed and cover your head, for when the rest of the truth comes to light, you will not be able to handle it.

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Portia777 | Sep 05, 2012, 11:34 AM EDT

Adoption is human trafficking where breeders- mothers are either approved by society if under male control - husband or banished from society with their babies. The demonised mothers are punished by having their creations- children- stolen for adoption or foster warehousing and these mothers are expected to continue on as if they never gave birth. Meanwhile a needy rich woman can go to some baby brooker and and ask for a ready made human child and buy one. The dark side of the adoption business is never in the media. Never see the Baby Thief Georgia Tann and her scam aided and abetted by lawyer and Judge in USA. Now Ireland is importing children from other poor countries and forcing children to assimilate into our culture. Do we see of the number of Vietnamese children who were sold to Ireland during that war and how many suicided out? No. The adoptees are dehumanised as are their creators and children are literally bought and sold like slaves or cattle. Nothing has changed. We have not learned. The secrecy continues. The Inquisition secret courts of Ireland still exist.Business as usual. One group in society is groomed to believe they are do gooders while the other is demonised and $$$$$ is made by the brookers, Governments etc. What research was done into blood types etc of mothers? Oh there is a lot more to be exposed to the world on this human trafficking.How different were we to Nazis in Germany, removing human children from Poland etc? How different were we from Jesuit destruction of indigenous children in USA- shaving their hair, processing them for suitable rich white families?How different were we to British Empire and Australia's lost generation of children? Now all the truth emerges. Frances Fitzgerald needs to open the records of our human children, mothers etc to the light of truth. Can we handle truth of what was done to our unmarried mothers and their children? We better get ready.

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lokionline | Sep 05, 2012, 11:28 AM EDT

What does it say about the 50s and 60s in Dublin and the way the clergy operated then when it can be said of McQuaid that "He was typical of his era, but not a monster."? McQuaid was considered to be 50 years out of step even at the time he was Archbishop of Dublin and he held Dublin back during some of he most important civil rights times of the past 100 years - I know I was there. He would have been more at home in the period prior to WW1.

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hunter933 | Sep 05, 2012, 10:54 AM EDT

Just another form of human trafficking.

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Springfield9 | Sep 05, 2012, 10:54 AM EDT

I knew there was a reason I didn't like the Penguins - besides getting beat up by them.

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hermitTalker | Sep 05, 2012, 10:32 AM EDT

This is an old story,e-hashed for a book review. I would hope the comments about "selling" babies, and nuns making lots of cash from this, and Catholic Charities is maligned, accepting that people were rejected by Government agencies and getting babies from Ireland- without having gone to C-C first makes no sense given the US Catholic culture. Painting Abp JC McQuaid as the black beast has become so acceptable today. He was typical of his era, but not a monster.

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culchiewoman | Sep 05, 2012, 10:31 AM EDT

"Everything old is new again..." There is nothing new about this scandal, although for some American readers, it may be new-ish. This scandal first broke in 1996, and Mike Milotte's first edition of 'Banished Babies' was published in 1997. Since then, many of us have done interviews in both Ireland (RTE, print media) and US (20/20's 'The Lost Children of Ireland', 1996). There have been books written in addition to Mike's (which was re-released this year). Of the more than 2,000 of us sent to the US between the 1940s-1960s, I am only aware of perhaps 200-300 online, or who have registered on public search databases. So that would imply that more than 1,500 are either dead,or a) don't know they were adopted or b) don't know they were adopted from Ireland. What's really pathetic is that neither Ireland nor the US has learned its lesson, and now Ireland has become an *importer* of children, brokered through non-registered or regulated agencies in Florida, as well as from countries like Mexico, Vietnam, Guatemala, many involving illegal trafficking and subsequent scandal. As sunspotter5 says, it's called adoption and everyone applauds, or in the words of the Rev. keith Griffith, MBE: "Adoption is the only traumatic loss for which the whole of society expects us to be grateful."

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Portia777 | Sep 05, 2012, 10:20 AM EDT

california12 how can these children come forward when many had their birth certs altered with adoptees named as natural parents. $$$$$$$$ talks in Eire, you know.

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