British Prime Minister Keir Starmer formally apologized Thursday to women and their children caught up in a historic forced adoptions scandal in England and Wales over an almost three-decade long period between the 1950s and 1970s. File Photo Betty Laura Zapata/EPA
Outgoing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer apologized in person Thursday to women and some of their children who were caught up in a historic forced adoptions scandal in England and Wales dating back to the 1950s through the 1970s.
Stamer issued a formal apology on behalf of the British state, calling the taking of an estimated 185,000 babies from unmarried women, railroaded into allowing their children to be put up for adoption, a “stain on our history.”
The shame is not yours. The shame was never yours. The shame is ours,” he said in a statement to the House of Commons after earlier hosting a group of survivors in Downing Street.
“Mothers, many young, vulnerable, and without support were coerced, bullied, or misled into feeling that they had no choice but to have their children taken away from them. What a thing to do,” he said.
Speaking as some of those whose lives were severely impacted watched on from the public gallery, Starmer said that what happened to them and to tens of thousands of mothers, children and families “should never have happened.”
“It is a stain on our history,” he said.
Starmer said the victims had “very powerfully” relayed to him the “gut-wrenching” shame they were made to feel and how it was drummed into them that they were immoral young women whose children would be better off without them.
The experiences stayed with them through their lifetimes, while their children grew up believing they were unwanted, he said.
“We are deeply and profoundly sorry to the mothers who were told they were unfit, who were prevented from caring for the children they desperately wanted to help and to keep, and who have carried this loss for decades,” said Starmer.
Starmer acknowledged that the practice was deliberate and widespread, particularly between 1949 and 1976 when it was, he said, “embedded within systems across local authorities, across voluntary and faith-based institutions, and in health and social care services,” including parts of what is now the National Health Service.
“All institutions that operated with power over people’s lives, yet they did so without compassion, without consent, and without dignity or proper safeguards,” said Starmer.
He said some women, including those placed in Mother and Baby Homes and other institutions, were prevented from seeing their families and partners, denied education and job opportunities and kept in harsh living conditions.
Some of the treatment meted out to the women was tantamount to manipulation and abuse, said Starmer.
Mothers and adoptees campaigned for years for the state to acknowledge wrongdoing but no offer of compensation was forthcoming, although the government has announced a $5.3 million fund to improve access to adoption records and assist family reunions.
Survivor Ann Keen, whose baby son was adopted in 1966 after she was sent to a mother and baby home in Swansea in Wales at the age of 17, told the BBC she had “no say” in the decision.
The former Member of Parliament in the ruling Labour Party, told BBC Radio ahead of Starmer’s statement to lawmakers that she was eagerly anticipating the moment she would finally be “released from my shame.”
