[ad_1]
The publicity surrounding Hollywood actress Jane Russell and her adoption of an Irish baby enraged the government at the time because it portrayed Ireland as ‘exporter babies’ for the benefit of wealthy Americans who wanted children.
Russell was one of the most famous artists in the world when in November 1951 he adopted Thomas Kavanagh, a 15-month-old boy born to Irish parents in London.
The adoption nearly ruined his career and led to accusations in the international press that Irish institutions were selling babies to the highest bidder.
Tommy’s mother Florrie showed up at London’s Savoy Hotel after learning that Russell was looking to adopt an Irish boy. Irish authorities became involved when Russell publicly complained that British law did not allow him to remove the boy from Britain, which had stopped the practice in 1948.
Later, Tommy received an Irish passport and visa and was brought to the United States. The haste with which the Irish embassy in London granted the baby a passport was widely condemned.
Although Tommy Kavanagh was not adopted from an Irish mother and baby, he attracted unfavorable attention internationally.
‘Ring of thieves’
According to the report by the Households for Mothers and Babies Commission of Inquiry, an article appeared in Empire News saying that “Canadian police believe they have come across a gang of criminals selling babies for up to £ 1,785 each” to doctors and lawyers. involved in it.
This sparked concern from officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DEA), which later became the Department of Foreign Affairs, that if babies were brought into the US with Irish passports and sold to the highest bidder, blame them.
In January 1952, an official from the Irish embassy in London contacted the Dublin department to issue a passport for a child who had been placed with a United States Army couple based in Great Britain. The boy was brought to the UK from Ireland without any travel documents and from there to the United States.
A department official responded by saying that although Russell’s adoption papers were in order, “it didn’t keep us out of trouble.”
References
The damage to Ireland’s reputation was such that then-Dublin Archbishop John Charles McQuaid drew up new guidelines in the early 1950s. The church declared that it would no longer accept referrals from people such as employers or family friends, but instead only from Catholic charities and dioceses in the United States.
Future American parents were expected to make an affidavit to the effect that they were Catholic, that they would raise their children as Catholics and educate them in Catholic schools and universities.
The commission found that a tightening of laws on foreign adoptions came as a result of the bad press.
“To the extent that controls were exercised by the DEA through the Passport Office, they were largely exercised out of concern for the well-being of children. Some of the actions taken were motivated by concern about bad publicity, but nonetheless promoted the well-being of children.
The commission saw a series of “delivery certificates” signed by mothers who were giving their children up for adoption.
Promise
One gave a mother and her baby at home “full custody and control of my child, with authority to place him in a family for legal adoption, whether outside Éire or otherwise; and I agree and promise not to try to get my baby back or induce him to leave any place where he can be found. ”
The commission found that of the 1,638 adopted from institutions for mothers and babies between 1922 and 1998, 1,427 children were adopted in the United States and 149 in Great Britain. Of those adoptions, 508, by far the majority, were from Sean Ross Abbey in Co Tipperary.
The most famous adoptee was Philomena Lee’s son Anthony, who was forced into adoption in 1952 to the Hess family in the United States. Her story was told in the hit movie Philomena which was released in 2013.
Michael Hess became the chief legal adviser to the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations. He died of AIDS in 1995 before Ms. Lee could find him.
[ad_2]