Forced adoptions scandal as young mums deceived into giving newborns away

The scandal of forced adoptions in the UK was branded “a stain on history” by Sir Keir Starmer . Still serving as Prime Minister when he issued an official apology for the outrage on July 2 this year, he told those affected: "The shame is not yours. The shame was never yours. The shame is ours.”

Now a groundbreaking BBC documentary, Stolen Babies, is telling the real story of what happened to more than 250,000 unmarried UK mothers between 1949 and 1976, who were coerced, bullied or misled into handing their newborn babies over for adoption.

Many were sent to mother and baby homes - isolated from their families. Babies were routinely removed from their mothers shortly after birth without proper, informed consent, in a scandal involving local authorities, health services (including early NHS hospitals ) and faith-based or voluntary organisations, such as church-run homes.

And successive governments funded and supported the infrastructure enabling these disgraceful practices. Investigative journalist Marion Scott says: “This was state-sanctioned human rights abuse on a massive scale. Some mothers weren't even allowed to look upon their baby's face. These professional people - the nurses, the doctors - they all participated. I can only describe it as dystopian.”

Central London-based retired MP Ann Keen, 77, was 17 when she fell pregnant in 1966, and was forced into having her baby boy adopted. She says: “Working class unmarried girls were having babies that were being adopted by middle class women. I didn’t give him up for adoption… he was taken by the state.”

Working in a toilet roll factory in her teens, Ann was sexually assaulted by a salesman, horrifying her parents when she fell pregnant. Ann says: ‘They said, ‘how could you do this to us? This is dreadful’. I was sent away to a mum and baby home. I didn't blame them. I blamed myself.”

During her labour at an NHS hospital in Swansea, Ann was refused pain relief. She says: “I was told I wouldn't have anything for pain because I would remember it, and I wouldn't be a bad girl again. They saw me as a woman that didn't have any morality and therefore I wasn't worthy of any help. I don't believe, had I been married, that would have happened.”

Ann gave birth to a healthy baby boy. She recalls: “I loved being a mum. I was completely in love with my baby. Then, on the eighth day, when I woke up and went to see him, he wasn’t there. I was told by a cruel midwife, ‘oh, you won't see him again. We told you not to get close. We've been watching you. He's in that building over there. He's waiting for his new mummy. You'll never see him again. And you come with me’.

“She took me into this bathroom, put me in the bath, grabbed my breast, and said, ‘I'm getting rid of this milk, you won't be needing it’. That was when I knew I'd lost everything. I grieved for him throughout my life. I still grieve for the baby.”

In 1995, Ann’s son, Mark, now 59, tracked her down and they were reunited after 27 years. She says: “A grown man walked into my house. It was the most incredible moment - emotional, frightening, wonderful. Here he was - my baby, real, and in my arms after all these years.