Four Corners: Nov 10

Next Monday Four Corners presents ‘Ireland’s Lost Babies’, a BBC report by Martin Sixsmith looking at young women locked up, their children taken away – what was their sin?

The movie Philomena told the story of Philomena Lee, who was forced by the Catholic Church to give up her son for adoption. It showed her journey with journalist Martin Sixsmith to find her child 50 years later.

The movie won public and critical praise, but it also shone a light on a shocking period of Irish history – a time when the Church wielded enormous political and cultural power, attempting to control even what happened in the bedrooms of Ireland.

In the weeks and months after the film was released, the real Martin Sixsmith was contacted by many other mothers who, like Philomena, had their own heart-rending stories to tell. Now, he goes on a journey to put mothers back with their children. Along the way he investigates the Irish Catholic Church and its role in an adoption trade that lasted more than four decades. He reveals how they forcibly removed children from their mothers. In some cases, they were kept in orphanages while other children were sent overseas for adoption.

Often the Church authorities accepted healthy donations from wealthy couples wanting to adopt children, raising questions about the ethics and the morality of the process. At the same time, Sixsmith finds evidence that the Church did not properly vet the new parents and as a result some children were abused or ill-treated.

The program tells the moving stories of both mothers and children whose lives have been changed forever, and he confronts the people who effectively stole the children, demanding to know why they remain unwilling to help families get back together.

Monday 10th November at 8.30pm on ABC.