Victims of forced adoptions in England between 1949 and 1976 have welcomed Prime Minister Keir Starmer's formal apology but are demanding concrete measures, including mental health support, to back up the words. Campaigners described the apology as 'hugely significant' but stressed that without remedy, it risks becoming meaningless.
Ann Keen's story: Punishment and loss
Ann Keen, a former Labour MP, was 17 and pregnant when England won the World Cup in 1966. She told her father that day, and he said she had 'put shame on the family.' She was sent to an unmarried mother's home where she scrubbed steps from morning until night. 'It was all about punishment,' she said. In the delivery room, NHS staff told her she couldn't have pain relief because she was 'a bad girl.' After giving birth, she was allowed 10 days with her son, but on the eighth day he was taken away because staff felt she was 'getting far too close to him.' She did not see him again for 27 years.
Prime Minister's apology: A profound moment
Keen was among the campaigners in parliament listening to Starmer formally apologise for the state's role in forced adoptions. 'It was totally overwhelming, I thought the prime minister meant every word he said,' she said. The apology came after decades of campaigning for the British government to admit its role.
Debbie Iromlou: Fighting for identity and medical history
Debbie Iromlou, co-founder of the Adult Adoptee Movement, was 16 when she discovered she had been forcibly placed into foster care at birth in 1968. She spent decades searching for her birth parents and had to fight for access to their details. She met her birth mother shortly before she passed away, but her father died before she found out who he was. 'Having to fight for our records is a huge shame, our own identity shouldn't be withheld from us. This is basic human rights we're talking about,' she said. 'And being denied our medical history puts us and our children at huge risk. We don't know what we're carrying in our genes.'
Iromlou said Starmer's apology was 'validating' and that 'living through decades of trauma, hearing the prime minister acknowledge that suffering was emotional.' However, she stressed that the apology must come with a package of mental health support. Iromlou, like many adult adoptees, has been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. 'It has taken me many years to access specialist therapeutic services and even those are not really suitable for the trauma we've been through. It's not widely understood among the medical profession,' she said. 'It's totally unaffordable for us to get the help we need.'
Vik Fielder: Cruel discouragement and mental health impact
Vik Fielder's mother was forced to put her up for adoption after giving birth in 1971. Fielder never met her mother before she died and was actively discouraged from seeking her out by social workers who told her she could 'wreck her life' if the mother had married and had other children. 'They tried to keep us apart, even after we were old enough to go looking for each other and had agency, and that's cruel,' she said.
Fielder emphasised that mental health support is the most important thing the government should provide. 'I've had mental health issues. I've had a nervous breakdown, I have attempted suicide,' she said. 'And not once did anyone link it to my adoption. Even though adult adoptees are significantly more likely to attempt suicide.'
Diana Defries: Apology 'hugely significant' but needs remedy
Diana Defries, chair of the Movement for an Adoption Apology, was 16 when her daughter was 'literally taken from my arms' and forcibly adopted. After leading the campaign for more than a decade, she said Thursday's announcement had taken too long but was 'hugely significant.' 'It was extraordinary, not least because I felt that at long last we've been heard, at long last somebody understood that what happened to us was wrong and actually said it out loud,' she said.
Defries insisted the apology must come with remedy to help victims, and campaigners will keep pushing for details. 'Without the measures to go with the words, the words become meaningless,' she said. 'That is a problem that has beset other apologies.'
