'He died thinking I'd abandoned him': Philomena tells Cork conference
A woman whose story of forced adoption inspired an Oscar-nominated film has spoken of how nuns at a mother-and-baby home lied to her son about her.
Philomena Lee, who inspired the film "Philomena", said her son Anthony had made repeated attempts to contact her, but that the Sacred Heart Sisters wouldn't pass on her contact details.
She was speaking at a major conference in Cork on reforming Ireland's adoption laws.
She said she had given her details to the sisters at Sean Ross Abbey in Tipperary, but they wouldn't pass them on to her son, who was born there.
"They told him, actually … that I had abandoned him at two weeks old," she told the conference.
"That I went off and left him at two weeks. And I looked after him for three and a half years - this was the sad part of it. He died thinking I had abandoned him."
Also speaking at the conference was HSE social worker Triona Hall, who told the conference about one of her clients who still feels the social pressure of her experience many years later.
"I've been meeting her through the winter and through the spring in the pouring rain in my car - she won't go into [a coffee shop] even, in case somebody knows I work in adoption, and I they make a connection," Hall said.
"She's a woman in her late 70s, and she's carried this secret for 55 years."
