Now I know why I have lived só long... for this

Mother reunited with daughter she was forced to give up as a teenager

- BY SARA WALLIS

NEARLY 70 years after she held her baby in her arms for the last time, Jean's eyes fill with tears as she remembers her newborn's blue eyes and blonde hair.

Her baby girl, who she named Maria, was snatched away for adoption without even time for a kiss goodbye - and Jean never saw her again, until now.

In heartbreaking scenes to be screened in a Long Lost Family: Mother and Baby Home Scandal special on ITV, the 85-year-old finally gets to meet the child who was taken away from her so brutally, leaving her traumatised.

Jean was just 16 in the summer of 1956 when she discovered she was pregnant by Tony, her first-ever boyfriend.

They wanted to marry, but having brought shame to her family, Jean was sent to the Home of the Good Shepherd Mother and Baby Home in Haslemere, Surrey, a home established by a moral welfare association connected to the Church of England, where a baptism and adoption were arranged.

Jean, from Chertsey, recalled: "It was a big house and we had to scrub all that clean. We had to go to chapel every morning and evening to ask forgiveness.

"I was terrified, I didn't know what to do.

"My dad was a bully. He called me the 'biggest whore' when he found out I was pregnant."

With no option, Jean and Tony reluctantly took their 10-week-old baby to the London offices of the Southwark Catholic Rescue society. Jean said: "I gave her to this woman whod said we'd go and show her off, so I thought she was bringing her back to let us kiss her goodbye, but she didn't."