My newborn daughter was prised from my arms... I never got over it

Diana Defries was one of 185,000 young unmarried women in Britain forced to give up their babies between the 1950s and 80s. As she leads a campaign group to sue the Government for its refusal to issue a formal apology, she reveals her heartbreaking story

- By Heather Main

WHEN Diana Defries was just 17 years old, she fell pregnant. Her much older boyfriend abandoned her and her parents were furious. But Diana, now 66, knew one thing — she wanted to be a mother to the baby she was carrying.

Even before her daughter was born, she had an overwhelming maternal instinct to care for and protect her baby.

But when the teenage Diana was sent to a home for unmarried mothers, she was told she had no choice, her daughter was to be given to a respectable family. The last time Diana saw her baby girl, it was as she was prised from her arms, both of them screaming for each other.

Fifty years on, she's still recovering from the trauma of losing her little girl. But now, she's also angry and she's leading a campaign group that plans to sue the Government, which refuses to apologise to the thousands of families whose lives were torn apart by the forced adoption scandal.

Diana, from London, is one of at least 185,000 so-called "unfit mothers" whose babies were taken away from them from the 1950s up until the 1980s.

Teenage and unmarried mothers were forced by their families, the church, and other agencies to give birth in secret - where their babies would be forcibly adopted by families considered to be more suitable.

Shrouded in secrecy, thousands of adoption records were destroyed or kept secret - meaning thousands of parents and now, adult adoptees, were unable to trace their families and in many cases, had no idea they were ever adopted.

In 2022, the Joint Committee on Human Rights carried out an inquiry into the scandal, which ruled that the UK government was ultimately responsible for the abhorrent practice. Following the inquiry, both the Scottish and Welsh governments issued a public apology to those whose lives were torn apart by the scandal but the Government has so far refused to follow suit.