A woman who was forcibly adopted in 1971 at the age of seven has asked the government for an apology.
Vicki Fielder, from Over Stowey, Somerset, says her mother was forced to abandon her because she was unmarried.
An estimated 250,000 women were affected by the practice of forced adoption in Britain in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
Vicki, now 51, is campaigning for an apology for these mothers and for children like her.
It comes days after Nicola Sturgeon issued an apology on behalf of the Scottish Government, and it has now been ten years since Australia issued the world’s first formal government apology for forced adoption in 2013.
Vicki, who is a member of the Adult Adoptee Movement, a support group campaigning for a formal apology, shared her story with BBC Radio Somerset.
Born in Enfield, London, she stayed with her mother in hospital for a week before being adopted and taken to Somerset.
She said: “We were fed a line like ‘Your mother couldn’t take care of you, she did what was best for you.’
“You don’t have the opportunity to really grieve.
“It’s a great loss for a child, even a baby.”
“Hit Me Hard”
Vicki began searching for her biological mother after becoming a mother herself. Though her adoptive parents told everything they knew about Vicki’s biological mother as she grew up, the details were sketchy.
“Like many adoptees, it really came out when I had kids and when I had my daughter. It hit me really hard when she was seven days old,” she said.
“It was the first time I met someone I was biologically related to when I gave birth to her. So I started thinking about my birth mother and how I would look for her.”
In 2004, Vicki was finally able to uncover what had happened to her mother, explaining, “I had two hits from [a genealogy website] and immediately one of them answered and said, “I know exactly who you are, can I call you?”
“Then she told me that my mother sadly passed away in 1992.
“She was only 38 and that was directly because she had to give up on me.”
Vicki also discovered that her mother was one of nine children and had a “tough” life.
“To find out you can’t bring your baby home and you have to give your baby away is just a horrible thing. She was 18 years old,” she said.
“To me she was a child, but the prevailing societal pressures of the time meant that these women did not have the opportunity to raise their children.
“We weren’t given the opportunity to be raised by our mothers.”
Vicki was also able to locate her birth father, who lives in Jamaica, and learned that she had a half-sister named Angelique, who was raised by her mother and stepfather, and two half-brothers.
She now visits her sister once a month and calls her brothers every week.
A report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in Westminster, published in 2022, says 185,000 women in the 1950s, 60s and 70s were “shamed” and “forced” to give up their babies and they should be given an apology.
Earlier this month, the government apologized “on behalf of society” in its response, but stalled before a formal apology.
JCHR Chair Joanna Cherry said: “It is disappointing that the Government has chosen not to issue a formal apology in recognition of the appalling treatment unmarried mothers have endured during this time and the lifelong consequences it has had for them She and her children had now grown and everyone involved.”
The wait for a formal apology continues for Vicki and the thousands of other adopters and mothers who have been separated from their children.
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