Bastard Nation is happy to announce that long-time adoptee rights activist Mari Steed has been named Vice President of Bastard Nation. Mari has been with us from the beginning and has played an invaluable role in our formation and success.
Mari is the mother of a daughter relinquished to adoption in the US in 1978. She is also an adopted adult born in Ireland in 1960 and trafficked to the US in 1961. She has been joyously reunited with her daughter since 1997 and with her mother, now recently passed, since 2001. Mari serves as US Coordinator with Adoption Rights Alliance and with The Philomena Project, an initiative started by Irish mother Philomena Lee (whose story serves as the basis for recent Oscar-nominated film Philomena), Philomena’s daughter Jane Libberton, and Adoption Rights Alliance. The Project has taken the issue to the Irish State, Washington, DC and even the Vatican. In 2003, she co-founded Justice for Magdalenes (now known as Justice for Magdalenes Research), an advocacy organization which successfully campaigned for a State apology and restorative justice for survivors of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries. She currently serves as the group’s Committee Director. Mari has been interviewed, written and spoken extensively on Ireland’s adoption exportation, intercountry adoption practice, US adoption activism and the Magdalene Laundries. She has also testified on the US ratification of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption and both Pennsylvania and New Jersey adoption legislation.
Please welcome Mari!
Dear Group
My name is Frances and I am a mature student in the North of England writing a dissertation about the Magdalene Laundries My connection stems from my Irish Catholic ancestry and not knowing of my maternal grandmother My mother was born in 1934 in Ireland and was adopted we think around 1938. We can only think that her mother was a young unwed pregnant girl and would have had no choice. We have had no information, birth certificates to help only a surname of Mackin. My mother felt the family that adopted her only wanted to use her as a farmhand She has had very little education and met my father in 1956 and they both came over for work in England and made it their home My mother has always had a sadness in her but has never forgiven her mother for giving her up and was always so protective of myself and my siblings. When we reached teenagers she never wanted us to have our freedom and feigned illness to make us look after her This has caused her many mental health issues and the stigma of not being wanted in her eyes has never left her. She is now 83, has lived in residential care and has dementia. I would dearly love to email Mari Steed and ask her how being born of a Magdalene if it has ever affected in her in anyway. I feel it would give my piece of work a ethnicity that would give the reader a better understanding of these brave young girls and women and also how she feels about her faith I choose to no longer practice being Catholic as I feel the Catholic Church is dated and I find no comfort from it. I appreciate if you do not wish to give me an email address but if this email could be forwarded to Mari I would be most grateful. Many Thanks
Sorry, I just found your comment. I will forward this to Mari.