‘Hugely significant’: those affected by forced adoptions welcome apology but demand more remedy

Victims say hearing Keir Starmer’s acknowledgment of their suffering was emotional but want more mental support This summer’s World Cup fever vividly takes Ann Keen back to 1966 and the day England won the tournament – she was 17 years old and it was the day she told her father she was pregnant. “It was the worst thing that could ever have been said to him. I was told I’d put shame on the family and I must be sent away,” the former Labour MP said. “I was in an unmarried mother’s home where I had to scrub the steps from morning until night. It was all about punishment. Even in the delivery room I was told I couldn’t have anything for the pain, because I was a bad girl. And when NHS staff are telling you that, you start to believe it.” Afterwards, she was told she could have 10 days with her son, but on the eighth day he was taken away as staff were concerned she was getting “far too close to him”. She didn’t see him again for 27 years. Keen was among the campaigners – both mothers and adult adoptees – who sat in parliament listening to the prime minister formally apologise for the state’s role in forced adoptions between 1949 and 1976. It was a profou