Ms Alice Coughlan:

When I came out of Cork, on my way home, I made four promises. I would trust no one. I would let no one control me ever again. I would block everything that had happened from my mind. If I ended up being the opposite of the nuns who dealt with me, I would be a good person. I blocked everything out for 40 years. I never married. I worked hard. I bought my own house. I had one more daughter and I educated her. I worked very hard.

About six years ago I decided I was done. I started getting these flashbacks. I had another operation. I got shingles. For the first time in about 40 years I was locked in a house on my own where I had to face my life. I went to counselling, which I paid for. To be totally honest, it was fine. It helped me. It opened up the start of what happened to me. I went to the commission and asked for counselling from the commission. A year to the day after I appeared before the commission, I was offered counselling, but only if I gave up my own counsellor. I said, "No, I'm not going to have this."

Then it got to the stage where counselling was not doing anything for me. I was getting flashbacks and other things. After appearing before the commission, for three months I would remember something that happened to me in the convent and I would say, "Oh God, I should have said that at the meeting."

Then I turned around and I went to my doctor and I went to the community mental health centre where I saw a psychologist. This was a totally different experience for me. First, this lady was not saying to me, "Yes, Alice. No, Alice. Right, Alice." I do not mean this in a wrong way; I am just saying this is what I was getting from counselling. The psychologist was kind of hearing me or guiding me through certain things and pulling me back when I went all over the place.

To put it bluntly, for the two years I went to counselling there was not one week when I did not cry through the counselling session. It was like a release for me if I am honest. It is not that it did me that much good but it did give me a release. That is the only way I can describe it.

If I was asked now what I think people need, I can honestly say they need trauma counselling with somebody who actually knows what they have gone through - a loss, this feeling that somebody has taken their soul and just thrown it into the dust, and that they are of no importance to anybody or anything. They need somebody who is able to look at them. They need to feel they can actually talk to someone who understands what they are saying. That person should be able to turn around and guide them.

I believe this of every person who has gone through an institution or any form of trauma as a result of this, be it adoptees or especially survivors of mother and baby homes and other institutions. A woman bringing children into this world afterwards is destroyed because of this and obviously it will greatly affect her children or her partner.

The other thing is that it actually helped me realise that I did not have a choice.

Well, I had a choice - either give my child up for adoption or that child goes into an institution until 17 years of age. Either way, I would not be getting that child back. That was my choice, but is that a choice? I knew what happened in institutions. Even in those days, people were not that silly. We knew what happened in those places. I have met my daughter, but there are many adopted people who actually believe that their mothers went into a convent, had them and then decided to give them away for adoption.

Something else I feel strongly about is the nuns writing these reports. The nun that did this to me wrote up my information, but I am supposed to sit back and say that that was grand and she was going to be fair. This nun walked in and gave me a new name, a new number and that advice. That was my choice - keep my mouth shut and get on with it. She did not say, "Keep your mouth shut". She just said, "You are not getting your child" and that it would go for adoption and have a privileged and good upbringing. Unfortunately, I had had a privileged upbringing, in that I had a Catholic private education, so I was twice as bad as the rest of them. At least they had some excuse because they were not educated by the nuns, etc.

The main point is that they be offered advice. I spent two years sitting in the Catholic Protection and Rescue Society of Ireland listening to a social worker before I even met my daughter. We had to go out of our way to do that. I turned around and said, "Hold on a minute". I had blocked everything out because I had been so innocent, so I spoke at my daughter. I did not get anyone who talked to me about what to expect when meeting my daughter. I did not get any of that, so I actually spoke at my daughter for the first year and a half, not to her, and she spoke at me. All she could think of was that it had been the worst time of my life and she was bringing it back to me. The last time we met, we both cried. We decided to leave it for a few weeks and then get back together. We are looking forward to meeting each other.