Sir, – Audrey Flynn and Teresa Flynn (February 26th) quite rightly ask, where are the fathers of those children born to women in these institutions run by nuns? They are not all dead and gone.
My mother told me how, when she again met my father, Enrico Garcia, on a train to London, he begged her to take me from the mother-and-baby home run by the nuns of the Sacred Heart convent, Bessborough, Co Cork. This was 1943, during the second World War. I was then three years old. He offered to set us up in London where he had business interests.
She told me this in 1975, after I had successfully traced her, living in Belfast.
Not all fathers were irresponsible. In fact, my father was not even aware of my existence until that chance meeting on a train to London. I suspect many other fathers would have been in a similar position. – Yours, etc,