Sitting at a Port Macquarie cafe, Theresa Hiney Tinggal reflects on her upbringing in Ireland and how her true identity was kept from her.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
In 2002 at the age of 48, Theresa found out that she was illegally adopted and her birth certificate was falsified.
She was handed over to her adoptive parents and registered as their legal child at two-days-old.
Theresa said she always felt there was "something not quite right".
"I never fit in," she said.
"I didn't get along with my adoptive mother and it started bothering me. I hadn't spoken to her in about 16 years [in 2002]."
Living in the south of England, Theresa first reached out to her uncle who was living in northern England and told him she was going back to Ireland to speak with her mother.
"He was crying on the phone and told me she wasn't my mother and the man who raised me wasn't my father," Theresa said.
"He said he remembered my parents saying they got me and not in a legal way."
She then called her sister and found out she was also keeping the adoption a secret.
"I came to the conclusion that I must have been the only person that didn't know."
Teresa did go and visit her adoptive mother to ask about her illegal adoption.
"She was quite shocked and she told me what happened, but it sounded like she was reading a script over and over again," Theresa said.
At the time Theresa was adopted, she said Ireland was a "very Catholic country" and that it was an "awful shame to be pregnant" while unmarried.
"The way it was at the time, nobody asked questions or interfered," she said.
"The girl would fall pregnant and then disappear and would be stuck in a mother and baby hall and made to work until she gave birth."
Search for answers
After Theresa found out she was illegally adopted, she tried to find out more information from the government and started a group and website for other illegal adoptees in Ireland.
"Each time the government has just ignored us," she said.
Over the years, Theresa also advertised in newspapers in Ireland and appeared on TV in search of her birth mother.
"Someone mentioned trying an Ancestry DNA site and I submitted my DNA but didn't really follow up on it."
A friend of Theresa's and a producer working on a documentary about Ireland's illegal adoptions followed up on her ancestry DNA results in 2017.
She managed to find her cousins in Ireland.
"They were all very excited to see what I looked like," Theresa said.
Theresa discovered she had a sister who was estranged from the family and that her birth mother had died in 2009, before Theresa could meet her.
"Anything I found out about my mother, I was told by my cousins."
She said there has still been no large-scale investigation by the Ireland Government into illegal adoptions.
"The people involved in these adoptions made money from it. The Church destroyed so many lives with this," she said.
Theresa did meet her sister, but the relationship between them was strained and they no longer talk.
Now living in England, Theresa maintains a relationship with her biological cousins and her two sisters that she grew up with.
She makes the journey to Port Macquarie each year to visit her daughter.
Theresa said she still struggles to come to terms with the lies and deceit of her true identity.
"It's very difficult when you find family," she said.
"I find that I'm the one that has to keep in touch and it's almost like I'm a stranger.
"In my soul I don't feel comfortable because I don't know where I belong."
