How much damage was done by those who paved the road to hell with their good intentions
Roberto, born to a Maltese girl in 1974, and what seems to me to have been a British or American father, placed in an orphanage and then raised in Syracuse by the Sicilian couple who adopted him.
Angela gave birth when she was 17 and her mother forced her to give the baby up to the nuns. She never saw her son until she met him for the first time 40 years later on a television show, and then died a couple of days afterwards at just 57.
I’ve been crying about the story of Angela, the Maltese woman in her 50s who has just died, a few days after meeting for the first time, on Italian television, the son she was forced by her mother to put in an orphanage run by nuns, when he was newborn, and never saw again for 40 years.
She looked much older than her age and it is obvious that she hasn’t had an easy life; hers is a face changed by slow-boiling grief.
I have no doubt that it was the emotional overload of that encounter which killed her. It would have brought a flood of distress, guilt and sorrow rather than joy – you have to be truly devoid of imagination and empathy not to understand why, and then again in the far-from-ideal-situation of a television set with an audience, when such stressful situations should always be private, because these are private matters.
Yes, it made for great television, but what about the people involved? For the son, Roberto, there was only happiness: he had found his mother at last. But for his mother, Angela, there were 40 years of sorrow and guilt to deal with, deep-buried anger at being made to give the baby up and worse, having to deal with the sheer, unutterable waste of what might have been but wasn’t allowed to be. A deluge of sorrow at that level can cause a person’s heart to fail, and it looks as though it did.
When the programme was broadcast on Italian television yesterday (it had been recorded), the station did not add a note saying that Angela had died just after that encounter. That was truly wrong. Viewers were left with the impression that this was a story with a happy ending. But it is a story with a terrible ending. They didn’t want to spoil it with the truth.
You have the link to the programme below. I wouldn’t ordinarily recommend something of this nature, but this particular case is just so sad and dreadful that I think you should watch it just to be reminded how some people are set upon paving the road to hell with their good intentions.
Angela had her baby 40 years ago in Malta. It was 1974, she was 17, and her mother forced her to give the baby up for adoption as soon as he was born. There is something about Roberto’s appearance that tells me his father was probably British or American. The forces hadn’t yet left then. That would have been another factor in the mother’s decision to avoid ‘shame’. Those of my generation and older know that the expression ‘tifel ta’ bahri’ – a sailor’s bastard – was commonplace and it was most definitely pejorative. People even used it, thoughtlessly, to joke about blond or red-haired children to their mothers: “Qisu tifel ta’ bahri.” It seems inconceivable now, but those who are younger have absolutely no idea of how very different Malta was when it was a maritime and military base.
In reality, Roberto wasn’t adopted as a baby and stayed at that orphanage for quite a long while. When he was adopted by an older couple in Syracuse, Sicily, he was old enough to have formed basic memories of a ‘before’. His adoptive parents never told him that he was adopted, and refused to answer his repeated questions that were prompted by his instinctive understanding, even as a young child, that he had come from somewhere else.
Even as a really young child living in Syracuse, he had ‘flashes’, he said, of a long and large flight of stairs, of a big place with many rooms, of nuns and many children. He didn’t know what this meant, but when he was older he realised that it had to have been a children’s home run by nuns, and that he would not have had these ‘flashes’ unless he had been there himself. But still his adoptive parents insisted that they were his real parents.
He also noticed that in his home there were no pictures of his baptism, of him as a baby, as a toddler, and he couldn’t understand why not.
The dissonance between his adoptive parents’ concealment of the truth and his primeval awareness that he had come from somewhere else caused Roberto great discomfort and left him constantly unsettled until he met his wife and created his own home and form of stability. But the feelings of having come from some place else never went away.
Then, when he was 36 (four years ago), he was walking along the promenade in Syracuse when he stopped to talk to an old woman. “There are two stages in life when people blurt out the truth without thinking or restraint,” the television host says, “when they are very young and very old.”
And so it was with this old woman. “I know who you are. You are the son of Professor X,” she said to Roberto on that promenade. “But you are not really the son of Professor X.”
“In that moment I knew for certain that my feelings were not just my imagination, and I went back and confronted my mother,” Roberto said. By then, his adoptive father had died, and his adoptive mother just broke down and told him everything (“In fact she told me almost too much,” Roberto said, “whereas my father had refused to say anything at all.”).
Armed with his real mother’s full name and the name of the orphanage where he was held, Roberto travelled the mere 60 miles from Syracuse to Malta and found her. Or rather, he found her front door. But he was too scared to knock because he didn’t know whether she was married and might not have told her husband about her first child (she was, and she hadn’t), whether she had other children (yes, two daughters), and whether she would want to see him at all.
He didn’t know whether it was her decision to give him up, whether she put him in an orphanage because she didn’t want him, and whether she would simply slam the door in his face.
And then four years later the television show heard about his story and stepped in, making that first overture itself, I would say fatally.
In the footage, you can see that Roberto is absolutely thrilled to see his real mother for the first time, despite (or perhaps, because of) being 40 years old. That’s it, as far as he is concerned, the end of the matter: this is where we begin and put the rest behind us. But you can also see that his mother is deluged with sorrow to the point where she is about to collapse. She is not thinking of the future. She is thinking of the past. She does not smile once. Her tears are not tears of joy or happiness. They are tears of grief.
What a tragic story. All those people who did so much damage, telling themselves it was out of parental love when all along it was about nothing but protecting themselves: Angela’s mother who forced her to abandon her baby (her own grandson; how could she) in an orphanage to avoid ‘shame’ and gossip from the neighbours; Roberto’s adoptive parents who lied to him or refused to tell him the truth because they feared that they would ‘lose his love’ if he found out they were not his real parents.
And of course, you have to wonder about Roberto’s birth certificate. What did it say? There is no mention of this in the programme, but it is the first thing that occurred to me. He will have needed that birth certificate to get married, I suppose, but then perhaps Italian law is as abusive as Maltese law, which for some years now has allowed adoptive parents to obtain what is effectively a false birth certificate in lieu of a certificate of adoption, issued by the Public Registry in Malta and showing them as the birth parents. Because of this certificate, adopted children in Malta can’t find out that they were adopted unless their adoptive parents tell them. I cannot understand how this can be considered ‘in the child’s best interests’. As Roberto’s story shows, it isn’t at all.
While these Maltese certificates falsely present the adoptive parents as birth parents, changing the date and place of birth is not permitted. So you have children born in, say, Romania with Maltese birth parents. But that’s another story. Let’s stick to Roberto and Angela.
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http://www.wittytv.it/ce-posta-per-te/il-volto/#.VNcKPIeUbrM.mailto
I have a much loved adopted daughter myself and she has known about and felt totally comfortable with the situation all her life.
I cannot imagine the mentality of fear that keeps adoptive parents from telling their children the truth from when they are old enough to understand it.
The longer they wait to do so, the more traumatic the revelation can be for the adopted child – or adult. Children adapt more naturally and quickly to the truth, and take it in their stride very easily, especially when they are so loved that they will feel no insecurity at all.
Nowadays, when adoption is so much more common than it used to be in the past, there is no longer any embarrassment or stigma associated with it.
The fear that the child will love his or her adoptive parents any less, if they know the truth or if they actually meet their biological parents when they’re older, is, frankly, absolute crap. The human heart is capable of extending its capacity for love indefinitely. It does not need to reduce the amount of love from one person to make space for another.
If a child meets his or her biological parents, and makes an emotional connection with them, it does not necessarily follow that it will weaken the strong one he has made with the people who have brought him up and loved him all his life. That, in my opinion, is indestructible.
When or if my daughter expresses the wish to meet her biological parents, I will be the first person to encourage her and help her to do so, to be there to ease any emotional hurdles that might occur. I am not afraid she will love me any less – far from it.
If meeting them will help make her life more whole, so be it. Her well-being is paramount in my book and I don’t want her to feel guilty for wanting to do so.
Every Mother’s and Father’s Day , I have always encouraged her to say a little prayer for her biological parents, because if it weren’t for them she wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t have a daughter who I love more than life itself.
You are an excellent caring woman.
I can’t understand why people watch this stuff. It’s just so tragic.
It is true that the mother appeared overwhelmed by meeting her son who she had given up for adoption so long ago.
It is true that such reunions best happen in private rather than in the glare of a TV studio.
However, there must have been some element of relief in finally seeing her long-lost son and in sharing her long-borne secret with the rest of her family.
When invited to the programme, deep down she must have known who wanted to meet her, which is why she told her daughters.
She could have refused the invitation to the programme but the desire to see her first-born child must have been too strong.
The extreme emotions may indeed have contributed to her demise shortly after, but she passed away with the knowledge that her son bore her no grudge for what she had been forced to do by his grandmother so many years before. A bitter-sweet story all along.
I must admit, this story bent my heart in three. And the social story in those days definitely broke this woman’s heart.
In years gone by, unmarried Maltese girls who became pregnant were sent off to Gozo until delivery. Was his birthplace Malta or Gozo?
The child (if unwanted) used to be sent to an institution some days after birth. I was a midwife at the time at the hospital in Gozo, and it would be nice to know who his midwife was.
As we have seen from the above, some parents lie, so where is the child’s right to find out who his/her parents are?
Does this mean that the child would be prevented from researching his/her birth history and therefore health history, for example, which might be a very real need in case of certain diseases?
How could the state change documents which could result in the adopted child and later adult not finding the truth about himself?
This seems quite odd.
[Daphne – It is fact. Maltese law was amended some years ago under pressure from people who had adopted children and who wanted to pass off the children as their own, but who argued that it was embarrassing for the child to present an adoption certificate when asked for a birth certificate. I had written against the measure in my newspaper columns, arguing that it was deceitful and that birth certificates are meant to present the facts and not fiction. My three children have never in their entire lives required access to their birth certificate for anything, except for one who needed it at the age of 25 to apply for something. Children do not need to see their birth certificate, and by the time they are old enough to require access to it for their own affairs, they are old enough to have been told the truth about their origins.]
And there’s absolutely nothing shameful with being adopted anyway. Just as a child doesn’t control where or who he is born to, he also doesn’t control where or by who he is adopted.
The law is seriously misguided and abusive. It doesn’t in any way protect children’s rights. It just makes it easy for adoptive parents to pretend that their adopted children are their biological progeny.
It makes you wonder whether the parents are more interested in the child’s rights or the couple’s so-called right to have a family.
I hate these shows which exploit tragic familial situations to turn a profit. If the people involved really care about bringing long-lost relatives together, they should start a non-profit organisation which does this sort of work quietly.
I agree totally with you. The mother seems to be a very unhappy woman.
I cannot imagine when she had her second child how she could not remember her first.
I can imagine her great grief, holding such a secret from her family, husband and children.
I was happy for Roberto but I was sorry for his mother.
His adoptive parents were selfish enough not to disclose the real story, but on the other hand they were afraid of losing him. Roberto was brought up in a good family; he was lucky.
I agree with you that maybe Angela could have died of a broken heart.
A real tragedy, for public consumption and audience share.
I hate (pseudo) reality TV.
While all you say about the programme is correct and I never follow it because it’s not my kind of entertainment, being rather sensitive myself, I cannot help but think that while Angela may have died prematurely yet she passed away more at peace with herself then she would have done had this meeting never taken place.
At least that’s the way I have fashioned the happy ending for myself.
All I can say is how bittersweet for Roberto to have finally found his real mother only to lose her forever a couple of days later.
I agree with you, Daphne. This was purported to be a win-win but I can only imagine the sense of mistrust this would instill if I had been her partner in marriage for possibly approx. 40 years.
She told her family about this only a week before the programme. Imagine the grief.
Miskina, she died of a broken heart.
I have worked on various such cases including a few for television. One must keep an open mind especially at what might have caused the death.
Each case has its own peculiarities and certain safeguards have to be taken especially to protect the mother. Did the mother want such an encounter on television?
Discretion is of utmost importance.
What a heart breaking story. It seems to me that the mother’s final wish had been granted but the emotions were too strong to cope with. Very sad indeed.
The son will live with regret for the rest of his life.
I understand the lady’s situation when she was 17, but 40 years is a too long a time to keep a secret of that calibre.
It is too heavy a burden to carry. If not to yourself, you owe it to the child himself, and to his siblings to know the truth.
The world has become too small for such things to be kept hidden. I hope that this situation has taught a lot of us a lesson.
[Daphne – It is only those who have been adopted who are permitted to seek out information about their biological parents. Biological parents are not permitted to seek information on the children they have given up for adoption. In other words, they must live in hope that their children will contact them because they are not allowed to seek out and contact their children themselves. In matters which involve children, the law always seeks to put the rights and interests of the child first, over and above those of the parent (or is supposed to). The child has a right to find out who his or her real parents are, but the real parents have no right to find out what became of the child they have given up.]
@ personal
You could’ve been my midwife then.
You may contact me through Daphne. I will be very happy to know you.
It seems to me that at 17, in those days, the mother would have hardly had a say in the matter.
Short of leaving the country. Escaping: but how would she have obtained her/ a passport?
Short of some form of subterfuge she would have been at the mercy of her parents.
And it is those parents that I blame, not the daughter, who however did theoretically have a choice to do the right thing upon her 18th birthday.
Parent pressure was something awful in those days.
1974 was also a difficult period in Malta, and the years that came after that possible had an influence on this daughter of what was best for her son.
The trauma this event must have created for the daughter since the knowledge of her pregnancy cannot be taken lightly.
I wonder if Roberto will now discover from the mother’s family, who the father is and if he is still alive.
Would he have known about Roberto?
In those days, details of such births were recorded in the Church registry when these became known, but in the back section of the Register.
In those days, for all the ills that the Church is said to be responsible for, they did create and try to leave a true record in their archives, which alternate register just doesn’t happen today.
I would see what the parish priest would have known at the time. Check the backs of the registers. Where these registers are not held by the Church any more, check whether these were “bought” by a private genealogist.
So much heartache and pain caused by the parents’ ill placed priorities and pressure.
I feel sorry for all those involved and would hope that Roberto’s half-sisters reach out to him eventually. Not taking too long so as to waste more time than has already been wasted by lack of courage of those who did know.
There is still time for love and happiness to right it from here on, and to carry it forward.
I can’t understand how her own mother did this to her, being a mother herself.
Would she have given her own child away? Then why did she do it to her own daughter? How ignorant they were back in those days.
They gave more importance to what other people think of them than they did to human life and happiness.
I was in tears watching this because I feel sure she did not have a clear idea of what she was getting herself into.
I’m sure she knew it was about her son, but she couldn’t have known she would go through all that unnecessary emotional torture for the sake of prime-time TV.
When the envelope opened and Roberto’s wife was there, Angela’s confusion was palpable. It was painful to watch. No words said for ages. No explanation from the host.
It was like she was thinking ‘I’m sure I had a boy’. Imagine having given birth to a child and then to be faced with that confusion.
It would have multiplied her guilt several times over.
It was like she was searching for her own resemblance in the woman and strangely enough there was some. So distressing! How could they do that to her?
Did they check with a professional whether she was actually emotionally able to handle all that suspense?
How disgraceful not mentioning she died! I can see why though. The psychological torture of those 20 minutes was so intense and so clear to all that the producers would be hammered by criticism if the public knew she died a few days later.
The fact they did not mention she died reeks of unprofessionalism and guilt.
“Did they check with a professional whether she was actually emotionally able to handle all that suspense? ”
I think that the answer to that would probably be “no” and that, had they done so, she might have “failed the test.” The poor woman looked permanently sad, even in older photos taken prior to appearing on the television programme.
When the child was going to be given for adoption they were not allowed to see the child,not even hear the child cry, and also they were not told the sex of the child.
I know, because I was there.
How about thinking of the remaining siblings who also have to deal with this intrusion at such a painful time?
The existence of Roberto can no longer be called an intrusion.
It is a fact of life. For which they all have paid the price, but Roberto and his mother most of all. Now the mother is no longer there, but Roberto is.
Ignoring him, however, is an extrusion.
That is why the exclusion of genetic tracing from the birth certificate should be considered a modern sin.
I’m surprised she was not locked up in a mental institution for the rest of her life.
It seems that the maternal grandparents are both still alive. They must have a hell of a lot on their conscience.
Why are you saying that? She should have been locked up for what?
[Daphne – Michael does not mean she should have been locked up. His is a reference to the fact that there was a time when girls who had children out of marriage were, literally, locked up – either in a mental institution or in some slave-labour outfit like the Irish ‘Madeleine Laundries’.]
Jiena ta’ 15 years sibt l-ommi minn l-istitut. Ghamlit tlett xhur immur kull weekend, u wara tlett xhur, cemplet il-qassis biex jiena ma mmurx izjed, u illum lanqas naf fejn qiehda. Ta’ 17 years spiccajt fit-triq.
Il-hajja xi kultant kiefra, pero’ taqtax qalbek – mhux kulhadd xorta. Ma nafx kemm ghandek zmien issa, pero’ hawn postijiet li jistghu forsi jghinuk, skond x’ikun il-kaz tieghek, bhal Suret il-Bniedem http://suret-il-bniedem.aidengine.net/contact u Dar Merhba Bik http://www.wave-network.org/organizations/dar-merhba-bik
What a cruel world! I was so heartbroken just watching, let alone the poor woman with what she went through.
She was probably put to so much shame, that she probably wasn’t allowed to mention it to anyone. She must have been traumatized all her life.
In a way, this episode might have given her a sense of relief, albeit possibly precipitating her death.
It is said no one dies of a broken heart per se, but she must have had so many pent-up feelings which would have contributed to health problems.
May she rest in peace, and may Roberto find peace too. He’s been through such a lot.
I can imagine how he feels, having lost his adoptive parents, and now, after finally finding his biological mother, losing her too. He’s probably feeling a lot of guilt too, miskin.
I really hope that his half-sisters will keep good contact with him. That’s the only good I can see coming out of this story.
As for sensational prime-time programmes like this, it’s really all about the money, isn’t it?
I was in tears when I recalled my social work placement at the Ursuline Creche and the children who were kept there at the time.
For long days I had felt their unspeakable anguish. Seeing it again in Roberto’s face and seeing his mother’s grief made me live again those days in an emotional powerlessness wanting to do something for these children.
Such dramatic revelations are traumatizing and they should never be exposed as a show. I feel the same about our own TV shows of a similar kind.
The full birth certificate of an adopted person is different to that of a person who hasn’t been adopted. It is the extract that is the same.
That said, birth parents aren’t listed on the certificates and that is because open adoptions are not yet legal in Malta, therefore, the adoptive family cannot know details of the birth family.
It is only the child, on reaching 18, who can request the courts to ‘unseal’ the documents.
As an adoptive mum, who has told her child the story of his origin from day 1, I’m glad that the extract is different because this actually protects the child’s right to privacy, particularly in a country the size of Malta.
Once my child is old enough to make his own decisions, I wouldn’t mind broadcasting it to all and sundry but till then, my primary goal is for him to know his personal story and do with it what he will, when he is ready to.
On another note, while expert consensus today is that it is detrimental to hide the truth of their origins from children who are adopted, this wasn’t the case in the not-so-distance past.
A few decades ago, the advice given to adoptive parents was to never reveal the truth to adopted children, something that seems so counter-intuitive to us nowadays.
ghalkemm ma tantx naqbel ma dak li tikteb is soltu illum ikolli nejd li naqbel mieghek 100%. Jien nemmen li din l-istorja tefet lil din il mara fil qabar.
This lady had never mentioned the event to her husband and daughters, but obviously had to explain everything when the postman came.
It must have been very emotional for all the members of the family. Such programmes do more harm than good.
The circumstances of this story are tragic enough but even more troubling is the fact that the state is still – willingly or unwittingly – colluding with selfish adoptive parents who are hell bent on depriving their adopted children of their basic right to know that they are actually adopted.
This has serious emotional and psychological consequences and also hinders an adopted person’s ability to find out about any possible medical conditions within his/her biological extended family that he/she would ideally need to research and mitigate in order to protect himself/herself and any possible offspring/descendants.