Adoption can proceed without consent of father, court rules

A woman can proceed to have her daughter (3) adopted despite her persistent refusals to identify the child's father so his consent for adoption might be obtained, the High Court has ruled.

Mr Justice Henry Abbott said he was making that order with "considerable regret" but considered it was necessary in the best interests of the child. If the father does find out about his child at some stage, he is entitled to challenge the adoption order, he said.

The 22-year-old woman had told the court that the father, whom she knew for several years and with whom she was formerly in a relationship for two periods, one of three months and another a year, would be unable to cope with knowing about the child.  She wanted the child adopted and to grow up in a home with two loving parents, she said.

She had hidden her pregnancy from everyone apart from her sister whose apartment she moved into for a short time before the baby was born. She explained away her increased weight by saying she had a metabolic condition.

Thirty weeks into her pregnancy, she sought early adoption but the adoption agency said she must first give the father’s name in both his interests and those of the child.

She refused, saying the father would be unable to cope with knowing about the child.  The father was on regular medication for depression and, if he failed to take it, can be overwhelmed and withdraws from social interaction and had also had a number of stresses recently, including failing his exams and his sister being diagnosed with a serious illness.

His parents, she claimed, found it difficult to support him and she was unwilling to increase his stress levels by telling him about the pregnancy.

While she was no longer in a relationship with him, she was protective of him and of her own parents whom, she believed, would suffer knowing of a grandchild that would be lost to them by adoption.

Despite receiving counselling from the adoption agency involving being repeatedly advised of the legal rights of the father and the repercussions for him and the child, she still refused to identify him.

Following the baby’s birth, the child was placed in a pre-adoptive foster home where she remained pending the outcome of the application by the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) for an order approving the placing of the baby for adoption without notifying the father.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Henry Abbott said the father’s legal rights in relation to the child were not being met but “nothing more can be done” to ascertain his identity. The mother and her sister both refused in court to identify him.

The interests of the child remain paramount as directed by the 2010 Adoption Act and by the Constitution, the judge said. The child’s speedy adoption and placement for adoption dictated the court should make the order sought.

Earlier in his judgment, Mr Justice Abbott remarked “the problem with secrets was that they are frequently found out and that the father would probably find out eventually”. If this happened, the father could move to challenge any adoption order.

The judge said the woman and her sister are intelligent and educated women who had undertaken to provide information on the father’s medical history but would not reveal his identity.

An alternative to granting an adoption order was to place the child in long-term foster care with a view to her ultimately being adopted by the foster family but that was “fraught with uncertainty”.

The judge referred to a similar UK case in which a judge said if a woman was compelled, in the face of being jailed for contempt, to reveal the identity, it could drive other women to seek abortions or give birth secretly at risk to both themselves and their babies.  The UK judge said such a process smacked “too much of the Inquisition to be tolerable.”

Mr Justice Abbott said he was taking a “similar balanced approach” in this case.