Mother-and-baby homes: 'They called us fallen women, bad women'

Adele is almost 70 - but even now she said the smell of lavender wood polish triggers a memory rewind of more than half a century.

Aged 17, she was brought to Marianvale mother-and-baby home in Newry, County Down.

She had been taken in her parish priest's car after discovering she was pregnant.

Once she arrived, Adele said the nuns who ran the institution took away her name.

"They said I could no longer use my ordinary name, and I was given a name to use while I was there," she explained.

Adele herself had been adopted from a mother-and-baby home in Belfast in the 1950s, after being born to a single mother.

Her adoptive family were "good people" but she feels "there wasn't a lot of affection and love in the household".

She said she "looked for love in the wrong places".