A man in Ireland has filed a lawsuit against the children’s home which forcibly removed him from his mother and put him up for adoption.

Terry Doran, now in his fifties, said that the nuns at the home forged his mother’s signature in order to dispense with her consent and move him across the Border when he was only a few months old.

Mr Doran was adopted and raised by a couple in County Derry after he was removed from his mother for being unmarried.

Kevin Winters of KRW Law, the solicitor representing Mr Doran, is alleging negligence by a failure to take care of the plaintiffs at the Marianvale home, forcefully separating them, removing Mr Doran to another jurisdiction and concealing the true circumstances of the separation from his mother.

Mr Winters also said that the nuns’ conduct was “clandestine and gratuitously cruel”. One of the nuns told Mr Doran’s mother that her baby had gone and she would never be able to see him again.

The nuns say that the adoptions carried out at the home were all done in accordance with legislation.

Mr Doran and his mother were reunited in 2010, after 46 years. At the reunion, she told Mr Doran, “I never gave you away, you were taken from me. I woke up in the morning, the cot was empty and I was sent home”.

Speaking to the Irish Times on Thursday, Mr Doran said, ““It looked like she had waited all those years to tell me that.”

A hearing for the case took place today. A further review has been listed for September.