Kevin J. Battle is a retired police officer and Coast Guardsman. He currently lives in South Portland, Maine, but grew up with his loving adoptive family in Long Island, New York.
While his childhood was a happy and healthy one, Kevin's birth in 1958 and the circumstances surrounding his adoption at the age of 2 were shrouded in mystery. How did he end up at an orphanage? Who was his biological mother? Why did she give him away? Not even Kevin's adoptive parents knew the full story. All they knew was that they loved him, and now he was their son.
When Kevin was in high school, he wanted to become a volunteer firefighter. However, he was initially rejected because his identification papers were incomplete.
This is when he first became determined to fill in the missing puzzle pieces from his past.
Nothing prepared Kevin for what he'd uncover over the course of the next four decades — including the shocking truth behind the convent in Ireland where he was born.
Source: Brian O'Donovan/RTE
Kevin J. Battle can still remember the day he was dropped off at his adoptive family's home in Long Island. He was only two years old at the time.
For years, it was unclear how Kevin even ended up at the orphanage; the circumstances surrounding his birth and background were shrouded in mystery.
Still, Kevin's adoptive parents and little sister provided him with a loving and supportive home.
In high school, Kevin hoped to become a volunteer firefighter, but he was initially turned away because of his incomplete identification papers.
Kevin, you see, was not born a U.S. citizen.
This made him more determined than ever before to learn the truth about his past.
He eventually found his New York birth certificate, along with papers showing his actual place of birth: Sean Ross Abbey in County Tipperary, Ireland.
Sean Ross Abbey is a convent and the location of St Anne's Special School run by the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts.
Kevin received only a few pieces of information. His birth mom was listed as Kathleen Sheedy and his year of birth was 1958.
He couldn't find anyone who matched that name and year and was ignored by everyone he emailed for information.
Then one day, Kevin learned his adoption papers had been falsified. His mother's name was not Kathleen Sheedy, but Catherine Sheehy!
He'd wasted a lot of time looking for the wrong person.
In 1978, Kevin traveled to Sean Ross Abbey in Ireland, on a mission to find his old records.
However, the nuns promptly turned him away and refused to speak with him.
During that same trip, a bartender told Kevin about the nuns of Sean Ross Abbey who used to burn adoption records behind the convent.
Decades past and Kevin had no more insight — until stories about shady "mother and baby homes" in Ireland began to emerge, blowing the lid off decades of mistreatment of unwed mothers and their babies born out of wedlock.
As the press took notice, Kevin received a letter from the convent. If he paid $130, they would send him his records. He was skeptical, but agreed.
When the new packet of paperwork arrived in the mail, Kevin was pleasantly surprise to see his birth mother's real name printed on the certificate. He called the convent to inquire about her, but was told she had died.
Kevin remained skeptical to believe anything.
By this point, Kevin's wife was equally invested in her husband's past so she bought him an at-home DNA testing kit.
It matched him with a first cousin in Great Britain.
"We’ve been looking for you," his cousin wrote in an email.
Kevin was off again, this time to the London — where family members of which he'd never known about apparently lived.
Kevin was greeted at the airport by a 59-year-old man named Tony. "Hi, I'm your brother," he said.
This was a moment he never thought would become a reality.
During the drive back to Tony's house, Kevin was flooded with details about his birth, his mother and the Sacred Heart Sisters.
Kevin was born William Sheehy in July 1958 in Sean Ross Abbey.
There, the Sacred Heart Sisters would take babies from their unwed mothers and adopt them out to unwitting families in other parts of Ireland and countries overseas, like England and the United States. Meanwhile, the mothers would be forced into manual labor to "atone for their sins."
In 2009, a journalist investigated and exposed this horrible practice of forcing unmarried pregnant girls into convents.
At the time, the girls and/or their families used fake names to avoid the public shaming and stigma attached to giving birth out of wedlock — hence the reason it was initially difficult for Kevin to find his mother's real name.
In 1978, when Kevin went searching for his mother, she was still alive.
But of course, he didn't know that; the nuns had lied to him.
Catherine Sheehy had looked for her son after he was adopted, but the convent told her he died in a car accident in New York.
She never gave up hope that he was still alive.
Kevin's half-siblings said they first learned about him in 2009 — the day of Catherine Sheehy's funeral.
As it turned out, she was so devastated about having to give "William" away that she kept the secret for decades. But she wanted her husband, Kevin's birth father, to tell the rest of their children the truth when she passed away.
While in the UK with his blood relatives, he stepped inside the home where his mother once lived — and saw a blurry photo of them together for the very first time.
"Look at her smile, look at how she’s holding me," he said.
"She did want me, I see that now."
The truth has set him free.
