Adopted Man Seeks Father

Church asked for answers.

Press Yvonne Martin. The Press 2003

How would I know?

I wasn’t   there. In fairness to the truth he has just got to accept what ever he’s told. We certainly don’t know.

                                                    Father Paddy Cahill.

A Christchurch man trying to trace his father through the Catholic Church was advised that he may have to wait and ask his dead mother in Heaven.

But Peter Carmine-White, 61, refuses to take that chance. Several decades have already passed since he began asking church and Government authorities who his father was. He is still no closer to solving the mystery.

“All I want is the truth,” said Mr. Carmine-White, a former nurse and father of six. “ I am sure there are people alive who know.”

Mr. Carmine-White was born in 1941 at Nazareth House in Brougham Street, then a catholic residential home for needy children, set up by the Order of the Sisters of Nazareth.

His mother, Dorothy (Dora)  Carmine, along with two sisters, was in the nun’s care when she became pregnant, age 15.

She had baby Peter on September 20 1941, and he was put into the foster care of a Catholic family, The Whites, who later adopted him.

“There were no problems with my upbringing, but I never considered myself to be a White. It was a falsity to think that I was, He said.

Mr. Carmine-white remembers getting visits from an “Aunty Dora” in the early years and sitting for professional portraits with her , before the visits stopped.

“As I got older I started to ask questions about Aunty Dora, but never got replies,” he said. “ I am sure you naturally know who your mother is. There is a bond there.”

At eight, he was selling raffle tickets door-to-door for the church when a women told him “ You’re not a white, you’re a Carmine.”

Mr. Carmine-White’s quest for the truth began.

A family death notice in the news paper eventually led to is mother, who he spent some time with in the North Island in the late 1970s. But they lost contact again and she took her secret to the grave eight years ago.

A copy of his birth certicate confirmed she was his mother, but there was a blank where his father’s details should have been.

Phone calls to the Nazareth nuns shed no light on the matter. Neither did queries to the Good Shepherd Sisters, who later looked after his mother (then renamed Francis Theresa) at their Mount Magdala girl’s home.

Child Youth and Family was able to supply a few pieces of the puzzle. Its foster documents originally showed his name as Peter Carmody, amended to Peter Carmine. They showed maintenance of 15shillings was paid for his care through the Nazareth sisters, but not who paid it.

Father Paddy Cahill, who heads the Catholic Professional Standards Committee, wrote that no-one knew who his father was.

A young Dora and her sister went to Lyttelton to visit their aunty and uncle at Lyttelton and became separated at the railway station on the way home, he said.

Dora arrived home later to Nazareth House upset. She was working in the kitchen on the night of the birth when she complained of stomach pains and was sent to bed.

“In those days there was a great innocence about sex, so neither your mother or the sisters were aware she was pregnant.” wrote Father Cahill.

“Some people thought that your cousin was your father but only your mother knew the truth.”

Mr. Carmine-White was stunned with the response. “I couldn’t believe it when I read it.”

He Contacted The Press for any leads that could help track his father and plans to seek further information from the church through the Privacy Act.

Father Cahill said yesterday that Mr Carmine-White was told what was known “and he won’t believe it.”

“How would I know?

“I wasn’t there. In fairness to the truth he has just got to accept whatever he’s told. We certainly don’t know.” Said Father Cahill.

“Girls are having babies in 2003 and we don’t know who the fathers are. He is asking us to have information dating back to 1941.

How reasonable can we be? “