Sian E JonesI knew in 1979 I would write this book! My parents, who were both psychiatric nurses, dropped me off at the nearest large hospital for the mentally subnormal. It was my 18th birthday. On my first day, I encountered a small cohort of women who didn't ppear to me to have any discernible learning disability or congenital abnormalities that would have led to admission to the institution. I soon learned they all had one thing in common; they had all had babies out of wedlock and had been deemed as moral defectives. They had been there since their adolescence. It seemed so incongruous to me that while the sounds of the 70's were blaring from the ward radio, the echoes of such recent history were walking along the cavernous corridors of the ward, now wholly ill-equipped to leave due to institutionalisation.I learned so much from those women. It is astonishing that we treated women this way in our recent past. Their pregnancies were often the result of abuse and violence, yet the perpetrators went unpunished.I wanted to bring to life one of those women's stories. I wanted to remember, and for their lives to be remembered.For every Lara, I thank you. Read More Read Less