"Tell No One" by Brendan Watkins

TELL NO ONE, by Brendan Watkins, is praised to have achieved something that few memoirs can, “laying bare a disturbing history with compassion and humanity”.

It details the author's search for his birth parents, which uncovered “an astonishing global scandal at the heart of the Catholic Church”.

Here are the deep emotions of a man desperately searching for answers to some of the most fundamental questions about his existence. “Who were my parents? Where were they? Why did they give me away?”

The author's voice is distinct and almost tangible, illustrating the “nagging inkling” that many adopted people feel, “that they're mismatched, don't quite fit, or are outsiders, a recurring sense that they've lost something”.

Watkins learned about his adoption when he was eight years old. Upon his decision to start a family of his own, he encountered the practical issue of “what was swimming around in my gene pool” that could affect the health and development of his future offspring.

Worse, after decades of extensive research and a DNA test, Watkins discovered that he is the son of a priest and a nun.

His father, a celebrated outback missionary, had sworn his mother to secrecy about their relationship. This is a form of “spiritual abuse” that “says so much about the misogyny of the Catholic Church, the institution”.

“It's a male-centric institution that doesn't recognise the rights of women. I found that my mother had met my father when she was 14 or 15, and he was 30 years older... so he had enormous influence over her.”

There are approximately 450,000 Catholic priests around the world. It is estimated that they have fathered over 20,000 children. Research has shown that many mothers were pressured to have abortions. Others were coerced into hiding, tormented by shame and guilt as they gave birth to babies who were immediately and forcibly removed for adoption, their records falsified or conveniently lost.

How many women endured this fate? And how many children of priests have suffered from secrecy and lies like Watkins did? Tell No One is a powerful reminder of the sort of cruelty that institutionalised religious power can impose on women and children.