Woman reunites with child from rape 80 years later

Los Angeles: A woman who gave up her baby for adoption after getting raped has reunited with her daughter - more than 80 years later.

Eileen Wagner, 99, of Monroe, Wisconsin, was 16 when a young man assaulted her as she walked home from the library.

Her parents sent her to a home in Milwaukee for woman planning to place their babies up for adoption, where she delivered her daughter in April 1933, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Dorien Hammann, 83, spoke to her for the first time last month when she called Wagner on the phone and said: 'Hello, mother.'

Wagner had never told her two other children, which she had with her husband later on, about the rape.

She told the Chicago Tribune she felt tears of joy as she replied: 'I thought this day would never come.'

Wagner was walking home with one of her girlfriends in De Pere when they came across two young men.

One of them said he and Wagner should cut across the park so that she could be home by her 10pm curfew.

The man raped her when they took the shortcut.

Wagner never saw him again but became pregnant with his child, hiding it from her parents for as long as possible.

They eventually sent her to Milwaukee, in a home for women who planned to put their babies up for adoption.

Wagner spent three months there.

'In those days, it was such an embarrassment,' she told the Chicago Tribune. 'It was a lonesome time.'

She gave birth to a daughter on April 15, 1933, and named her Beverly Ann.

The baby stayed in the custody of the Children's Home & Aid Society of Wisconsin for two years, before George and Dorothy Schmidt, a couple from the Milwaukee suburbs who had previously adopted a boy, took her in.

Wagner saw her child again in court for a brief moment at the time of the adoption.

She went on to attend nursing school, where she met her husband Richard, and got married in 1938.

She never told their two children about her rape or about their third sibling because she worried about how it could affect them.

'Everything is so open now, but years ago, that was taboo,' she told the Chicago Tribune.

She came close to telling them a couple of times but thought it would be best to just leave it alone, she added.

The Schmidts always told Hammann she had been adopted.

She went to college for two years, got married three times, and welcomed three children and three grandchildren.

Her daughter-in-law, Jeanette Foster, traced down Hammann online, using information from the adoption papers.

She didn't tell Hammann, who had never been tempted to look for her birth parents.

'There are good stories and there are bad stories, and I never wanted to open a can of worms and spoil anything,' Hammann told the Chicago Tribune.

But Foster found an obituary for Wagner's brother online, which included Wagner among his surviving relatives.

Foster dialed a phone number listed online and Wagner picked up.

'It is still so hard to believe that at my age, my birth mother is still alive,' Hammann told the Chicago Tribune. 'I get chills and goose bumps all at the same time when I think of this.'

Wagner thought it might be a scam at first but became convinced when Foster told her the details she knew about the adoption - including the name Beverly, which Wagner had given Hammann at birth.

Wagner and Hammann spoke on the phone several times and met in person on April 25.

'I just wanted to know that she was OK, and she had a good life and wasn't abused,' Wagner told the newspaper.

'There's so much going on in this world these days and you're thinking all these things could have happened.'

Hammann travelled to Monroe with her husband and spoke to her mother for two and a half hours.

They realized they both had similar haircuts and shared a love of golf that had kept them on the green past 80 years old.

Wagner told Hammann about the circumstances of her birth, explaining why she had given her up for adoption.

The two met again on Mother's Day, during which Hammann met Wagner's two other children - her half-brother and half-sister.

Wagner, whose husband died in 2006 at 91 years old, has finally told her family about her rape.

Her son William came in hours after Foster's phone call and found her sobbing.

'I sat in the bed and hugged her,' he told the Chicago Tribune.

The family will come together again on Sunday to celebrate Wagner's 100th birthday.

Hammann will bring her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law and her grandson - and Wagner will be surrounded by her three children.