Bill Donohue comments on more lies being told about “Philomena”:
The lies never stop. The latest lie is that Philomena Lee found her son.
Yesterday, the website of “People” quoted the 80-year-old Lee as saying, “I’m thankful and happy I did find him, and that’s all I ever wanted to do.”
Similarly, in the entertainment section of “Time” yesterday, it was written, “Many other Irish women found themselves in similar situations [pregnant out-of-wedlock at age 18 in 1952] but, unlike Lee, never managed to find the children who were taken from them.”
All of this is a lie. Lee never found her son: he died in 1995 and was buried on the grounds at the very convent that took her in when she was in need. She is lying about this because it fits with the lie about her looking frantically for him for 50 years. In the movie, she is depicted as searching for her son in the United States.
Philomena Lee never set foot in the United States until last November when she went to Los Angeles to hawk her movie. Indeed, she never even bothered to tell her daughter, Jane, about the brother she never knew she had until Philomena had too much to drink at a Christmas party in 2004.
Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe adds to the lies when he says the nuns “gave him [the son] away to an American family behind Philomena’s back.” In fact, Philomena voluntarily signed adoption papers relinquishing custody of her son when she was 22 years of age.
None of this is by accident. It is as deliberate as it is malicious.
