I was told I was unworthy to be a mother. Then they stole my baby

Marion only had a few months to get to know her baby before he was taken from her

Marion McMillan was 17, pregnant and unmarried, when she made her first trip to England from her home in the south-west of Scotland.

It was 1966 and she was sent by her family to a maternity home run by the Salvation Army more than 150 miles away, in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The young mum spent nine months with her baby - a beautiful boy with "gorgeous wee black hair" - before he was taken from her.

She begged staff to let her keep him. "I said 'please help me keep my baby, don't let them take my baby, please' and he was gone," she told a new BBC documentary, Stolen Babies.

Warning: This story contains racist language and descriptions of sexual abuse and violence

It tells the stories of some of the 250,000 women who were forced to hand over their newborns for adoption between 1949 and 1976.

They were powerless against the will of the state, social workers and religious organisations, and the system which supplied infants to adoptive families.

"Let's face it, we were working class unmarried girls having babies that were being adopted by middle class women," another victim, Ann Keen, told the programme.

For years many of the women kept their ordeal - their shame - secret.

In July, outgoing prime minister Sir Keir Starmer issued a formal apology to those mothers, telling them: "The shame is not yours... the shame is ours."

Marion's story: 'They cannae take my baby away from me'

Marion fell in love with a refugee from Pakistan when she was 17

Marion grew up in Stranraer in the 1960s where she fell for an older man who had emigrated from Pakistan.

"I was in love at the time and it was so lovely, I never gave it a second thought," she said.

"We were only together just a few short times, and I'd never told my family but at 17 I became pregnant out of wedlock."

She hoped they would marry but her boyfriend knew their relationship would not be accepted.

"Nobody will want you to go with a black man, Marion," he told her.

In their last conversation, he suggested emigrating to Hawaii where he believed mixed-race marriages were more acceptable.

"I never saw him ever again after that," she said. "Didn't know what was ahead of me. The conveyor belt of 'unwed mother' took control, and that was when I lost control."

Marion McMillan said her son was born with a beautiful head of dark hair

She gave birth at Hopedene, a home for unmarried mothers where conditions were austere and treatment could be brutal.

"Everything, from the minute you cross their threshold, is that you're unworthy to be a mother and we're taking your baby from you," Marion said.

"It's going for adoption. So you better get used to that, girl, because you've no money, you've no place to live, you've not got anybody to support you."

While giving birth she was slapped across the face by the matron for trying to get off a bed.

"And I don't know what was worse, the shock of her doing that [or] being in heavy labour," she said. "And the next thing my son is born."

She wasn't allowed to hold him until the following day.

"I was absolutely terrified," Marion said. "Absolutely terrified that they're taking my baby. They cannae take my baby away from me."

Her son was taken from her when he was just nine months old

But Marion got to spend longer with her baby than some of the other girls in mother and baby homes across the UK.

"I was a Scotch girl with a half-caste, that's what the Salvation Army recognised me to be," Marion said.

"And of course you were told that half-caste is very rarely successful in adoption."

He was nine months old when he was picked out by his adoptive parents. Marion compared the wait to hand him over to death row.

"[The matron] took him, and she was weeping with me, and she must have had another member of staff that took him then, and she was still holding me."

Her desperate pleas to keep the baby were ignored.

Marion was finally reunited with her son in 2004.

Unwelcome back home in Stranraer, she ended up in a women's hostel in Glasgow.

"Suddenly I'm banished from where I was born and brought up and I'm entirely on my own again," she told BBC Scotland News.

Marion was finally reunited with her son in 2004, but her experience as a teenager continues to cast a long shadow.

"It's been painful for him, painful for me, painful for his [adoptive] parents, painful for everybody.

"But it you take away the pain it's been a gift from God because all the years I missed him."