Dame Judi Dench has been urged to throw her support behind the children of unwed mothers, who believe they had their babies unfairly taken from them by Catholic institutions in Ireland and adopted out to couples all over the world.

The Skyfall actress is currently playing one of the real-life victims in new movie Philomena, which chronicles a woman's search for the son she was forced to give up.

The film has shed new light on the scandal and now adoption rights organisers want Dench to bring more awareness to the controversy.

Adoption Rights Alliance co-founder Susan Lohan, says, "We would like her to announce to the worldwide Tv audience that the practice of unlawful containment of unmarried women and girls in these mother and baby homes has never been investigated by the Irish state.

"There was no apology nor has redress ever occurred. Incredibly, the Irish state continues to fund its partner in crime, the Catholic church, to hold the birth and care records of over 50,000 children. The state colludes with them to prevent the taken children from discovering their identities.

"We desperately want Dame Judi to highlight that... because the bad guys in this story, ie the religious orders of nuns, have only recently dumped their records with an under-resourced Hse (Health Service Executive), which has no resources to safeguard the records, never mind quantify or identify the data held within."