A MOTHER has said what she hopes is her final goodbye to the baby daughter, whose organs were retained by York Health Services NHS Trust for more than a decade without her knowledge.

Jackie Holmes, 34, of Ouseburn Avenue, Acomb, has buried the retained slides and tissue samples in a small casket alongside the original coffin of her 11-month-old daughter, Kimberley.

Kimberley was a cot death victim in 1988 and was buried at Fulford Cemetery. It wasn't until the Alder Hey organ retention scandal in 2000 that Jackie began to wonder if anything had been taken from her daughter's body during a post-mortem examination at York District Hospital.

She has now been able to bury the rest of her daughter in a dignified, but very sad service.

She said: "It is a relief to know she is all in one place now. But I will always live in fear that something else could happen, I could find something else out that is distressing.

"I am still so angry with the hospital for what it did. And I don't even know why it had to take parts of her. What right did it have."

Jackie says the last year has been a "living nightmare" as she has waited to get back the rest of her daughter's body. "No parent should ever have had to go through this and yet I am one of thousands all over the country.

"Burying her again was like reliving the past. I had to go through it once and was forced to go through it a second time. I've had to move on once and now I have to try to move on again. It is too much.

"All the old memories have been brought back. It has been a very traumatic experience and I am still very angry about what happened to my baby."

* Jackie is in talks with her solicitor over a joint court action with other York parents affected by the organ retention affair.

Updated: 10:32 Monday, January 21, 2002