ITV'S This Morning programme told how internet adoption couple the Kilshaws had been destroyed at the hands of the tabloid press.

Judith and Alan Kilshaw, who have been forced to give up their home in Chester for rented accommodation in North Wales, spoke to the programme's agony aunt Denise Robertson.

She told presenters Phillip Schofield and Fern Brittan that the Kilshaws were sometimes 'unwise' but had 'love in their hearts' and she felt they had a hard time at the hands of the media.

Mr and Mrs Kilshaw gained notoriety when they were portrayed as 'buying babies' following an £8,200 payment to a Californian Internet adoption agency to gain custody of twins Kimberley and Belinda.

Unknown to them, another couple had already come to an arrangement with the agency, leaving the Kilshaws to fight an expensive and damaging legal battle.

The twins were taken away by social services and returned to the US.

Alan went to The Sun with his story and the media turned on them.

'It all went wrong because of the press's desire to look after their own interests rather than print the truth,' he said.

And he told This Morning viewers that they didn't receive payment for the article and he never in his wildest dreams expected it to be printed on seven pages, including 'getting rid of page three'.

'I never wanted it in the first place,' said Judith about the press coverage. 'I just wanted the girls in Buckley. It was like falling into an inferno.'

She said she 'possibly in a way' had not forgiven Alan for going to the press because of the way things turned out including social services taking away the twins.

'Possibly if I had put on the clothes The Sun wanted, wore pearls and put my hair in a bun and wore brogues and pretended what they wanted me to be, it might have looked better,' she reflected.

The Kilshaws, who were living on Rush-field Road, Westminster Park, had to move to Shotton after their bungalow was sold by trustees appointed after both of them were declared bankrupt.

So they, together with their two boys, James and Rupert, five cats and a dog, have relocated to a rented cottage, paid for by housing benefit because neither of them is in work.

Inevitably, the relationship between Alan and Judith has also been put under intense pressure and caused problems for the boys.

'When the children come home and say 'Dad, I wish my name wasn't Kilshaw', how does that make you feel?' said Alan, who

has been depressed, partly because he can no longer practise as a lawyer after being struck off in relation to an unconnected case.

And Judith told of her heartache at not speaking to eldest daughter Louisa since the saga. They fell out after Louisa gave a story to the papers in which she was critical of her mother.

Judith said: 'All she needs to do is pick up the phone. I think there will be a meeting between the two of us.'

In spite of everything, Mrs Kilshaw made clear she would still like to adopt children; if anything, the struggle she has faced has strengthened that feeling.

She told Denise Robertson: 'You cannot replace the girls but an adoption would help us heal as a family, that's how I feel.'