Adoptees are demanding answers after learning they were victims of a forced adoption scheme in Australia decades ago.
From 1958 to 1984, Australia had an official policy allowing forced adoption, in which babies born to unmarried women were taken from them by the government. After the babies were adopted, records were closed; it is estimated that as many as 250,000 babies were taken from their mothers and placed for adoption. The Australian government finally apologized for the scheme in 2013, but for many, the trauma lives on — and justice has not been served.
A woman named Danae told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that she was unaware she was adopted until she was in her 50s — and then, despite being a victim of the government’s scheme, she had to pay to get a copy of her true birth certificate, with her real name and biological parents’ information.
“I cried for I don’t know how long … days and weeks. It was like this big hole in the ground opened up and swallowed me in,” she said. “It was overwhelming.”
She believes that the government should notify adoptees who were adopted under this scheme, and then provide resources to not only reunite them with their biological families but to deal with the separation trauma.
“So they closed the chapter on the closed adoptions but they didn’t go back and check up on all those people that it’s happened to,” Danae said. “The effects of the closed adoptions are still happening to this day.” In her situation, her biological mother was eventually found, but did not want to keep in touch. It’s something Danae blames on the Australian government.
“That’s the thing about being a late discovery adoptee,” Danae said. “You have to wonder, if I’d been made aware of this even at the age of 18, when I became an adult, which was 30-odd years ago, how different things would have been if I’d known. To reconnect with a biological parent only 18 years after the fact, has got to be a lot easier than 50 years after the fact.”
Thanks to Danae’s advocacy, support for an official government inquiry is growing. In a message to former WA Child Protection Minister Simone McGurk at a meeting with other survivors of forced adoption, Danae said, “There are still people walking around to this day that are holding onto a birth certificate that is complete fiction. I say to the government, you need to open every single adoption and you need to follow through and check that people know.”
That meeting is said to have marked a turning point in the campaign. It was just a week later that McGurk, who had been against such an inquiry, appeared to have a change of heart and referred the issue to a committee. That committee is still deliberating, but the current minister, Sabine Winton, has said she also supports an inquiry into the matter.
