Senate inquiry into forced adoptions found barbaric, horrific abuses

The box under the word "Subject:" is open to you.

It would save the editors a lot of time.

Thanks!

If the government & others are remiss and ignore this Forced Adoptions tragedies then I'd suggest class actions or taking your serious complaints to lawyers, as someone has written, definitely.
The law was there when you were adolescents and I'm maninly concerned about the younger ones because I'm at that age. That's not selfish it's just that I can empathise because I'm there without being pregnant and alone.
Having said that I also think forced adoptions on adults was not on either.
You're not victims however you've been victimised to the hilt, frankly in the most horrific and horrendous ways my mum and dad watched 4 corners with me, and we've read lots about all this.
All the things I've read and seen steers me to believe you are entitled to empowerment.
That means different things to different people.
For birth mums I mean you are entitled to recompenses and resolutions/empowerment after having your livlihood, very life and that of your babies put through the most vile tortures set upon any mothers of any infants.
Very sad to hear this news. I hate bully's too, as someone has pointed out, they are predators & scavengers, yuk.
Extremely concerned the perpetrators may be too embarassed or shame-faced to own up, yet they have to in the long run my dad said. It all comes back to them.
I'm looking for justice with this forced adoptions and also looking for a real democractic Australia.
It just doesn't act democratic too many times.
You're amazing to have survived what my family and I find despicable & unjust. How do they sleep at night who would hurt young mums and their babies.
It's as though they were savages then when forced adoptions happened. And they claim other Australians are this. Governments and coprorations need to rethink their priorities or they'll lose their votes and their clients.
Get the law, pro bono, and class action would be good I'm told.

Good luck.

Jesse T

Any way of tracing other forced adoptions 'victims'.
Don't like that term 'victim', however Origins Inc NSW have a petition on thier website with email addresses of many who have been through this. They're on Google and Yahoo.
Remember everyone who signed the petition is not one of the 'victimised'. Not by a long shot, they are supporting the 'victimised, many of them, maybe most'.

Maybe this might help the person who asked how to contact 'victims of forced adoptions' and only if the person who wants this info. is with just and privacy respectful motives. They're not objects today.
Otherwise, forget it. Bully's beware.
You're not targeting any so called 'victims' again.
They have support beyond that now the senate inquiry has happened, and too many people are aware and outraged of forced adoptions.

Best wishes to the victimised, not victims.
Patrice & Tim

I keep thinking about the adolescent birth or biological mothers in particluar, as well as their babies.

I think about what Eric (or Erik) Erikkson wrote about adolescence being the time when the young woman (or man) either chooses identity ot role diffusion.
Perhaps it's not a choice, perhaps it's genetic, perhaps it's ????
A lot of questions here.
(Eric Erikkson had no academic training that I know of, yet he's cited as an expert in human development by many.)

Regarding forced adoptions I imagine there would be those who despite their tragedies connected with forced adoptions have forged an identity even as they suffer the scars that may never heal.
For others they may have slotted into role diffusion and gone with the crowd, and also have those scars and never question or think for themselves, yet are valuable no matter what.
Do things like forced adoptions ever heal?

Forced Adoptions, I imagine, would have put a spanner in the works with this asolescent human development.
I'm trying to fathom just how these young mums survived such early tragedies and many are alive to tell their stories, horrific ones at that. Tragic.
Sad life experiences from that one tragedy that would have hurt them so deeply they think even today they are 'wrong'.
They were told that in their adolescence. (Wrongly told that).
It's a kind of stigma I imagine that is hard to heal and one not many have mentioned in the way I mean here, a lingering 'you're wrong'.

We have to give these mothers the chance to know they not only had and have rights and were also right to love and want to raise their babies.
How to do this.
By the perpetrators stopping being so stubborn; and admitting guilt and wrong doing, rather than keeping on keeping these now women in a kind of limbo.
Never good enough, never valuable, even when they do above and beyond the call of duty in their lives, many of them.

I'm thinking of all the birth/biological mums tonight and I wish them healing, as everyone seems to be writing resolutions. They deserve these.
This is a very serious social injustice.
It demands to be taken as such.

I wonder what Eric Erikkson would have to say about the trauma of forced adoptions when the mothers were adolescents. It reminds me of psychological Frida Kharlos.
As if they had spears of contempt thrust on them when they were in fact innocent of no crime or wrong doing, simple as were unmarried, therefore deemed unfit to raise their babies.

We have to move to places of empathy, all of us.
The entertainment industry and news media has to depict
the truths of forced adoptions more.

One concerned Australian citizen

Justice & Resolutions for ALL forced adoptioms victims.
Some people don't like the term 'Victim/s' it's just that it means the person was persecuted and attacked.
In the case of forced adoptions the mums with their own babies were brutalised to the point of torture.
Give the just apologies.

The Salvation Army [and others who haven't yet apologised] should have a lot of guilt they need to expulge get rid of for their enormous part in forced adoptions. No apology from them.
They're offensive and caught with their pants down.
I've realised they are covering up a lot & it's tragic such a multinational corporation that claims christian faith and goodness can do this.
Ban the dontaions to these torturers.
They need to respect motherhood and get rid of their ignorant terrifying prejudices.
George Collins

The truth behind the person who said the victims in the hospitals and homes said: "I don't have to see my baby do I?" This was on 4 Corners 'Given or Taken?'
As if.
That's not believable.
Intolerable this interviewee was admitted to air this flagrant common lie.
There's not a mother I know who would say this after the birth of her baby.
Forced Adoptions and what has been shown about it so far is only the tip of the iceberg, and lies such as the above have no place in what news media interviewees are telling the public, and the real truths they are denying to cover themselves.
I've never met a biolog. mother who didn't want to see her newborn baby, has anyone out there?
In disgust at this twisted 'social worker' woman who said such things, there was more, lies further.
Best of all good outcomes for the victims.
Don't think the Australian public can be fooled by anybody of that calibre.
Mitchell

The Anglican Church and the Salvation Army by their very silence [with forced adoptions] it's a cover up.

Who else has or will remain silent with the Inquiry finalised & a Report now presented to all.

Abi

Collins, maybe not "ban ll donations" to people who wont admit wrong, just bar them if they don't speak up and out about their wrong doing, reference your comment day or two ago.
Give them a second chance to publicly apologise and make amends, not a third.
They are reputed as doing good thinhs and now it's widely known as discovered they didn't do these with forced adoptions (and some other matters) so their share holders need a shake for sure, and the best thing I thnk is for them to start admtting their treacherous non good nor godly deeds with forced adoptions.
Hope this makes senswe.
Best wishes to the victims, you're in my prayers even though I'm not organised religious, I like the princiles at the core of christianity; it must be terrible to have to relive these tragedies for the victims. I'm with you all the way.
C.Lehmann

In order to begin to help the victims of forced adoptions we need to look at the negative evaluations against the natural mothers.
These are still affecting so many.
Nearly quarter of a million was one count of forced adoptions victims. That's significant.
These negative evaluations made by ignorant and discriminatory others are still in the psyches of many outside of forced adoptions who lack the capacity to understand their implications.

We need to look at the hostile and discriminatory cultures & environments where these mothers were placed during and after their maternity placements.
Realising the patterns many may remain in (although the locations, and personalities. of each individual victim differs).

We need to realise how these cultures and those professionals who were meant to 'help' them then, created at such impressionable ages and stages very low self-esteem in their 'patients', no matter how each put on different facades to cope and surivive (considering those who did survive, as many have not).
Not all have low self esteem today, however they are not growing to their full potential, that tug of yesterday remains too strong.
Many do feel 'wrong' as one commentor has suggested, no matter what they do or contribute as home makers, parents, careerists or other today.

We need to release the negativity thrust on these victims and replace this by reinstating the natural mothers value, equal status to any other parent (not forgetting these victims lost the right and conscious ability (due to drugs imposed plus other coercive practices imposed by professionals, families, governments, and churchs or corporations) to parent, not by choice by coercion under very profound tragic circumstances.)

There's more than enough trauma today for many of these women, as there was yesterday, we need to understand this.
Such a loss as happens with coerced adoptions needs proactive recognition and active aid beyond what the senate inquiry found.
Never negating the excellent precise, honest and empathic Senator Rachel Siewerts evaluation of the extent of these traumatic losses that the Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions found.

We need to consider not only what transpired to bring these mothers down also how to raise, protect and prevent them from any further accumulative traumas (associated with forced adoptions) and this latter means counselling as imperative (by choice only) or to enable the victims to break low self esteem patterns and their effects of victimisation so they can move forward.
Nothing less, a whole lot more.

We need to recognise finally the very profound trauma the natural mothers suffered yesterday, no matter how much work various individuals may have done for themselves to overcome these, and recognise how their lives have once again been re-traumatised (again not by choice) as the tragedies of their own, and their fellow victims, have had their stories re-surface one way or another, via media or otherwise.

To understand we now need to empathically and actively address the Report with humanity to lift the victims into at minimal, amount of healing, and maximal, re-entry into society with the value they had prior to their victimisation and a whole lot growth, resolution, healing and wisdom.

Though we can't make the perpetrators confess their insidious and heinious wrongs, we can stand up to them and assert explain, ammend, and request they give back what they need too, not only for the victims healing & resolution, for their own healing, reputations and status.

Best of regards to the victims of forced adoptions.
James

This all reminds me of the tormenting book I read "Sophie's Choice".
In it the protagonist/Sophie had no choices at all.
It's worth looking at the parallels, as they are real.
Sophie's Choice was one of the most horrendous books I've ever read, I think forced adoptions comes second even as not yet in book form.
If it is I haven't read that or those books yet.
I'm deeply blessed to have never had to experience what many mothers actually did.
I'm a mother and a wife and I want justice for the victims of forced adoptions.
Discrimination and Prejudice on such a large scale always does enormous damage to all of us ultimately.
There seems to be crimes in forced adoptions, crimes against humanity.
Regards
Fiona

This forced adoptions is the worst human rights abuse and tragedy I've heard about for a long time.
With full support and empathy for the victims.
Get your justice and apologies.
You are entitled to nothing less.

Toni

I've read about consent forms, and saw a few things in the news.
What happened to me was one of only a few memories of my lengthy stay at a maternity hospital in Marrickville.
I wanted to see my baby and could hear baby cries.
I asked to see my baby and was rejected by everyone.
My doctor (private) was not around very much.
Two women much older as I was 16, came to me with a form saying 'you can see your baby if you sign this" and stood over me commanding I sign it. They wouldn't leave until I did.
I remember I was blurry eyed and I think it was the drugs they gave me or maybe extreme distress.
Whatever, I was forced to sign that form.
I had to put the fathers name, my religion, my hobbies, the name of my baby, on the form, and a few things I don't remember. I don;t remember what kind of form it was even.
In distress I didn't put the main hobbies though I did put what I remember as the rest as it was. This is one memory in a blur of a time.
It is odd they didn't allow me to see my baby shortly after I signed that form, and only let me do so when they came to me much later and said: "The parents have come to take your baby home and you need to this your baby for this". Shock happened though I can't forget the way they said this, it was so cruel and confusing to me. What parents, who?
That took me into a world of delirium and I can't write what I felt then. I must have gone blank and maybe unconscious.
That's the thing, a lot of the coercion was done when I was in an abnormal state. i.e. I was drugged up, and from my records by my private doctor I wasn't meant to be like this.
Who was in charge, my family and my doctor, or the staff at that maternity hospital. It's apparent the doctor's input wasn't heard or followed.
My parents weren't able to visit very much.
It's true the reality saying "You can sign your life away".
I had unwittingly and under duress (long told) signed away my babies life, as well as my own being a mother to this baby. I wasn't allowed to mother my own baby and there was no logical reason why that was so.
These signing things under pressure, with two officious bulky commanding women standing over you is very intimidating, and no one should ever have to sign under those situations.
No one should sign their lives away as in sign anything without knowing exactly what they are signing.
How was I to know that at 16, and under the circumstances.
I couldn't as I was unable to ask questions or even speak.

I came in to that maternity hospital with a baby in my womb and left with empty arms, and a heartache that has never subsided.
Why do supposedly professional staff and their clients use others for their best interests and then leave the victims out in the cold without any comfort, support or knowledge of what's just happened?
This all came up when my partner asked me tonight "what is happening with the Senate Inquiry Report".
I needed to write this down.

Thank you for letting me do this Indymedia.

Birth mother

It was "Taken" ABC 4 Corners, and your show was only half true.
Indynedia, there's some important points here.
My family know a lof about this topic because of a long time neighbour's daughter.
We also know about marital status discrimination from another work related area and have lived with racial discrimination.
I think Australia has to take on board how discrimination and bullying go hand in hand.
Enough.
Fair go for the victims
Fong

I don't think the victims of forced adoptions want pity or patronisation I think they want acknowledgement of wrong doing.

Too often there were and still are assumptions about minority groups or persons who have been shamed left that way because of the lack of acknowledgement.

We have to apologise to those who were wrongly shamed and blamed. Even when that acknowledgement means the perpetrators have to own up to their own shame and wrong in forced adoptions.

I believe most victims of forced adoptions had no choices yet I still hear the same old cliche : How kind of those decent parents taking in an unwanted child, it's said in different ways all leading others to think it's true, when it's anything but. Idealizing the adoptive parents, insane and childish.
Finally, I know single mums are still marginalised and
heaven help them when they go into many a church setting whereby the married couples so often look down on them.
And they have before today as well.
I've witnessed this, it's been in my family geneology, appalling extremist and bigoted.
Little wonder they walk away from those places.
Shameful.
Keith O'Brien

The most noticeable propaganda on ABC's 4 Corners 'Given or Taken?' was this:
They showed a footage of someone with her back to camera talking with a social worker about adoption.
Fact, Truth, Reality is No one came to many if not most unwed mothers in forced adoptions at any time to either discuss or talk about our babies and our selves.
No one gave us pre-adoptionor at any time during forcedadoptions counselling.
No one.
No one gave us pre-adoption or any other advice.
We were plunged into signing the consent forms without any knowledge of what it meant or even what it was.
For many there was no mention it was a 'consent form' that's how I know of it from personally reliving it all.
The scene where the black and white images on 4 Corners 'Given or Taken' shows a sprightly young social worker (guess that was her role) would have been a rarity,and the public wereshown this as if it were the norm, the reality for most if not all mothers.
Lies again.
I think 4 Corners did a good job of showing the victims and their distress or very profound trauma as has been said, though it's what they allowed to be shown that was outright propoganda and lies I object to.
No doubt if I were watching that program and had no knowledge of forced adoptions I would come away thinking "The girls were given ample support". Utter and unconscionable cover ups again.
I'm tired of the news media,and this now includes ABC not telling the whole truths.
Showing what their supervisors tell them too?Like when the personnel at the maternity hospitals followed 'unjust orders' because they were "compelled by higher authorities" too. Shame, Shame, Shame.
4 Corners has gone down in my estimation because of that program.
It's the longest running program on television, and now not because it tells truths because it appears to do what the big bosses tell it too.
ABC I used to admire you so much.
I'll still grant you the better of some media, yet you went off-track and into lies and deception with 'Given or Taken?'
Of course the babies were taken, yet we all believed in some strange way we were giving them, when the last of our hope went away.
For some of us that was when we were given Stilboestral.
I took one and then when I was told it was for drying up my milk I pretended to take the rest, but didn't.
I had hope I would mother my own child.
That hope was shattered and there has been lifelong sadness, guilt, hurt so deep all of my life since.

Forced Adoptions were just that.
The babies were not 'given up' (that's the most unconscionable thing to think a mother could do) they were 'taken by force'.

Thanks
Good luck to my peers
Glenda

ABC 4 Corners Given or Taken? was with a few black and white footages.
None of them had any words with them, except for the addons ABC put there.
I never got any advice, any counselling or any time given to me to ask questions or understand what it was I and my baby were going through also.
Thanks Glenda.
The black and white footage of the young girl with her back to camera and the "sprightly" social worker, that could have been taken from archives of normal obstetric practices, and as Dr. Geoff Rickarby has stated:
".... because they (forced adoptions) were extraordinaty departures from usual obstetric practicse.?"
(Excerpts from Dr. Geoff Rickarby's Sumission for an earlier not so raised Inquiry into Forced Adoptions.)

I figure the lies from the retired social worker (not in black and white) were put on the show to paint a picture of deciet and cover ups too.
It doesn't fool anyone including Dr. Geoff Rickarby, again.
ABC being unreliabe, unable to be trusted I take your point wholeheartedly agreeing with Given or Taken? being part truth and the other parts propaganda or blatant cover ups for the professionals, so called.

I'll try to find out just where that black and white footage came from so it further proves what I know.
There was absolutely no counselling, no advice given and no supports for the victims of forced adoptions and for this the consent forms mean little more than illegal paper work that was signed under duress from what I know the most anguished and disturbed by then real mothers.
How dare ABC stoop so low.
Who is pulling their strings making a mockery of the truths of forced adoptions, their financers the government or other influences. I know a few people with contacts at ABC.
4 Corners has gone down in my esteem also Glenda, though I don't watch much T.V. and only watched that programme because was recommended too. It saddened and outraged me tremendously to see the blatant lies as well as the victims truth sadness and damage.
I had to talk to a lot of my friends and family to make sense of it all, and why ABC would put some of it in a programme meant to educate and inform with truths.
They all saw what you saw and what I do also.
B.B.

Kerry O'Brien is no David Frost, unfortunately, though they both in entertainment, different time lines.
Given or Taken was entertainment with some journalism.
I'm appalled at how they depicted much of the real facts.
Omitting a lot and showing more that was not truthful.
I'll take up the good in it.
The one thing that I think makes the show meaningful, real is that one painting of the woman with tears and her eyes wiped out by these.
I have no reason to believe that that one painting didn't also leave an indellable imprint on many other thoughtful and caring viewers minds. Talking about ABC's 4 Corners Given or Taken?
It was the truth all in one, that word and meaning picture.

The other truths were the consent forms shown to all with Stilboestral on them and other drugs given, they possibly left out a few.
It's factual that the victims would have been so traumatised as to not be able to see clearly through their severe anguish and total newfound lack of trust in so called 'professionsla' there to help and they hindered families of birth in horrific ways.
Assert your rights now all victims of forced adoptions.
It's partly about the assertion you were denied and can now claim.
Keith

A disturbingly appropriate quote wirh reference to forced adoptions.

"Adoption works on the premise that, in order to save the child one must destroy the mother"

By Dian Wellfare [Deceased too young] Founder of Origins Inc.

Mick and Julie

That's one of the main reasons Forced Adoptioms were Forced.
The Consent forms being signed without the signatories having any idea, no idea at all, and none explained to them, no counselling, no professional advice, what they were signing.
Glenda Keith and others say it better than I.

It clicked when I read their comments.

I kept thinking I went along to see a couple my age when I was adolescent unwed and pregnant at school, and they had a baby. Their life was different to mine, the husband did bash his young with baby wife out in the suburbs.
[I was in a way researching how to raise my child and what it might be like, with or without a partner then, under pressure of exams and other obstacles at my school]

I was pregnant at a very parochial private school and didn't know anythimg about this area of life, sexual or otherwise.
If that sounds odd, one would have to have attended one of those schools to understand. Repression including no sexual education was the norm at mine.

One of life's most major and life altering decisions to make and no one there for any assistance, advice, support, counselling; whilst there was hypocrasy everywhere I looked or read for same.

This is why Forced adoptions were Forced.
One of the main components.
The memory that anguishes me or hits me the hardest.
Why should we have given our lives or our babies lives to infertile or otherwise strangers, anyone at all without first knowing what we were signing.
This breach of law is forefront of forced adoption injustices I believe.

In order to have the greatest empathy the deepest kind one has to in some way experience the actual event.
I have experienced this firsthand.
The hospital staff had no rights to ask me to sign under duress any form, or to force me to sign it when I was in the most profound and devastating distress.

Little wonder I'm concerned about the human rights of all who have or would suffer any forms of torture.
I know firsthand what emotional and physical torture is.
The consent forms were not signed with any knolwledge of what we all were about to endure, and lifelong that would be. That's only part of the whole picture, yet a large part.

I've just re-lived this and naturally needed my supportive network which is there today. I was asked to sign something I didn't understand recently [as a sophisticated adult] and the person asking me would not explain. That's to their [that companies downfall if they persist such practices], this time I've taken it all to a barrister friend to investigate, he was too busy when I first needed the advice, but now not so.

Forced adoptions were Forced adoptions because the forms we were asled to sign when in the most extreme trauma and vulnerability were never explained, never counsleled with us, never were we given any advice about these forms, by anyone.
Who would erase that very law asking 'signing under duress' is illegal, for the taking of someone else's baby to give to strangers to raise as their own?
Look at how many did, approx quarter of a million mothers lost their infants in Australia alone to last count from one source.

Birth Mother
14th June 2012

14th June 2012 Birth Mother, this is for you.

Your insights and knowing are correct, truthful.

The perpetrators of forced adoptions didn't discharge their duties or their obligations to you [all of you] their clients [or patients] who lost their babies to forced adoptions.

The legal aspects are more serious obligations [the highest duties and abligations] no less today as when and what the Forced Adoption Inquiry, Report, and follow through are looking at.

Thanks
Solicitor

Consent forms like all legal documents were illegal if they were not given to the client/patient with her the birth mother having the paperwork all thoroughly explained.
That's law.
There's something very disturbing about social workers or nursing sisters asking anyone to sign under duress anything.
They didn't have the authority to ask the adolescents or young adults to sign anything without explaining not only the meaning and also the consequences.

The consequences for many many thousands have been terrifying to say the least.

This is just the beginning of what is unfolding with forced adoptions.
There's more to come that is absolutely shocking, and the perpetrators have an obligation to finally do something good for all those affected.
They who tortured young unwed birthing women or adolescents were sick.
Deb

I saw a lot of the news about forced adoptions.
They so ugly it's not funny.
Get the skunks who did this to young guileless and vulnerable unmarried pregnant ones.
This is a shameful recent past.
The PM seems to like to avoid a lot of people who have been tortured or might be, but she' out if she keeps doing this and especially with this one.
Australians care about mothers and their babies.
Best wishes to the mums.
Narelle

The victims of forced adoptions were asked to sign consent forms without any knowledge of their consequences nor their contents.
This is misleading to a criminal extent.

Further misleading happens whenever any lawyer asks any client to sign any paperwork which may not be pro bono at all, and unbeknown to the client who has requested pro bono.

Mislaeding the young mums into signing under duress what they had no idea would impact them so savagely and lifelong was totally unjust and now demands a lot of in depth consideratuons and resoltions for the victims.
They're lives were made a living nightmare because of how they were MISLEAD and treated as wrong when they were right, and with human rights.

I agree 4 Corners 'Given or Taken?' distorted truths and the public's perceptions by having that retired social worker try to assert 'there was no force'.
It also distorted truth by pretending the patients received counselling, I'd like to know of any who did.
I have found in my work no such a one.

There WAS force, as the patients/clients had no idea how the signing of the consent forms or whatever they were told they were would have such very profound and devastating long term effects, all their lives.

I'm looking at this further this is not a closed Report, it's only just opened after what has come forward and is coming forward yet again.

James

It's in one way fine to hear the Premier of South Australia Jay Weatherill will be making a formal apology to victims of forced adoptions in South Australia, as that's where she is the Premier.
On another level there is a lot more than this kind of apology needed and recompense for the victims of forced adoptions.

We've found files about this are pursuing these.
Facts and truths go beyond what the public has been told to date.

I commend whoever is writing about the signatures on those consent forms; that's one area of law that was misleading and unconscionable.

I also commend whoever is writing about lawyers as there appears to be some who are taking advantage of these women in the most flagrantly misleading and abhorrent ways.
There is remedy for this as per this site, see the Commissioner, who is the Watchdog for solicitors and barristers.

There's more to come about forced adoptions and Indymedia are doing a great job at exposing the truths being uncovered.
What a holocaust of unmarried mothers.

All the best to the victims and their families and friends.

Trevor

That's it, no way.
This is not a closed book.
There is a lot more being raised about forced adoptions and their aftermaths.
One State (South Australia) Premier's apology is simply that.
Not what the victims deserve, they deserve more and their views and voices need to be raised.
Only a few hundred at the submissions, and there are many more.

It's good Indymedia is keeping the thread open as there's some unearthed knowledge coming to the fore.

Jackie W.

Thanks Indymedia for the additional narrative.
The comments stream keeps flowing as this is a very topical and important social cause.

It follows over from other areas of adult bullying, oppression, covert and overt discrimination and social familial as well as all sorts of other injustices.

I also have to write an article about forced adoptions so the comments stream is very useful, educational and informative.

It's not enough for one state to say they will apologise on July 18th. though for those victims in South Australia it's a start to acknlwledgement of that States role in Forced Adoptions.
Good on Indymedia for alerting the public about this first apology from a State government.
Good on Jay Weatherill.

Thanks Indy, and best to the targets of forced adoptions.
My colleagues and I look forward to further comment streams here, they're helpful and necessary in more ways than one.
Judith

There is an error on the comment for the Watchdog for clients who go to ruthless unethical lawyers, and seek to make valid complaints as their rights.

The exact error is as follows:
Email written as olso@agd.nsw.gov.au is incorrect.
This should read: oslc@agd.nsw.gov.au
(C) no (O) OSLC

The other details are uptodate.
Thanks and well wishes to all who are seeking ethical lawyers with their forced adoptions prosecutions.

Thom

x

You've been taken off the screen dusplaying all the resources for information about forced adoptions, Indymedia, what gives?

Yours is the best post with the most informative reads and commentary.

Instead there's the superfluous add for a legal form who do sexual abuse cases, in Canberra.
What gives with that too?

Why have you been sidelined?

Thanks for a response, we're confused and without a good resource under Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions.

Thom and family

Additional narrative reads "Hundreds of women, where it should read thousands of women".

50% of the women, according to Dr. Geoff Rickarby never went on to have any further infants, in some instances any further couples relationships.

Minutia, no, it's the details of this horrific social injustice in and with the whole picture.

Thanks Indy
Thom

Of all the media on forced adoptions Indymedia has given us the best all round information about forced adoptions and the Senate Inquiry into these, and forced adoptions overall.
We know the Senate Inquiry is over with however the Report that stemmed from that is not by a long shot.
Neither is the fact a lot of those impacted were never privy too or didn;t give evidence to a government they cannot trust, for various reasons.
I can understand the latter.

What's happening now is we go to Indymedia and look up Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions and it says "Requested Page not found".
We want to have all the information possible not the ABC or Government censored versions of what has and is happening with Forced Adoptions.
This is a very serious injustice.
The commenters all had some good things to say and all should be able to see this on the main frame. i.e. when you look up Senate Inquiry into forced adoptions.

We request it go back there, and if not, why it's not there as the different and informative truths in the comments are very helpful for a lot of people we work with and study with.

Jessica R

We think you should be included on the same page as all the other websites for Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions.
Who took you off and if it was the government it's because you have the best material.
Go Indymedia, and don't let any "authority" intimidate you.
We have freedom of speech in this country and find your news the best of them all.
Second is Green Left Weekly.
The original needs to stay, the comments have been useful as well as telling us just what is happening for many who were part of this holocaust of single pregnant mums, some it appears not single but made that way by the powers that be.
It's all shameful.
Grant Walker

Indymedia should be both under Forced Adoptions, and also under Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions.

I've realised a lot about a lot of this because of what Indymedia have produced via your comments.

My main comment aside from that is justice for the targets of forced adoptions.
I especially think the mums have it rough cause we all know losing someone that close is tragedy for anyone.

Australia has too much negative discrimination and a lot of cultures of hate, even as this is counterbalanced by the opposite, thank goodness.
The rednecks need harnessing or something.

Best of luck
Anthony

To the Editor:
You have asked what was the page Indymedia news media on Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions was on.
The answer is it was on the first page when anyone goes to Google Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions.

You've now been made somewhere around page 12 or so, and people can't access that site even there as it says PAGE NOT FOUND, or make comments.

They can make comments now if they go to the new post under Forced Adoptions, however, whoever pushed you off the front page of the Senate Inquiry needs to reinstate you there where you were.
The truths in your media are really potent and sincere.

My family have an adoption connection, have looked forward to reading the comments on Indymedia Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions.
The Senate have no rights to throw you our of the equation, what's their problem?
I don;t know how to contact the Senate but if they are responsible shame on them.
It's called suppressing news media and in this case grass roots and needed news media.

Thanks, good luck to the traumatised. I'm outraged at Australian Forced Adoptions as are all I know and that's a lot of personnel and thinking persons.

Brad

Forced adoptions and the Quadrant Mags ignorant rant about "Adoption is better than Abortion".
Whose talking about comparing here.

The issue is about Forced Adoptions.

Quadrant lacks readibility on this topic because it has it's wires crossed on topics.

I want the victims of forced adoptions to know justice.

Red

The birth mums who we now know had no supports, no counselling, no advice given and no information about the consequences were left in the most terrifying lonely predicament.

I am soul searching how the many who haven't as yet apologised cannot apologise for this sheer and utter neglect.

It could well be perceived as a form of death of the young adolescent or older birth mum, as that aloneness whilst being mislead into fathoming one of life's major decisions, without any supports, counselling or information would feel like a death. Disconnected from all caring, what torture is that for anyone.

Whoever wrote ABC 4 Corners had a black and white section whereby they depicted there was supportive social workers for the unmarried mums has mislead the public.
I cannot believe this as there is too much evidence to the contrary.

Above all else I want all the victims to receive adequate support today, and ongoing until they have adequate psychological and physical well-being to progress and not only survive also thrive.
They deserve nothing less.

Forced adoptions is a tragic Australian saga.
I'm wholeheartedly behind all who suffer any of the cruel realities of such a loss as one's born baby at or soon after the birth of their own flesh and blood.
You're not alone today, that's the best part of what has been unearthed not only by the Seante Inquiry into Forced Adoptions by all the other news media about forced adoptions as well.
Re-cover. Those with sincere and ethical duty of care or due care as well as those who are in your personal circle, care. You all matter very significantly.

It appears from a lot in this news stream there's a lot of moral support for you today. Assert your rights to further.

Jodi

I respect Jodi's comment for those birth mums who were private patients, in isolated private wards.
I also respect the truths counseling, advice and information about consequences of adoption loss, even simple warmth was severely lacking in times of forced adoptions. The birth mums were nor ever given any such warmth and caring.

Taking into account the women or girls who were in the maternity homes (not hospitals) or separated for whatever reasons, there would have been a degree of comraderie available for them the private patients could not have had.
That degree of comraderie would have been a connecting alliance, even as they were put to servitude doing laundry duties and the like.
All so shocking and disturbing.

I can only conclude the private patients would have suffered the severest forms of isolation (a bully ploy used and known to advantage those who seek to benefit from anothers suffering, or used in many illegal or unethical practices).
This does not mean there is a separation of what is required to remedy the individual victims.
They all suffer and have suffered.

Forced adoptions were unacceptable to my loved ones and work mates as myself and would be again today if this ever happened again.
We don't actually know if this is re-occurring as yet. time will tell us that.

Like the private patients even the comeradie of the home patients could not rid this preposterous forced adoptions from happening.
I want all the victims to now have only honest and caring contacts.
If the victims come across dishonest and unempathic, insensitive counselors, lawyers, social workers or any authority again today they have every right to make this publicly known and have it addressed with support from people like my self.
I seek justice for these people, it's their right.
There's a lot of notice from this forced adoptions and a lot of well known and not so well known people do care about this, abosolutely. We commend you for standing up to the authorities and asking for apologies and compensations that you deserve, as well as your chosen professional counselling.

Best wishes to you all.

Humanity wasn't there when forced adoptions happened, it's needed today more than ever.

Margaret

Even though the few who spoke out as solo voices about forced adoptions have ample social networks today, I'd like to write Mahatma Gandhi's quote for your 'power of one', it's admirable & remarkable what you've done, beyond words really.

[Groups by their very nature can stand up and fight a whole lot easier, even if not easily at all, as with all social injustice speakers.]

"Never apologise for being correct or for being years ahead of your time.
If your right you know it, speak your mind.
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth"
by Mahatma Gandhi

Cheers
Margaret

Now when anyone goes to the site about this it's Page not found.
i.e. your new header is now Page Not Found, and Indymedia have not been put back into their place where anybody interested or concerned can have a say.

Thanks for writing to the Senator, but something is a bit strange with the Senate Inquiry into Forced Adoptions whole website.

Sombody appears to be messing with the content and making sure ABC and the Government are the only ones aside from one group namely Origins, as if they are the only ones who are there to gain information or comments from.
They're not. There's some glitch or something happening again.

That's limiting freedom of knowledge and information especially the publics necessary thoughts and ideas.

Strangely also, Green Left Weekly have today shown us only comments from 2011, when prior we wrote from 2012 what is it about this topic that some want to suppress others who have valuable things to contribute to Forced Adoptions and the past Senate Inquiry into this.

Thanks
Thom

Totally agree with the comment about individual persons and their contributions.
If it were not for one trail blazer this topic would not have been raised some time before any inquiries, and this person has been commended by the mindful for her creative artistic input.

Forced adoptions are all about the lack of empathy and compassion in the past and I add the present.
We all need to now consciously promote Empathy and Compassion as what they are, the human qualities that divide us from barbaric or very sociopath others.

All the best to the victims, this is a tragic Australian wrong or injustice.
Wayne

The thing about Forced Adoptions is if anybody looks hard enough they will find somebody in their family or family background who've lost a baby to adoption or who've been adopted. It was, still is very common in almost every family.
That's why, I think, so many people have taken a keen interest in this social cause.

Demand Justice, don't give up on healing the apparent pain you've had to go through and most still do.

It's a very big one Forced Adoptions.

All Coercive policies and practices are big enough to expect judgements, and be granted justice.
We're not owned, none of us, by anyone or anything else in this world.
Unless Australia is a Totalitarian politically manipulating nation??

We want to hear some good come out of the real life horror stories that've been told over many years about forced adoptions.

Barbara and Ian

Forced adoptions were as this heading suggests absolutely barbaric.

My family and I are all for the mums and all who have been unjustly treated to gain recompense.

I also agree there have been some leaders who have instigated this Inquiry long before any inquiries happpened. I attended one such occasion and it was an eye-opener to what was to be forthcoming with Rickarby's Inquiry and then this last one.

This has gone on for far too long and is a hideous example of how basic humanity just wasn't available to
very traumtised mums and their babies.

Australia can do better than that these days.

Rachel

It's simple easy and like with with alcoholic who keeps saying 'sorry' 'sorry' after beating his wife, or similar.
The Commonwealth are going to apologise as they have advertised.
That's one of the recommendations from the Report from the Senate Inquiry into forced adoptions.
What about some things more tangible as well.

I'm kind of glad they have finally conceded to apologise, though they can't speak for all the institutions nor the State governments who did barbaric wrongs as well, claim that they may as they seem to be doing.

Nobody wants simplistic and patronising sorry's if they carry no weight of integrity and true repairing the vast and profound traumas inflicted on the birth mums as well as those they gave birth too, and all the extended families of these persons.

I'm aware there's more to come and also know there should be more to come, and no counseling or anything should ever come from any of the perpetrators, this includes the Clatholic Church, The Salvation Army, The Benevolent Society, the Hospitals and homes that were with duty of care they neglected so blatantly and shamefully.

The counselling and compensation should be given by other than the perpetrators.
The perpetrators whether they have said 'sorry' or not, have to answer a few questions before they play god again.

Forced adoptions disgusts my family and I.
If it's going on today heaven help the torturers they'll be exposed I have no doubts about this.
Francis Butler

Todays news about the onto air interview from the Salvation Army that openly shows their intolerable and hateful malice toward homosexuals, unconscionable.
"Death to homosexuals" is in one of their manuals, and shows everybody this group of corporate greed characters are nothing less than despicable.

That they were central to forced adoptions and had hospitals and homes for unmarried mothers where they equally wanted them to die another kind of death, through loss of the mothers born babies, is equally despicable.
The discrimination they gave those unsuppprted mothers is also nothing less than criminal.

Furthermore these types have not apologised for their role in forced adoptions a humungous one.
We've read here about their role with Bethesda at Marrickville yet they had other maternity homes and hospitals where they victimised helpless vulnerable mums and babies.

Shame, shame shame.
These kind of corporations should be highly scrutinised and have their ethical standards looked at by highest governments and the law, if governmnets and the Australian law give a damn about anti-discrimination.

We're appalled and see now they definitely deserve their own 'written' pergatory for being so off the planet.

Do they have any other targets they want to 'kill off' through lack of empathy and compassion.
Are they sociopaths or psychopaths all of them?

I'm appalled at the homophpbia news and appalled at the forced adoptions that were at their hands.

This corporation needs monitoring.
Who else is on their hit list?

Shame, shame, shame.
They need to get their conscious minds working, 'cause saying death to homosecuals, and leaving unmarried mothers to suffer the worst kind of loss a mum can go through are acts of unconscionable degree.
Are they conscious?

As a friend said to me yesterday "we all need to work at conscious (and actively) promoting empathy and compassion as human qualities that separate us all from barbarism, or sociopaths and psychopaths." We totally understand what she means, and agree. It's now imperative.

When do the Salvation Army apologise about all their unconscionable indoctrinations and acts? It's now time they did so.

They give some crumbs to a few, and the stake holders are singing pretty, because these mob are a multinational corporation. Who by the way have now lost their 'righteous' reputation, any reputation at all.

Bronwyn and Paul

The perpetrators should compensate forced adoptions victims F. Butler either by government scrutinising them and law enforcing this, or by legal prosecutions.

It's not about revenge it's about righting callamitous wrongs that have caused life long anguish and other effects for too many victims, mostly the birth mums.

I am with you as to who should NOT counsel the victims, and that's the perpetartors. What an outright conflict of interest that would be, whose to say they can be trusted yet again with this one.

They may try that one on, and I suggest no victim fall for their 'sad sorrys' that may be even sadder and wrongful unprofessional counselling.

It's good the diaolgue is continuing this isn't some small injustice that happened to a few.
[Even as those injustices are wrong also.]

It's hard to trust religions when certain ones have done and do the most unreligious things however there are good, bad and ugly in the church as well as everywhere else.

Good luck to the victims you have my blessings, and in a non-wrong-religious way.
I am religious in that I believe in the basic Love is more powerful than hate, and always wins in the long run.
Justice rather than revenge.

The Formal Commonwealth Government Apology is good, and hopefully will not be a treacherous 'Sorry' they have given our original peoples. What that didn;t stop was the ongoing racial discrimination happening today as yesterday.

The anti-discrimination board should be working harder to educate and elimnate contempt of differences, without allowing tolerance for social injustices sych as Forced adoptions. Tolerance as a virtue does not include tolerating the intolerable. There are lines drawn here.

Gavin

I'm not sure if Bronwyn and Paul are realising behind the scenes of all churchs, charities and corporations are the authors of their policies and practices.

These people can be found in the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and all others.

Unsure if Salvation Army are actually a church at this time, they certainly are a corporation.
It's now been shown to the people of Australia another highly hostile discrimination they have, against the gay population. It seems to be getting worse for the Salvation Army, they need to look in the mirror and mainly the authors who have written the negative discriminatory doctrines.

As this post is about Forced Adoptions we know they discriminated against unwed mothers.
I also see that was shameful.

All of this is as Paul and Bronwyn say shameful, however, not all people employed by the Salvation Army would be sociopaths or psychopaths and I think Paul and Bronwyn being conscionable people would agree.
As a corporate grouping worldwide they would have as every corporation does the good, bad and ugly, as someone said working amongst them.

The troublt seems to be their authors of the doctrines writings. If these are followed through by all the members of this corporation there is an overtly over the top hostile culture that needs attending too, and the authors need to re-write their 21st Century version of 'doctrines'.

Saying all, when all is never correct in any group is pretty tough, however I too object to what they are 'preaching' to the 'culture' and allowing to happen because of their negative discriminations. I pity them, they seem to not understand the anguish that hate mongering causes, or if they do understand this, are unable to rectify it. Pitiful and tragic, yet not all staff are the one kind.

My concerns mainly lie with the victims they target and when they rewrite their 'doctrines' they'd be best served if they showed honest, humane compassion and love rather than the hate that has recently emerged from their own staff and to air for all to hear.
Their apology is not enough.

It's tricky, a corporation based on a miltary model.
The whole fiasco of forced adoptions should be apologised for by this corporation.
The authorship and practices of hate mongering toward gays and unmarried mothers should be abolished.

Best of luck to, in this instance, the forced adoptions targets. You were tragically wronged.

Debra