Mothers want forced adoptions included in national apology to abuse in care survivors

Women whose newborn babies were forcibly taken for adoption want to be included in today's national apology for abuse in care.

The final report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in care found forced adoptions were often organised by church institutions, state social workers, and medical professionals.

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Commissioners found many women were either not allowed to meet their newborn babies or to bond with them.

Maggie Wilkinson was sent to the Anglican-run St Mary's home in Auckland as a pregnant 19-year-old in 1964.

She said she pleaded with the head matron to be allowed to keep her baby, but that fell on deaf ears.

She describes what happened next as an abduction.

"She [my baby] was right beside me, I put my arm on her, I put my hand on her, I said 'please don't take her away'.

"And a nurse said, 'well don't tell anyone', and I must have gone to sleep - whether I was given something to sleep - and when I woke she was gone."

Commissioners found physical, psychological, emotional and verbal abuse was perpetrated against the young women at the Anglican, Catholic, Salvation Army and non-denominational mothers' homes.

Wilkinson said she was forced to sign adoption papers, but she was in no state to think clearly after the harsh conditions of the home.

The women were forced to do harsh manual labour, she said.

"People talk about the Magdalene Laundries that were only in Ireland, and I have to hasten to add this happened in New Zealand. It was cruel, and incredibly lonely."

Wilkinson said she received compensation and an apology from the Anglican Church, and in 2017, petitioned for a government inquiry into forced adoptions.

She will be listening in Parliament today.

"I know of, have heard of, so many women so bowed with grief they have taken their own lives.

"I am going to Wellington and I am taking those women with me."

Katherine said she experienced a forced adoption after being placed with a non-denominational adoption agency in 1967, the Motherhood of Man, which ran in Auckland from 1942 until the late 1970s.

She said she had previously gone to the social welfare department, and ended up at the Motherhood of Man, which placed her with a private family to be a nanny for young children.

"That was very difficult for me. I was young, I was 17, and I had no experience looking after children; it was basically unpaid labour."

She told RNZ she gave birth at the organisation's private Fairleigh Hospital in Grey Lynn and only very briefly got to see her baby.

"When I gave birth to my daughter, I was able to hold her hand, and look at her and then I just left the hospital, and life has never been the same again for me."

She said she was told soon after to sign adoption papers by the Motherhood of Man's lawyers, but wasn't provided any counselling, or legal advice, just "told to sign on the dotted line".

Researcher Barbara Sumner gave evidence to the Royal Commission of Inquiry. She said she was born in a Salvation Army home and was forcibly removed from her mother there. She has extensively researched forced adoption and said the Salvation Army acted as an adoption agency when it was not licensed to, and this was rubber stamped by the state.

The Salvation Army was contacted for comment about this claim but could not respond in time for this story.

Sumner said it's estimated 100,000 women put children up for adoption in New Zealand's "baby scoop era", but there is a lack of exact data on how many women were coerced, pressured and forced to give away their children.

"What we have instead are testimonies of women who talk about the kind of coercion, the lack of support, which is in itself a form of coercion where they are given the choice of no-choice."

She said the system was set up to remove children from unmarried mothers and was done "in the most secret way".

Researcher Ione Cussens said organisations running mothers and baby homes interacted with social services to register adoptions and apply for social welfare payments, but they only needed to meet the criteria of a local boarding house.

She said it wasn't until 1974, after the Children's and Young Person's Act came into force, that the homes were required to be registered with social welfare and to be subject to inspections.

Debra Harris told RNZ women also experienced forced adoption in the public health and social work systems.

She said social workers told her she was unfit to be a mother when she sought help as an unmarried 18-year-old in 1971.

"If you're irresponsible, Ms Harris, if you're irresponsible enough to get pregnant, what makes you think you're responsible enough to have a child?

"On and on it went, it was just abuse after abuse. The criticism, the speaking down to, the belittling, the shaming," Harris said.

She said she had a difficult birth at St Helen's maternity Hospital in Auckland, including being given pethidine and experiencing a mid-forceps delivery, which resulted in her vomiting. She never saw her baby.

"I have memories of running up and down the wards looking for a baby Harris on any of the chalkboards, but of course, no, they weren't going to put names up there, they didn't want me to see her.

"I didn't even know if it was a boy or a girl."

She said her breasts were painfully bound to prevent lactation, and she was given another unmarried woman's child to hold and nurture, until it was adopted, "as an experiment stop the after-baby blues".

"It was very traumatic, it was very terrifying for an 18-year-old girl to be in a psychological situation of abuse. My family had disowned me because it was too embarrassing."

Kaaren Dunn was sent to the Salvation Army as a pregnant 18-year-old, and the adoption was then arranged through private obstetricians and doctors.

She says in 1965, she gave birth in a public hospital in Nelson.

"She was born under general anaesthetic and then taken, so I didn't ever get to see her, and I think every mother has a right to see their baby and also she was hidden from me, so there was no access.

"And when I tried to see her, the staff stepped in and stood in the way."

While Dunn gave evidence to the Royal Commission, treatment for general admissions at public hospitals were excluded from its the terms of reference.

She has written to the Prime Minister, calling for mothers like her to be included in an apology.

"It's actually a really shameful period of New Zealand's history that young women who fell pregnant outside of marriage, were punished for having babies."

The Prime Minister's office declined to comment on the story and a spokesperson says they won't reveal details ahead of the apology.

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