A Sanctioned Evil
by Dian Wellfare
The
premeditated interference in the
biological
sequence of birth between
mother
and child for the benefit of
others is a crime against humanity.By Dian Wellfare
PREFACE
This submission will focus on the adoption worker's responsibility toward theunwed and unsupported mother regarding
the possible adoption of her child
since the early 1950's and prior, how she was to personally request that adoption papers be brought to
her, how she was to be advised of financial assistance and alternatives that might enable her to keep her child, how she was
to be warned of the risk of dire future regret and the potential psychological harm that such a course of action may cause
her, and how only when she insisted upon the surrender of her child was an adoption to proceed. It will explain why this did
not occur, and how her human and legal rights have been entirely contravened.
Breaking the Laws of
Man and Nature
Twenty four years too late, but as soon as my mind allowed me to confront the loss of my child, I went
in search of my legal rights, and in doing so, found that as a sixteen year old mother in 1968, not only did I have the legal
right to keep my own baby after all, but that in their rapacious quest for newborns, the adoption industry rather forgot the
law - in having introduced hospital practices and counseling procedures that contravened not only their own manuals of adoption
practice since the early 1950's, but also the protection clauses of the Adoption of Children Act of 1965, in their entirety.
Based on supply and demand, the adoption of newborns, under the guise of
Christian morality, relied on perverting the principles of nature, or God's Master Plan, in using unwed mothers as
breeders, believing they were devoid of human maternal instincts and emotions, giving rise to the diabolical concept that
total strangers (eventually guaranteed a waiting period of usually no longer than 12 months for a newborn), were entitled
to create their families by placing orders for and claiming an already developing foetus, or one yet to be conceived - as
their own.
An unspeakable grief
So permanently traumatized by such unspeakable inhumanity against them, and being then accused of having given away their own babies, the young
mothers themselves were unable to give voice to their horror. Even those who did try to speak out during the 1960's-70's and
80's, were conveniently dismissed (silenced) by both the adoption industry and the courts themselves. Thus the public remained
unaware of the workings of this wicked system until recent years.
I intend to refute the myth that adoption was ever "in the best interest of the child", by explaining
how both the law and true meaning of the term has been deviously misrepresented with malicious intent, to be used as the key
to the smooth functioning of what began as a monstrous (but illicit) social cleansing campaign that ran away with itself,
and came to be seen as "a wonderful community service" for childless couples.
And finally, although this paper focuses on adoption practices within New South Wales, every state in
Australia followed similar adoption procedures, although dates may differ from state to state.
The Adoption Act refers to the Adoption of Children Act 1965.
Disclaimer
Any reference material used in this submission
pertaining to either adoptee’s or to adopted
parents
has been included to show the gross level of neglect,
breach
of duty of care, and blatant disregard adoption
professionals have shown toward the known damage
their
industry has created in their promotion of and
idealization of
traditional adoption.
In promoting the myth upon which traditional adoption
has been based the adoption industry ignored the
child's needs as being of paramount importance.
It
instead, fed upon and accommodated the problems
associated with infertility to generate and promote
their own profession, rather than assisting their
client to deal with and come to terms with the
emotional aspects of their infertility.
Most reference material used in this submission
has
been found within the social work section of both
the Fisher Library, and the Bosch Library of Sydney
University. As there was no Australian literature
on
adoption prior to the early 1970's, with Australia
relying on material collected from both the United
States and the United Kingdom for their practice, all
international literature used is therefore relevant
to
this inquiry.
What they knew - but ignored
The
Psychology of the Adopted Child
1943
The
National Committee for Mental Health
Journal on Mental Hygiene. New York,
by Florence
Clothier M.D.,1943
`The child who does not grow up with his own biological parents, or does not even know them or anyone of
his own blood, is an individual who has lost the thread of family continuity.
A deep identification with our forebears, as experienced originally in the mother-child
relationship, gives us our most fundamental security. The child's repeated discoveries
that the mother from whom he has been biologically separated will continue to
warm him, nourish him, and protect him pours into the very structure of his personality
a stability and a reassurance that he is safe, even in this new alien world.
Every adopted child, at some time in his development, has been deprived of this primitive relationship with his mother. This trauma and the severing of
the individual from his racial antecedents lie at the core of what is
peculiar to the psychology of the adopted child.
The adopted child presents all
the complications in social and emotional developments seen in the own child. But the
ego of the adopted child, in addition to all the normal demands made upon it,
is called upon to compensate for the wound left by the loss of the biological
mother. Later on this appears as an unknown void, separating the adopted child
from his fellows whose blood ties bind them to the past as well as to the future.
It is pertinent never
to lose sight of the fact that no matter how lost to him his natural parents may
be, the adopted child carries stamped in every cell of his body genes derived
from his forebears. The primitive stuff of which he is finallyat the time of his
conception...
The implications of this for the psychology of the adopted child are of the utmost significance.
The child who is placed
with adoptive parents at or soon after birth misses the mutual and deeply
satisfying mother-child relationship, the roots of which lie in that deep area
of the personality where the physiological and psychological are merged. Both for the child and for the natural mother, that
period is part of a biological sequence, and it is to be doubted whether the relationship
to it's post-partum mother, in it's subtler effects, can be replaced by even the
best of substitute mothers.
But those subtle effects
lie so deeply buried in the personality that, in light of our present knowledge,
we cannot evaluate them. We do know more about the trauma that an older baby suffers
when he is separated from his mother, with whom his relationship is no longer
merely parasitic, but toward whomhe has developed active social strivings.
For some children,
and in some stages of development, this severing of the budding social relationship
can cause irreparable harm.
The child's willingness
to sacrifice instinctive gratifications and infantile pleasures for the sake of
love relationships has proved a bitter disillusionment, and he may be loath to
give himself into a love relationship again.'
The Adoption of Newborns.
Professional
neglect - or child abuse?
Clothier continued: `We also have reason to believe that if an adoptive placement is made in earliest infancy with parents who accept and love the child, there is a maximum probability
that the child's emotional and social development will parallel that of the own child, even though the adopted child has to forego infancy's first and greatest protection
from tension.
The child who is placed
in infancy has the opportunity of passing through his Oedipal development in relationship to his adoptive parents without an interruption that, in the child's phantasy, may amount to the most severe of punishments.'
Having acknowledged their inability
to evaluate the trauma in severing the biological connection between a mother and child at birth, in 1943, `in light of their
present knowledge', failed to inspire any research into the trauma, and so the subsequent emotional wellbeing and future development
of millions of adopted infants world-wide, has relied entirely upon wishful thinking.
Mental health experts around the
world then spent the next fifty years conducting major research, and thousands of psychiatric case studies into the social
dysfunction of the adopted child, trying to find explanations for the emotional complications causing adopted children to
be over-represented in mental health facilities and clinics around the world.
They blamed `bad blood', genetic
pre-dispositions in the deviant mother, bad pre-natal care, difficult births, hereditary factors, neurotic adopters, that
adoptive parents were more inclined to send the child to psychiatric facilities, bad parenting, separation from foster parents,
genealogical bewilderment, attention deficit disorders, personality disorders, schizophrenia, etc. etc. And although much
research has been conducted into the harmful effects of separating an animal from it's mother at birth, never once has the
trauma caused by the interference of the biological sequence of birth between a human mother and child even been considered
let alone researched.
However, according to Florence
Clothier - the trauma suffered by an infant separated from his mother at birth
has always been known. It is the degree of that trauma which remains unknown because it has suited the fabric of society to
avoided and ignore it.
‘Adoption practice works on the premise
that in order to save the
child - you
must first destroy it's mother
Dian Wellfare
Taking babies from their mothers at birth
and hiding them forever was an internationally contrived social cleansing programme, deemed to be-"in the interest of the
community".
Dian Wellfare
Social Cleansing
Just as Hitler began his own social
cleansing campaign by first sterilizing anyone considered to be social misfits (a trend he had followed from the Eugenics
Institute of Virginia USA), so too did Australia follow a social cleansing campaign based on a yet another predicted trend,
and yet another form of social control emanating from the USA. This time the plan was to control illegitimacy by eradicating
unwed mothers from society through the promotion of a myth. This myth was created to provide a market demand for the illegitimate
babies of their young illegitimate mothers.
Not to be confused with the adoption
of children who really were in need - the
myth was traditional adoption. ie: the transfer of a newborn infant from it's own mother at birth to be used as an emotional
cure for the infertility of another.
The Emperor’s New Clothes
Based as it is on a legally sanctioned
lie, in creating a new identity for a child by sealing away forever his original birth certificate, and replacing it with an amended one to imply that an adopting parent gave birth to the child - and with adoption promoters dressing it up to allow for the emotional pretence of believing the child was just’
as if born’ to the adopting couple, the state found it could transfer its own community
responsibilities of financially caring for unsupported families in need,
onto the adopting parents.
Effectively paralleling
the mythical tale of the Emperors New Clothes - although adoption was originally
nothing more than foster care made permanent through a legal transaction - adoption came to be seen as something other than it was.
A Market is Born
According to historical research
trends: prior to World War 2, illegitimacy was considered to be the consequence of mental deficiency, immorality, bad companions,
poverty, and broken homes. ie. no-one wanted a child of `bad blood' born to a socially deviant
mother, not to mention that the country was in the middle of the great depression when no-one could afford another mouth to
feed, so adoption was not a highly marketable proposition.
The post war period, however, introduced
social planners such as Leontine Young, who saw a predominance of psychological and psychiatric disturbances as explanations
for illegitimacy, where the child needed to be `saved' from it's neurotic mother.
Add to that a growing awareness
that an epidemic of Clamydia and backyard abortions had swept the country during
the post war period, causing an acute infertility problem: and the mid and late 1950's witnessed a growing acceptance, a convenient
revelation, that unwed mothers came from all walks of life after all. The `bad blood' theory was then debunked with the nature
vs. nurture debate and a market demand for illegitimate babies had been born.
The same Leontine Young who less
than a decade earlier in the mid 194O's had labeled the unmarried mother as disturbed, neurotic and needed to get pregnant to give her mother a gift, (with her child needing to be saved from her), had already begun
reconsidering her concepts by 1953 when
she presented a paper to the National Conference for Social Workers in Cleveland, expressing her concerns about:
...the tendency growing out
of the demand for babies to regard
unmarried mothers as breeding
machines (by people intent) on
securing babies for quick adoption."
By 1965, Young's theories had been
ridiculed through analysis conducted by Rael Jean Isaac and legal Consultant Joseph Spencer, and others, but it had suited
the adoption industry's purpose to perpetuate the myth of the unmarried mother being psychologically disturbed for a further
thirty years and avoid any further research into her mental health.
A Clean Slate
Eventually unwilling to take older
children, with everyone demanding only perfect newborns with a "clean slate", by the early 1960's - a more streamlined procedure
was being engineered to kill two birds with one stone -to control illegitimacy(1) by
using the babies of unwed mothers as a cure for infertility(2). But it meant having to promote adoption as being in the best
interest of the child to meet social approval. It also relied upon introducing the term unwanted child to allow society to believe
they were saving the child, and of course disregarding all legal regulations and
protection clauses in relation to the treatment of unwed mothers in order to fill the orders placed for newborns.
An Odd Phenomenon,
Questioning why the peak adoption period evolved at a time when major social reform was occurring, the
Vietnam war was in full swing, make love not war was the catch cry of the day, the pill allowed for greater sexual freedom
for many, the illegitimacy rate had ( according to newspaper articles of the
time) remained constant and stable, and yet, the more rigid and punitive decades prior to the 1960's and 1970's witnessed
a greater percentage of single mothers keeping their babies within the family home.....I questioned why this unnatural and
socially misplaced phenomenon occurred.
After spending years searching
for and scouring old archival Government and agency literature and other related documents, needing to unravel how a civilized
and progressive society could become even more punitive in their attitudes and introduce such
cruelty as separating babies from their mothers at birth, I came upon what I believe was the catalyst which allowed such inhumanity to occur.
A Social Forecast
- The
Baby Boomers -
It was a paper written by Dr. Clark
E. Vincent, Professor of Sociology presented on 26th May
1964 at the Colonel Ruth Pagan Memorial Meeting, sponsored by the Child Welfare of Los
Angeles, National Association on Services to Unmarried Parents, Florence Crittendon Association of America, National Urban
League, and the Salvation Army, for a National Conference on Social Welfare.
Dr Vincent, a prognosticator of social
forecasts, had outlined his prediction in his paper titled `Illegitimacy in the Next Decade: Trends and Implications', that
as a result of the post war baby boom, a huge pool of teenage mothers born during
the period between 1952 and 1957 would create a potential over-supply of illegitimate babies as they reached the 15 to 19
year old age group ,“the greatest suppliers of adoptable babies”, by
1970, and - add to that an under-supply of potential adopters caused by the low birth rate during the period between 1930 - 1940 .... and by 1970 (he had predicted),
a major social problem regarding the over supply of illegitimate babies would result.
Until his projected forecast (since the
post war period) there had always been more couples wanting to adopt babies than
were ever available, and although illegitimacy had always been a fact of life, the concern was that by 1970, the tables would
turn and there would not be enough couples willing to adopt from the anticipated huge pool of babies that would become available.
This would create a major economic and social imbalance in the acceptable levels of illegitimacy in the community - unless
the period surrounding 1065-1970 could be socially controlled.
The `Crisis'
From the introduction to the Adoption
of Children Act 1965, proclaimed in 1967 and until 1973 (when the illegitimacy `crisis'
predicted by Vincent back in 1964 had supposedly passed), no mention had been made of provisions and services available
to enable the unwed mother to make any real choice. Even though district officers and the Minister for Child Welfare had clearly
outlined the mothers rights to a concerned public in 1965, and in Parliament, during debate over the new Act two years prior
to it's being proclaimed, th emother was never advised of her legal options.. This became a world-wide strategy also implemmted by the United Kingdom,
the United States, and New Zealand..
This submission will explain the engineering
process that brought the plan to fruition, including the process by which the adoption of newborns would be promoted to a previously resistant community in their quest to recruit the many additional prospective
adoptive parents needed to make the plan work.
On a personal note: I have come to understand
how it had been pre-determined by Vincent’s forecast in 1964 (four years before
he was conceived), that I should lose my child at birth.
Cross Cultural Data Collection
Vincent had also explained how Federal
Governments had already begun providing funds for research and demonstration projects dealing specifically with illegitimacy
and related problems during the late 1950's and early 1960's, and estimated how, by 1965-1970, more attention would be given
to international and cross cultural comparative data, reticent interest in unwed fathers, and that longitudinal studies into
illicit sexual activities were already being accompanied, if not exceeded by, the increased research interest in highly selected
aspects of illegitimacy ie. adoption.
These developments and the push toward
coordinated services were intended to understand illegitimacy and to diminish its occurrence, through education, research,
and preventative and rehabilitative services and activities. And although he was only three years out, he had also forecast
how the illegitimacy levels would eventually be controlled by 1970 through the introduction of easy access to terminations
and the availability of contraception to unmarried women. His forecasts have all came to pass.
Vincent’s predictions were the underlying reason why Governments of all English speaking nations, including Australia,
took over control of all adoptions, and therefore illegitimacy, (unlike war ravaged
populations in Europe where adoption was not a promotable issue) with the implementation of the Adoption of Children Act 1965.
Disregarding their own legislation, regulations and responsibility toward the psychological well being and legal
protection of the unwed mother and her child, by avoiding its responsibility to provide previously available financial support
and other provisions that might allow the mother
the freedom of choice , the state could effectively cull the illegitimacy rate to a more acceptable level.
Forecast No 2.
Supply and Demand = Punishment
Three years earlier than his above mentioned
prediction: according to his highly referenced book titled "Unmarried Mothers" based on research conducted into mothers who
kept and mothers who gave up their babies, in 1961 Clark Vincent had explained the propaganda on which the new Adoption of
Children Act 1965 would eventually become based. He forecast how the term "in the best interest of the child" would become
the tool used to pry newborns away from their own mothers at birth to supply the demand. Vincent's summary concludes (in part)
with the prediction that:
"If the demand for adoptable babies
continues to exceed the supply...
then it is quite possible that, in the near future, unwed
mothers
will be "punished" by having their children taken from them
right
after birth." He explains that:
"A policy like this would not be executed - nor labelled explicitly
as "punishment". Rather, it would be implemented by such pressures
and labels as:
1. scientific findings
2. the best interest of the child
3. rehabilitation of the unwed mother
4. and the stability of family and society."
Although he prefaced his research by adding
the following disclaimer :
"We must emphasize that the present study concerned "white, maternity-
home" unwed mothers.....We must also emphasize the fact that this study
was made in a location where, and at a time when, a demand for "white"
adoptable infants existed. The
data have little application to Negro unwed
mothers, who have very few adoption outlets for their children; they may
be as little applicable to
the white unwed mothers of another historical time,
one during which there is no demand for adoptable infants. If the demand
were absent, the unwed mothers who now score high in personality score
measuring e.g., socialization,
maturity, and responsibility, might very
possibly be more inclined to assume the responsibility of rearing their
illegitimate children.
We consider that the probability that such policy and practice will emerge
necessitates precautions to prevent the misapplication of group data to
individuals. It would be most unfortunate if such group data were
interpreted or misused to claim that any individual unwed mother desiring
to keep her child is "ipso-facto" an inadequate mother and a disturbed
person.
Such misapplication or misuse of data would do grave injustice to those
individual unwed mothers having the desire and the ability (latent or
manifest) to be very good mothers to their children, and who may
subsequently establish homes with fathers for these children."
Network
Preparations
Referenced by Mary Mclelland in her presentation
at the Precedings of a Seminar held on Friday 3rd February 1967 to proclaim The Adoption of Children Act 1965 in N.S.W, Vincent’s
predictions were endorsed, albeit unofficially (so as not to have to waste time getting it passed through legislation, I suspect)
and the above four factors, or excuses for breaking the law, became the official cornerstones upon which the new Adoption
of Children Act 1965 was promoted.
Although Vincent had let his (socially
engineered) cat out of the bag in 1961,
it took a further 5 years to engineer
and perfect a networking arrangement between 314 various departments and agencies within NSW, to implement his 'predictions'
thus ensuring the successful functioning of their new social cleansing campaign.
Until these practices were implemented, there were never enough adoptable babies to meet the demand. But once
introduced the period between 1967 -1973 became proudly referred to in social work circles as the 'bumper adoption era', having
effectively reaped enough newborns to beat the `crisis' and supply the demand. In fact so much so that by 1972 the supply
had, for the first time, exceeded the demand, leaving hundreds of infants languishing in institutions, having become too
old for adoption. Being no longer newborns and growing older by the day, their desirability was no longer so marketable.
The following year the Sole Parents benefit was advertised - which I think speaks for itself
Definitions and Misrepresentations
Definition of Adoption
"To
take as one's own"
Adoption: a permanent form of foster
care sanctioned in law.
Introduced originally to
care for children in need, deprived of their
own families.
Its greatest benefit
on a state level was to save the public purse with
the expectation that 90% of illegitimate children would be adopted.
......oooOOOooo......
Definition in law of:
"As if born to you"
A legal definition to explain that an adopted child would have the same right of inheritance from their
adoptive parental estate as if born naturally, and that adopting parents would
have the same parental rights and obligations to the child as those of natural parents.
Misrepresentation of
`as if born to you'
Adoption is a cure for infertility.
The
adoption workers main concern was based on the premise that
the emotional distress caused by infertility and childlessness
within marriage could be alleviated by providing an infant young
enough to just `as if born' to the adopting couple.
......oooOOOooo......
