Dian Wellfare Adoption Rights Campaigner (1951-2008)

A Sanctioned Evil Part 6
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Continuation  of Origins Submission to NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Adoption Practices
Written and researched by Dian Wellfare

Sacrificing and exploiting Newborns?

 

The promotion of traditional adoption, in light of the continuous mountain of research and psychiatric case studies clearly indicating the longterm detrimental effects and emotional problems associated with the adopted child - dating back to the early 1920's, all of which, having been totally ignored by the adoption industry, except in exceptional circumstances making such separation necessary, is a clear act of blatant child abuse and neglect suppressed by blatant propaganda.

 

Such neglect is certain indication that the interests of the child was of no more concern in the adoption equation than that of his mother. 

 

Just as adoption is based on a lie, it stands to reason that even the promise of a perfect life for our children was yet another lie. Upon reunion, the astounding level of emotional neglect, violence against, psychological oppression, forced slave-like dependency, fear, demanded obligation, sexual abuse of our children from infancy and beyond, emotional pain throughout their lives, social isolation, self worthlessness, self hatred, rage, emotional isolation, fear of relationships, fear of love, bears witness to that deceit.

 

In the words of one distraught mother:

 

  "They said my baby needed a father, so they gave her to a paedophile". 

 

 

 The Law

 

Our task as men

is to find the few principles

that will calm the infinite

anguish of free souls.

 

We must mend

what has been torn apart,

make justice imaginable again

in a world so obviously unjust,

 give happiness

a meaning once more

to peoples poisoned by the

misery of the century.

 

Albert Camus

`Our Task As Men'

Lyrical and Critical Essays

(N.Y. Alfred Knopf 1968)

 

The state's responsibility was to look after a child's best interest only IF a mother had surrendered her child, whereupon the child became a state ward. It was only then, that adoption was considered to be in the child's best interest as the preferred option to remaining a state ward.

 

Except in cases of abandonment, neglect or abuse, no law has ever alluded to adoption being in a child's best interest, over remaining with its own mother.

 

Furthermore, under the NSW Limitations Act of 1969, the consent of a minor was (and still is) unenforceable (and therefore invalid) until a mother reaches the age of majority which was 21 years of age and reducing in the early 1970's to 18 years. In relation to this issue the state owed a greater than normal duty of care to unwed mothers because of their youth. 

 

According to fiduciary law regarding the adoption of children within New South Wales:

 

       The State was at all material times, in accordance with its

       responsibilities in operating an adoption service through the

       Department of Child Welfare, obliged to look after the interests

       of mothers, regarding the "possible" adoption of their child and

       the potential psychological harm such a course of action might

       cause them.

 

In the matter of adoption the State was under a fiduciary obligation with respect to such women and was not to:

 

        (1) promote other interests over the interests of such women;

 

        (2) advise such persons or seek to persuade such persons to act

            in a manner contrary to their wishes with respect to the

            adoption of children;

 

        (3) seek to persuade such women to surrender their children for

            adoption as an alternative to keeping their children.

 

In fact, the use of the term "in the best interest of the child" to obtain a consent can be very well be interpreted as duress if contested in a court of law.

 

In 1984, the N.S.W. Parliamentary Review into Adoption Policy and Practices, recommended that before surrendering her child, the unmarried mother was to be informed of the consequences of adoption, AND THIS TIME IT WAS TO BE IN WRITING, but of course this is yet to occur, leaving the industry wide open to litigation for persistently breaching their duty of care. 

 

REFER ALSO SECTION: Health Commission Policy on Adoption 1982, page 132.

 

The practices referred to in this submission constitute coercion, undue influence, duress, inducement to sign a contract, abduction, kidnapping, professional negligence, criminal negligence, breach of duty of care, assault, improper consent taking, breach of natural law, breach of fiduciary duty by the medical profession, by the nursing profession, by the Child Welfare Departments and their subsequent Departmental titles, by the Health Commission and subsequent Departmental names, in having violated the mothers right to be free from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, to be free from discrimination, to be free from arbitrary interference with their families, and their right to be entitled to special protection as mothers.

 

I contend that those involved in these sadistic violations were fully aware of the potential for psychological harm inherent in adoption separation, and therefore are guilty of committing major human rights crimes, and major civil rights crimes of gigantic proportions, to which the New South Wales Government and their licensed adoption agencies are now fully accountable.

 

New South Wales

Law Reform Commission

Report 69

Review of the Adoption Information Act 1990

 

5.29  ...there was a lack of social and financial support for unmarried

      mothers. The supporting mothers benefit was not introduced until 1973. For many single mothers, it would have been difficult or impossible for them to manage on their own with a baby unless their own families provided a great deal of assistance.

 

5.31  ...the young mothers were subjected to a great deal of persuasion and

      pressure to give up their children for adoption. This was presented to

      them by family members, hospital staff and social workers and no doubt

      many others, as the best thing to do, especially for the child.

 

5.32  The final factor was a combination of hospital practices relating to the delivery and birth. The commission heard of birthparents who were drugged immediately after giving birth and were them transported without their consents to another hospital or convalescent centre where they were completely separated from their child,. who had remained at the hospital.

 

      Some practices involved a deception of the birthmother: examples included concealing the words on the document of consent or misrepresenting the document, and telling the birthmother, contrary to the fact, the child had died shortly after birth. Another practice was to hold a pillow or sheet over the mother's body during the delivery so that the child could be removed without even having been seen or held by them.

 

Many of these practices were illegal.

 

Even the Law Reform Commission after spending years reviewing the Adoption of Children Act 1965, and while reviewing the technicalities of the  Act, failed to observe that regulations have always been in place to protect the mother and child and that unmarried mothers did have legal rights, had been entitled to financial support and other facilities to enable her to keep her child. And while acknowledging some of the blatantly illegal aspects of adoption practice as above, failed to realise that pressure from any person to persuade her to surrender her child to adoption also constitutes an improper consent and is also illegal under the Act.

 

In reality, a review into the Adoption of Children Act 1965 was probably unnecessary when all that was really required was to get hold of the old Child Welfare Act 17, it's accompanying regulations, provisions, and protection clauses of the Adoption of Children Act 1965, and force adoption professionals to actually read them this time. 

 

Violations of women's human rights: birthmothers and adoption

Kathleen Sherry

1992

(Extract from a research paper by Sherry while reviewing

of The Adoption of Children Act 1965 unpublished)

 

        At first glance it seemed no more than the unfortunate result of outdated

        social and medical policy. However, viewing the evidence as a whole, a

        pattern of abusive treatment emerged. What these individual women were

        describing were not isolated instances with atypical doctors and social

        workers; rather their experiences revealed systematic violations of

        human rights. The treatment they received from doctors, social workers,

        charitable organisations and government departments violated their right

        to be free from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, free from

        discrimination, free from arbitrary interference with their family, as well

        as their right to be entitled to special protection as mothers.

 

        The stories of birthmothers, who have long been silent or ignored, cast

        the practice of adoption in a new light. These stories force us to

        acknowledge that not only is adoption highly problematic, but that it's

        history has been a brutal one. So brutal, that it raises issues of

        violations of fundamental human rights."

 

A Sociopathic Mind

 

`to knowingly inflict harm upon another without remorse or guilt'

 

Evil comes in many forms, and perhaps the true nature of the adoption

industry's collective sociopathic mind can be summed up in the words of one adoption expert, who promoted the adoption of babies almost single handedly  throughout the media in the 1960's - early 1970's, and former Social Worker in Charge at the Women’s Hospital, Crown Street, Sydney, between 1964 and 1976, who, in a written statement presented at a Supreme Court hearing in the case of `W' vs. The State of New South Wales - when asked if it was known to professional persons of moderate sophistication in 1968, that a mother would suffer psychological harm if forced to surrender her child to adoption,

responded with:

 

"Health authorities were aware of the

potential for harm in that sphere of time"

 

 

Social Avoidance

 

The devastating and irresolvable physiological and psychological trauma inherent in having introduced adoption practices condoning the inhumanity of tampering with a biological function of nature, by interfering in the process of completing the very primal act of giving birth between a mother and child, is something so heinous and so psychically destructive, that few health professionals dare touch it, and instead now choose to minimise, and keep the lid on the catastrophic consequences of such separation, by preferring to view it, at best, as grief and loss.

 

Understanding the Phenomenon

of Traditional Adoption

 

In their attempt to deflect the reality of the adoption happy era, the 1985 Review of Adoption Policy and Practice in NSW compiled by Audrey Marshall, described traditional adoptions as being:

 

"largely a phenomenon of a social era that is past." Compiled predominantly by social workers active throughout the "bumper adoption era", the report conveniently failed to acknowledge that the

adoption "phenomenon" to which they referred, came about as a direct result of a contrived and contemptuous corruption of the law by the entire adoption industry, in collusion with the Medical profession and Health Department in breaching their duty of care toward the emotional health and wellbeing of their patients and clients, in contravening their own regulations and legislation, in wittingly misrepresenting the meaning of the term "in the child's best interest" in having denied unwed mothers their legal rights and options, in promoting a service known to cause psychological harm to both mother and child, and in having treated young mothers and their newborns as sub-human, by depriving them of their dignity as mothers and as human beings. 

 

And in participating in a yet another programme of controlled Eugenics that ran away with itself and came to be seen as a wonderful community service for infertile couples.

 

I very much doubt that traditional adoption will safely be swept under some historical rug as having been a mere social phenomenon, but will rather come to be seen as yet another vile social cleansing chapter in Australia's family destroying and child hating history.

 

An estimated 80,000 mothers, 80,000 children and their accompanying blood relatives made up of siblings, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and future generations of children, consisting of an absolute minimum of one and half million people directly affected, many severely, by adoption separation in New South Wales alone.

 

There can be no reconciliation and no healing, without the establishment of national awareness of the truth behind the experimental practice of traditional adoption, before mothers are released from their unfounded guilt in having surrendered their babies, before our children know the truth, before we have accountability, justice, and restitution for these crimes, in whatever form that takes. Anything less will be an outrage to those whose lives have been so adversely affected by this monstrous perversion of nature.

 

Whether it will be humanly possible that any mother can ever reconcile the loss of her own living child: that will only be determined by the mothers upon whom these atrocities occurred. And that is at least one right of theirs that is certainly non-negotiable.

 

 

 

Afterward

 

I began this submission by quoting from a paper presented by Florence Clothier, titled `Psychology of the Adopted Child'. It is both interesting and distressing to observe the history of The National Committee for Mental Health, and the Journal on Mental Hygiene 1943, from where Florence Clothiers observations and promotion of traditional adoption have been found.

 

The Mental Hygiene movement of the early 1900's, initially evolved from the Eugenics movement in the late 1800's, through a major campaign conducted by a team of twelve psychiatrists in the earlier part of the twentieth century, one of it's major players being Ernst Rudin, who after attending the First International Congress for Mental Hygiene in 1930, designed the Nazi Sterilisation laws that went into effect in Germany three years later, in 1933 when Hitler gained power.

 

While the Eugenics movement focused on the control of human breeding by eliminating "savages, the weak of body or feeble of mind" (Darwin - Theory of Evolution), the Mental Hygiene movement orchestrated the control of acceptable social behaviour  through the introduction of social controllers to be used as their `henchmen' to carry out their will to control and interfere in the lives of others. These social controllers of course in the context of this submission were called district officers, allotment officers, social workers, and hospital almoners.

 

At the Third International Congress on Mental Hygiene, held in London in  1948, the movement changed their name and formed a global organisation called the World Federation for Mental Health, after the activities in Germany by Hitler, made the term `Mental Hygiene' a liability.

 

So - while I originally mentioned Hitler's social cleansing campaign merely as an example of another form of social control, not meaning to identify the two campaigns as synonymous, naturally, given that both were social cleansing programmes, and given that both evolved originally from the very same Mental Hygiene movement Committees, controlled by psychiatrists of the time (remembering the belief that unmarried mothers had been considered to be psychiatrically disturbed from the early 1950’s - Eugenics?), the seeds from which both forms of inhumanity sprung - are perhaps a little more closely linked than is comfortable.

 

(It is not known whether John Bowlby, the misinterpreted instigator of traditional adoption in the United Kingdom, was also a member of the Mental Hygiene Movement).

 

The social cleansing programme that culminated in the Holocaust began in 1933 and ceased in 1945, whereas the residual acceptance of the massive social cleansing programme of separating newborns from their mothers at birth, remains a socially sanctioned evil.

 

 

“...and there follows a mist and a weeping rain,

and life is never the same again”

 

 

 The Apologists

 

Apologists will justify their practices by explaining how they recognize that decisions taken in the past were based on the best knowledge of the time, and made with the best of intentions, although they may nevertheless have been fundamentally flawed.

 

They will sanction their own participation in these crimes by referring to such evil as being based on "societal mores of the time" whereas it was no such thing.

 

It is the law and its regulations that represent societal values, not ones own interpretation of the law.  

 

Such dismissive platitudes are offensive when it is known that the legal rights and psychological harm caused to mothers and children separated at birth, have never once in the history of adoption practice even been considered.

 

Where to Now?

 

The Committee for Origins Incorporated has called for this inquiry into adoption practices. However, while we believe that no mother has ever been provided with her legal and human rights in relation to her adoption experience, we do not profess to speak on behalf of every mother with regard to their requirement for justice and for personal healing.

 

There will be some  for whom a sincere apology and acknowledgment of past practices will be sufficient, others will find relief to know their children are made aware of the separation practices from their mothers, and others for whom that will not suffice and who may wish to take action through the Supreme Courts, while some may wish to take up their right to lay charges under the Crimes Act bypassing the statute of Limitations, and others wishing to overturn their child's adoption based on improper consent.

 

We therefore request that all avenues be made available for discussion with the Origins Committee along with discussion into the implementation of the following

requirements.

 

1.  Arrange to provide regular seminars and workshops accredited by the

    Department of Community Services and The Health Department to educate

    and inform all mental health workers of the nature of emotional implications

    resulting from the mothers experience.

 

2.  Provision of weekend, week long and monthly de-programming, trauma

    recovery, research, and respite centres made available for those in need of

    in depth recovery where required.

 

3.  Provide state-wide financial and material support to enable the development

    of self help organizations in city, regional and outer lying areas around the

    state.

  

4.  A review into, and improvement of all counseling procedures

 

5. A statewide/national campaign to remove the stigma put on mothers who

   surrendered children to adoption in the past, including the removal of the

   stigma inflicted upon our children in having been classified as unwanted

   children.

 

6.  A full National Judicial Inquiry into adoption practices

 

    and/or

 

7.  A Statewide Criminal Investigation under the New South Wales Crimes Act

    1900 - Kidnapping clauses.

 

8.  Overturn the Statute of Limitations.

 

9.  A full and sincere apology to all mothers and children who have been

    separated by adoption from the Australian Association of Social Workers,

    charitable organisations, licensed adoption agencies, the medical

    profession, the Nursing Association, the Department of Community

    Services, and the  NSW Health Department. 

 

10. Reparation    

 

11.  The reinstatement of all original Birth Certificates

 

12.  Full disclosure of the truth regarding adoption practices as an Act of

     Parliament to begin the official rewriting of adoption history.

 

13. To have the separation of mother and child at birth officially recognised as

    a severe trauma to both.

 

14.  Full research and disclosure into adoption consequences, including

             a. Suicide rates in adopted children and mothers

             b. Mental Health implications in both mothers and children

 

15. Disclaimer stickers posted on all past historical adoption literature and

    case work studies, found in state libraries which depict improper

    adoption facts based on the promotion of adoption myth.

 

16. The de-registration of all adoption agency and agent licences for non-

    compliance with the terms and conditions of their professional licence

    issued by the Department of Community Services for their failure to comply

    with the terms of the Child Welfare Act 17, the Adoption of Children Act

    1965, failing to comply with their own regulations, failing to apply a

    professional standard of duty of care as a professional adoption service to

    the community. 

 

17.  Accountability in the failure of the relevant Director Generals of the Child

     Welfare Departments (and its alternative and subsequent names), to police

     the goings on of its own Department and licensed private adoption agencies

     as licensing regulations dictate.  

 


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