In 1963, as an unmarried 18-year-old, Elizabeth Edwards was coerced into signing a consent form to give her daughter up for adoption less than 24 hours after giving birth.

She was dazed from the medication she had been given and frightened by her mother's threats that her 19-year-old fiance, Bill, would be jailed for carnal knowledge.

"When I asked to see my baby the doctor looked in my eyes with a really cold stare and said, 'Society will forgive one mistake.' It was a threat. Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the labour room," Mrs Edwards said yesterday.

Bill, whom she married a few months later and with whom she had another six children, was not told that she had had the baby and did not sign a consent form.

When he found out two days later he was not allowed to see his child. It was 26 years before the couple were reunited with their daughter.

"Only recently we've realised we had a right to have our own child... we understood we didn't have any rights because we were unmarried," Mrs Edwards said.

Now 58, Mrs Edwards is convener of Adoption Origins Victoria, a support group for women who were forced to give up their babies because they were single.

The group this week launched legal action in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to learn why the State Government reneged on a 1999 election promise to hold an inquiry into their plight.

Origins, which has about 200 Victorian members, is appealing against the State Government's refusal to release a document that the group believes details a cover-up of past illegal and unethical adoption practices.

Origins member June Smith told The Age she believed the Government failed to honour its pledge because it was fearful of litigation if the inquiry revealed unmarried mothers were illegally denied access to their babies.

"The exempt documents, we strongly believe, are documents written to ensure that past department/government roles in illegal and unethical adoptions will never be exposed," Ms Smith said in a document tendered to the tribunal.

Origins claims that between 1950 and 1984 single mothers were bullied into signing adoption papers without being informed of other options, their right to change their mind within 30 days or the availability of financial support.

The group says that under the 1957 Crimes Act it is unlawful to use force, fraud, decoy or enticement with intent to deprive a parent of a child under 16.

Ms Smith said that unmarried women were tied down while giving birth to prevent them from seeing their babies, given medication to dry up their breast milk and had their babies removed before the placenta was expelled.

"Mothers were told their baby had died when their baby had been placed on the breast of a married woman who had suffered a stillbirth, the mother then being asked to sign a death certificate, which in actual fact was consent to adoption," she said.

In the 1999 election campaign, Labor pledged that if elected it would hold an inquiry into Victoria's past adoption practices. But last year it reneged, enraging Origins members, who sought documents under the Freedom of Information Act explaining the about-face.

When the Department of Human Services refused to release a document, Origins appealed to VCAT.

Debra Coombs, acting for the department, yesterday told the tribunal that disclosure of the document would not be in the public interest. She said it was a "blunt speaking", handwritten internal document that offered only a partial explanation and could be misinterpreted.

In a document tendered to the tribunal, Mrs Edwards said an inquiry would enable women to communicate to their lost children that they had always been loved.

"Such a message would also bring great comfort to many adults... who have for many years been tormented by the feeling that their own mothers never cared for them," she said.

Senior tribunal member Robert Davis will rule next week on whether to allow the appeal.

Adoption files opened to mothers

Another Stolen Generation

Between 1950 and 1984, it seems, some young women were coerced into signing consent forms to give up their children for adoption.

It was heard that some young unmarried mothers were told their baby had died when in fact it had been placed on the breast of a married woman who had suffered a stillbirth. The unmarried women were then told to sign a ‘death certificate’, actually consent for adoption.

Adoption Origins Victoria estimates that there were 48,500 adoptions between 1950 and 1984, when adoptions legislation was reformed. Within the group, more than 200 women say their babies were stolen in this manner.

The group this month began legal action in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to learn why the State Government has not held an inquiry into the issue, as it promised in a 1999 election campaign. It sought documents that, it says, could reveal why the inquiry never happened.

The group claims that young single mothers were sometimes bullied into giving up their babies and not given the chance to change their minds within 30 days.

A member of the group says women were tied down while giving birth to prevent them from seeing their babies, given medication to dry up their breast milk and had their babies taken from them before the placenta had been expelled.

Last week they claimed success and the Tribunal granted them access to the documents they were after. Despite government lawyers’ assertions that the documents were not of public interest, the Tribunal ruled they were.

This is a success for more than 200 women. It is something to be celebrated by all Australian women, who have throughout our history been pressured to feel guilty about not being married, being homosexual (as men also have), being too young or too old to work or have children, and being outside a very rigid stereotype.

Babies may no longer be taken from their very young or Aboriginal parents, but there are other ways in which women are being pressured to feel guilty for being who they are.

Our Government still does not acknowledge homosexual marriages, and only now are unmarried women with children beginning to see some relief from a Government that is only slowly supporting them.

In this way, the Government is not supporting Australian women, but is asking us to reform and become a stereotype that we are not always conforming to naturally.

Like Adoption Origins did this month, Australian women should ask themselves what they want and who they are, and then demand to be accepted and supported as such.

20-Aug-2004

Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT LOCATION: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2004/s1180814.htm Broadcast: 19/08/2004 Victoria backs down on adoption inquiry Reporter: Geoff Hutchison

KERRY O'BRIEN: It's said there's no greater bond than that between a mother and her baby, and yet over a period of about 30 years last century, many thousands of mothers in Australia gave up their babies for adoption. For the most part, the mothers were single and the wisdom of the time was that the babies were willingly handed over for the opportunity of a better life in a more traditional family. But there was still a great deal of anguish, and a series of subsequent inquiries in various States revealed that many young single mothers were, in fact, unwilling victims of coercion that was sometimes illegal. So why has the Government in Victoria, with no direct links back to those days, reneged on a promise for a similar inquiry, in the process fighting a group of women who just want the truth to be told. Geoff Hutchison reports. ANITA CIANCIO: It feels like your heart has been just put back in your body and you're just, you're in one piece again. GEOFF HUTCHISON: The words of Melbourne mother Anita Ciancio, reunited with her 3-week-old baby, Montana, stolen a few days earlier from a suburban shopping centre. The story gripped our imagination -- could there be anything more terrible for a mother than to have a baby snatched away? JUNE SMITH: He was born in October 1961 and the doctor gave me my baby. Sorry. I just pictured him. It was the most beautiful thing of my life. I just fell in love. JEANNIE ARGUS: I had my hands held. I had a pillow placed high on my chest so that I couldn't see my baby. I heard her cry. Then there was silence. I asked what my baby was. No-one answered me. ELIZABETH EVANS, CONVENOR, ORIGINS VICTORIA: I asked to see her and the doctor looked at me and he said to me, "Society will forgive one mistake." And he walked out, turned on his heel and walked out of the labour ward. GEOFF HUTCHISON: They were little more than girls, but in the Australia of the 1960s, they were outcasts -- unmarried mothers, condemned by society, the State, the church and often their parents for one shameful mistake. And those parties made it very clear the unmarried mother would only find forgiveness if she gave up her baby for adoption. She was seldom told she had a legal right to keep her child. ELIZABETH EVANS: The midwife said to me, "Well, one day you'll get married and have a baby of your own." JUNE SMITH: And from the moment I set foot in that hospital with my son, I don't know whether she was the matron or the sister in charge, but she never let up. She told me I was selfish, I had no right to do what I was doing to my son, that he deserved better than me. GEOFF HUTCHISON: And so, humiliated and often very frightened, thousands of women like June Smith, Elizabeth Edwards and Jeannie Argus signed away their right to raise their babies -- their grief and their loss still very evident today. JUNE SMITH: I think the body takes over for you. It takes over your mind and says, "Don't think about it because you'll go crazy." And so you do, you just tuck it away. And it sneaks out every so often. JEANNIE ARGUS: No-one ever asked me if I wanted to keep her. No-one ever asked me. No-one ever told me that there was financial support, so the longest walk in my life was out of the gates, down the drive, on a train and back to Victoria. GEOFF HUTCHISON: In NSW four years ago, a parliamentary inquiry into adoption practices called them, "misguided, sometimes unethical and on occasions illegal". An inquiry was promised in Victoria too, and Labor's Community Services Minister, Christine Campbell, seemed determined to push it through. CHRISTINE CAMPBELL, MINISTER FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE (18th April 2000): The Government has made a commitment to hold an inquiry into past adoption practices during this term of Government. Draft terms of reference will be formulated. GEOFF HUTCHISON: But that was then. In 2002, Christine Campbell was sent to the back bench and the inquiry was abandoned, supposedly because it lacked the broad support of interest groups. There's a lot of pain involved in bringing up the past, and it seems the Bracks Government doesn't want to risk dealing with the possible consequences of admission or apology. Community Services Minister Sherryl Garbutt refused our invitation for an interview, leaving it to a department spokesperson to explain that interest groups - SPOKESPERSON FOR SHERRYL GARBUTT, MINISTER FOR COMMUNITY SERVICES, (10 August 2004): Were concerned about the negative effects on birth mothers and that any inquiry would be divisive and not help the healing process. ELIZABETH EVANS: Instead of an inquiry, the department offered us an option of having a person come out and interview us and we would tell our stories. We could not name the perpetrators, and then these stories would be archived and then we would be offered one counselling session. Now, this is little more than an academic exercise. JUNE SMITH: I don't think anyone really wants to admit that something had gone wrong. I could understand to a degree. There's a lot of people out there that have adopted children and they may think that we're trying to discredit them, but we're not. We know our children love their adoptive parents. We've got no problem with that. But these were abuses of women because they couldn't fight back at the time, and from where I'm sitting, it was a crime. GEOFF HUTCHISON: For years, they felt patronised and invalidated, but the tide may be turning for women like June Smith, Elizabeth Edwards and Jeannie Argus. Victoria's Civil and Administrative Tribunal has just ordered an unwilling State Government to hand over documents the women believe may explain why the inquiry into adoptive practices was abandoned. They hope too it will finally expose the lies of the past. JUNE SMITH: And it was -- I can't describe it. It was just euphoric for a little while, you know? I want acknowledgement. I want them to know. I want history to be rewritten that we weren't bad girls. GEOFF HUTCHISON: And what do you want? What do you think these mothers want and deserve? JEANNIE ARGUS: The truth. The truth. GEOFF HUTCHISON: But where does that truth lie and who should be held accountable for it? A mother, a matron, a government department? And even though it appears stark and cruel today, did adoptive practices of 40 years ago merely reflect a pious societal norm? And does that excuse it now? June Smith knows all the arguments. She also knows the only contact she ever had with the son she lost was one letter, and he still doesn't understand. JUNE SMITH: He said that it must have been a hard decision for me to have made to have him adopted. But there was no decision. There was no choice given. It was a foregone conclusion that I had no right to have my son. GEOFF HUTCHISON: So even today, he is quite innocently working on an assumption that you made that choice? JUNE SMITH: That I willingly gave him away. GEOFF HUTCHISON: Is that the worst part about all this? JUNE SMITH: Oh, absolutely. It tears you to bits to think that your son's grown up thinking his own mother didn't want him, and it was so much the opposite. KERRY O'BRIEN: Three very powerful and compelling witnesses. I wonder if they'll be compelling enough?