Forced adoption

By Melissa Meehan
JUNE Smith is weeping for a hidden part of Australian history.
The Yarra Junction resident said the national apology to the stolen generation was essential for indigenous reconciliation.
But she said the event has brought back sorrow for the “thousands of white women” who had their babies taken away from them during the same time.
Her own story is also an important part of Australia’s history, she says.
At the age of 19, an unmarried Ms Smith gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
During her pregnancy Ms Smith said she was advised by most of those around her that it would be best for the baby if she adopted it out to a married, loving family.
“When you’re a young girl with no one, pregnant and alone, everyone says you have to put the baby up for adoption,” Ms Smith said.
“But then your baby starts to move and once you have your baby you never want to see it go.
“I never wanted to let him go but I was overwhelmed with people at the hospital and the nuns telling me that I wasn’t good enough, that someone else would be better for my child,” Ms Smith said.
“The worst thing I was told was that if I loved my son, I would give him away.”
Ms Smith said the pressure from medical staff and religious representatives was overwhelming.
“They demeaned you, they disempowered you, they gave you no other choice, you were never offered any type of alternative,” Ms Smith said.
Although she has no recollection of the moment she signed the papers, Ms Smith saw copies of the signed adoption papers dated a few days after she gave birth.
“As soon as I signed they took my son away from me and left me in a ward with married mothers and their babies for seven days.”
After seven days alone in the ward without her son Ms Smith was discharged from the hospital.
In a cruel blow, Ms Smith was then given back her son and told to deliver him to St Joseph’s Babies Home in Broadmeadows.
“They put us in a taxi and sent us out there.”
“The nuns wrenched him from my arms. I asked if there was anything I could do to keep him but once they had him they ran out of the room.”
Ms Smith remembers a wave of uncontrollable sadness rushing over her entire body when she saw her son leave the room. “Then they threw paper after paper under my nose to sign.”
“I was so frantic, I was going crazy, I was shaking, I couldn’t see straight.”
Her experience as a teenager still affects her, tears flowing as she tells her story.
In the early 1990s, the then Opposition promised if voted into power to hold an inquiry into adoption practices during the early 1940s to the late 1970s.
“We were so pleased that the truth was going to come out,” Ms Smith said.
But the Government has since said that a review of the practices had occurred in the 1980s and it would be unnecessary to follow up with an inquiry.
“The Government should have apologised to the indigenous stolen generation, and no one will ever try to take that away from them.
“We, too, suffered the same way, and that’s the hard bit,” Ms Smith said.
“Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said one of the worst things in this world was to separate a mother from her child.”
Ms Smith said all children who were taken from their mothers during this time needed to know the abuses their mothers went through. “They need to know they were not given away because their parents didn’t love them or because they didn’t want them. They need to know we didn’t have a choice.”
Ms Smith said the call for a national inquiry was not part of a compensation bid but a need to have their stories acknowledged as an important element of Australian history.
Last week Ms Smith wrote to the Minister for Indigenous Affairs and Family Jenny Macklin to inform her of her story.