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Article Date: 25 Jul 2011 - 10:00 PDT
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Martin Laverty, the Chief Executive Officer of Catholic Health Australia has apologized for the forced adoptions that took place in Australia's Catholic hospitals in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when thousands of newborns were taken away from unmarried birth mothers and placed with other families. Meanwhile, a parliamentary enquiry into the practice has been extended because of the volume and complexity of the evidence.
In his national apology on Monday, Laverty referred to this period in the history of Australian healthcare as a "shameful and regretful time", and that it wasn't just a handful of hospitals that were forcibly removing babies from their natural mothers to place in adoptive homes:
"...we now know that there were many hospitals across Australia," he said, in a report by CatholicCulture.org, an online news channel of Trinity Communications.
The apology comes in the wake of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) investigation into claims of abuse and trauma in Newcastle, New South Wales.
Reporting on the story for ABC News' AM program early on Monday, Giselle Wakatama, said to at least 150,000 Australian women, the practice amounted to "baby snatching".
A psychiatrist who has been treating some of the women affected told the programme you would think this had happened in a "totalitarian country somewhere hundreds of years ago" but this "stain" on Australia's history was only 35 or 40 years ago.
Laverty made his apology in Newcastle:
"It's with a deep sense of regret, a deep sense of sorrow that practices of the past have caused ongoing pain, suffering and grief to these women, these brave women in Newcastle but also women around Australia," he said.
Juliette Clough was only 16 when as a single mother she had her baby boy taken away from her shortly after he was born in a Catholic-run hospital in Newcastle in 1970.
She said she remembers her ankles being strapped to the bed and being "gassed". "They just snatched away the baby", she said, according to an AAP report in the Sydney Morning Herald. She wasn't allowed to touch him or see him.
"It was just like a piece of my sould had died, and it's still dead," she added.
Her son would be 42 years old now. She said she thinks about him constantly, wonders what his life is like, does he have children, does she have grandchildren?
Clough has made a statement for a Senate enquiry into forced adoptions.
The enquiry, officially titled the "Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices", was set up late last year and was due to report at the end of June 2011, but this has now been extended until 21 November 2011, because"of the "large volume of evidence and the complexity of issues". The Community Affairs References Committee said in the meantime they will "continue to welcome evidence from new submitters".
Laverty said it was only in June this year that his organization first learned of the women's experiences.
In a submission to the committee of inquiry he said they were "genuinely sorry" for the "pain that arises from practices of the past".
Catholic Health say they would be prepared to support a fund for "remedying established wrongs", and would help set up a framework so victims get personal medical care and access to social work records to enable them to trace their lost relatives.
Clough has since married and given birth again, but she said having her first baby taken from her like that has prevented her bonding properly with her other children.
She suffers from depression and says she finds it hard to be the mother she wanted to be and "should have been".
Sources: Catholic Culture, ABC News, Sydney Morning Herald (AAP), Parliament of Australia Senate.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
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