Out of Australia
There's not much public discussion about Australians and adoption. In fact, if not for the child migration era, and the cropping of abusive schools to house the "unwanted children", there doesn't seem to be a very big blemish in child-care.
One has to dig just a little bit to find the problems in Placement:
AUSTRALIA: The premier of South Australia has offered a formal apology on behalf of the government and the Anglican, Roman Catholic and other churches to children in foster care who suffered abuse at the hands of sexual predators.
On June 17 Premier Mike Rann read the joint apology before the state parliament saying the government and churches acknowledged that “that some children and young people who were placed in our care suffered abuse that has impacted their lives. This should never have happened.”
"We are sorry and we express deep regret for the pain and the hurt that they experienced through no fault of their own. To all those who experienced abuse in state care, we are sorry. To those who witnessed these abuses, we say sorry. To those who were not believed, when trying to report these abuses, we say sorry,” Mr. Rann said.
Widespread abuse of children, placed in foster care in church and government homes, was documented in an inquiry led by former Supreme Court Judge Ted Mullighan, which found that hundreds of young people had been abused while in foster care from the 1930’s to the present day.
In April, the Archbishop of Adelaide, Dr. Jeffrey Driver, said he was “deeply saddened by the extent of abuse” revealed by the Mullighan report. “I acknowledge, with deep regret, that some of that abuse occurred in institutions run by the Anglican Church in South Australia,” he said in a statement.
“Without reservation, I repeat our apology to victims of sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is always intolerable. When it is perpetrated by a person holding a sacred trust it is particularly repugnant,” Dr. Driver said.
Hmmm... a formal apology should cover the loss of a protected childhood, right?
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More on Australia - Rabbit-Proof
I once started watching this movie, but had to quit. Too awful!
Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
A Review:
Rabbit-Proof Fence" is a moving story of racial prejudice, agoraphobic desert vistas, and amazing endurance as three girls walk 1,500 miles to find their mothers in 30s Australia.
These are the shocking facts behind the movie: during the early years of the 20th century, white Australians panicked about the supposed disaster of an "unwanted third race" of "half-caste" Aborigine children.
Special detention centres were set up across the continent to keep the mixed race children from "contaminating" the rest of Australian society, and orders were given to forcibly remove "half-caste" children from their families.
It was a disastrous, racist policy that brought about the misery of the so-called "stolen generations".
In "Rabbit-Proof Fence", Australian director Phillip Noyce gives us a perceptive, uplifting drama that highlights - and overcomes - that racist policy.
Having been forcible separated from their natural mothers, three girls - Molly (Sampi), Daisy (Sansbury), and Gracie (Monaghan) - escape from the Moore River Native Settlement, presided over by AO Neville (Branagh).
With an epic journey ahead of them, the girls set out to find their way back home by following the rabbit-proof fence that stretches across the Outback.
Cutting back and forth between the children's journey and Neville's increasingly desperate attempts to capture them, Noyce's sensitive dramatization swaps angry politics for emotional sympathy, concentrating on the plight of the children instead of ranting against the authorities.
By highlighting the realities of this hidden genocide (unbelievably, the policy continued until the early 70s), "Rabbit-Proof Fence" stands as a powerful, worthy testimony to the suffering of the stolen generations.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/10/16/rabbit_proof_fence_2002_review.shtml
More Australia - after the war...
Mothers and babies separated at birth
Look, don't touch: Dramatised scenes depict the horror of forced adoption in postwar Australia in Gone to a Good Home.
Photo: Supplied
November 2, 2006
Page 1 of 2 | Single page
A 17-year-old woman has been taken into custody for the crime of being pregnant but not married. During a night-time raid, Queensland police officers removed the woman from the home she shared with her partner and placed her in a prison holding cell. She was then transferred to the Holy Cross Catholic girl's home, to work without pay in the laundry until she gives birth. It is expected that a married couple will adopt the baby.
IF THIS appeared in today's Age the reaction would be one of shock and disbelief. Surely the officers should be charged with kidnapping, the Catholic institution investigated for slavery and the woman counselled and compensated.
But when it happened to Lily Arthur in 1967, Australia was a very different place. Single mothers were at the mercy of a postwar system that supported the illegal removal of illegitimate children from their mothers. The practice claimed the babies of more than 150,000 women.
Read the full article here