Catholic Church abducted 150,000 Australian babies

[Alyeska]

Yes, you read that correctly. The Catholith Church in Australia abducted at least 150,000 babies from young parents against their consent. And they are sorry about this.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-25/c ... ns/2808672

The Catholic Church in Australia has issued a national apology over past adoption practices that have been described as a "national disgrace".

The apology was prompted by an ABC investigation into claims of abuse and trauma in Newcastle.

It is believed at least 150,000 Australian women had their babies taken against their will by some churches and adoption agencies between the 1950s and 1970s.

Psychiatrist Geoff Rickarby has treated scores of affected women, and says it is a stain on Australia's history.

"It sounds like some totalitarian country somewhere hundreds of years ago, but in fact it's Australia only 35, 40 years ago," Dr Rickarby said.

The chief executive of Catholic Health Australia, Martin Laverty, says he is sorry for what happened.

He says the organisation is committed to righting the wrongs and wants to develop protocols to assist women affected.

Mr Laverty became aware of the past practices after the ABC began its investigations.

"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," Mr Laverty said.

Mr Laverty will formally apologise in Newcastle today, and the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese and the Singleton and North Sydney Sisters of Mercy will also say sorry.

Yeah, sorry does a lot of good. Personally I think kidnapping charges should be filed. And with that many cases, I think the Catholic Church ought to be declared a criminal organization and forcefully removed from the country. That is despicable what they did. Downright criminal.

[Lord Zentei]

Assuming the time span covers all of the 50s, 60s and 70s, that's at least 5000 cases per year. More than 13 cases per day, on average. In just one country.

Wow.

[Simon_Jester]

The logistics of this confuse me. Why wasn't this pursued at the time? The sheer scale of it would, I'd think, lead to at least some cases having gone public, and going into the 1970s I'd think it'd cause scandal.

I'm not disputing the facts here. I'm just... dear God how did they manage to get away with that?

Also, just to make this clear to anyone who doesn't click the original link, what's being talked about here is single moms giving birth and having the baby taken away from them without their consent, often because they were drugged during the birth and not allowed to see the baby afterwards.

[Master_Baerne]

Who wants to bet the Church gets away with a slap on the wrist and no real investigation into how this happened? Also, how in the world wasn't this brought up before now?

[defanatic]

Where did those children go? Are they all catholic sleeper agents now?

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Where did those children go? Are they all catholic sleeper agents now?

A secret army of the Knights Templar.

[Shroom Man 777]

So this is where they get all those spare kids for World Youth Day.

They say the Church needs to adapt to modern times.

Looks like they just adopted instead.



*sunglasses*

YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!


Honestly, this is despicable. How does this relate to the Stolen Generation?

[Alkaloid]

Honestly, this is despicable. How does this relate to the Stolen Generation?

It doesn't really, in that the stolen generations were the result of an attempted ethnic or cultural cleansing campaign aimed at Aborigines, and were generally shipped to orphanages, where as this seems to be more a religiously motivated attempt to put children with parents deemed more suitable. The fact that the West Australian government has apologised as well indicates that it wasn't going on unnoticed, but that fact that it only happened in Catholic hospitals would imply that it was tolerated rather than official policy.

Why they were allowed to get away with it is a huge question.

[Darth Fanboy]

The second half of that article is...chilling.

So what happens if the apologies aren't accepted? Seems to me like the church is only sorry they got caught.

[Lord Zentei]

OP didn't quote the entire article. Here's the rest of it:

Juliette Clough is one of the women who says she was forced to give up her baby at a Catholic-run hospital in Newcastle in 1970.

She was 16 at the time and says she was alone, afraid and desperate.

"My ankles were strapped to the bed, they were in stirrups and I was gassed, I had plenty of gas and they just snatched away the baby," Ms Clough said.

"You weren't allowed to see him or touch him, anything like that, or hold him and it was just like a piece of my soul had died. And it's still dead"

Margaret had a similar experience when her son was taken against her will in 1975, when she was 17.

"Straight away he was taken out of the labour ward. By the records it only took 13 minutes to transfer him from the labour ward to the nursery, so he was gone," she said

The women claim they were not told about single parent benefits or their rights to revoke consent for adoption.

Clare had two babies forcibly adopted.

She says the infants were like products, procured for couples deemed more suitable to raise them.

"I think it was almost like a machine or, you know I don't like the terminology but, a factory in that it was so well lubricated."
Pillows over faces

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert is chairwoman of a Senate inquiry currently examining the country's former adoption practices.

"Women have told stories about going into hospital not realising that they were going to have to give up their babies, but that pillows were put over their faces, that curtains were put up so they couldn't see the baby," Senator Siewert said.

Women have also told the ABC they were given milk suppressing drugs that have now been linked to cancer, as well as barbiturates that caused sedation and in some cases delirium.

Mr Laverty says it is not a period to be proud of.

"The evidence that's come forward really speaks to a shameful and regretful time in the history of healthcare in Australia," he said.

"It wasn't just a small number of hospitals. We now know that there were many hospitals across Australia."

Women have told the ABC there was pressure to sign adoption papers well before consent could legally be obtained, and in some cases documents were forged.

The Catholic Church's adoption agency has previously apologised for misguided, unethical or unlawful practices, after an inquiry by a New South Wales Parliamentary committee in 2000.

Last year the Western Australian Government also apologised, a move Senator Siewert says was extremely empowering for thousands of women there.

But Lily Arthur, from the forced adoption support group Origins NSW, is sceptical about apologies.

"I don't think that anyone can accept an apology for something that's never been basically dealt with legally," Ms Arthur said.

The article also contains an embedded video.

This case brought to mind the following quote:

The only chance now, I felt, was that we'd gone to such excess that none of the people in a position to bring the hammer down on us could possibly believe it.
- Fear and Loathing in the RCC

Paraphrased slightly, but apt nonetheless.

[thejester]

Removing children from their parents without said parents consent was hardly the sole work of the Catholic Church during this period - not only were there the Stolen Generations, but also thousands of child migrants shipped from the UK to Australia postwar and placed in state/foster care:

Australian PM Kevin Rudd has apologised to the hundreds of thousands of people, some British migrants, who were abused or neglected in state care as children.

Mr Rudd said he was "deeply sorry" for the pain caused to the children and their extended families.

He said he hoped the national apology would help to "heal the pain" and be a turning point in Australian history.

Some 500,000 "forgotten Australians" were abused or neglected in orphanages and children's homes from 1930 to 1970.

...

Under the Child Migrants Programme - which ended just 40 years ago - the UK sent poor children to a "better life" in Australia, Canada and elsewhere.

Most of the children were already in care after being taken from their families by the state or abandoned by their parents.

As they were compulsorily shipped out of Britain, many of them were told - wrongly - their parents were dead.

Many parents did not know their children, aged as young as three, had been sent to Australia.

The attitude that allowed occur pretty clearly pervaded all levels of government as well as the church - and frankly probably reflected broader beliefs in society as well. It's a pretty cruel irony that Australian egalitarianism and the tradition of state welfare it spawned was essentially responsible for these acts - the road to hell and good intentions etc.

And just as an aside I wonder if Bolt et al will come out and take pot shots at the evidence presented by these victims...something tells me not.

[K. A. Pital]

Ah, the RCC. Slavery in Nazi-dominated Europe, kidnappings in Australia. God Bless them!

[Skgoa]

It's a pretty cruel irony that Australian egalitarianism and the tradition of state welfare it spawned was essentially responsible for these acts - the road to hell and good intentions etc.

Its a big leap from "rendering help to those in need" to "forcing your own good intentions on them by commiting heinous crimes because you feel morally superior."

[Simon_Jester]

It's a pretty cruel irony that Australian egalitarianism and the tradition of state welfare it spawned was essentially responsible for these acts - the road to hell and good intentions etc.

Its a big leap from "rendering help to those in need" to "forcing your own good intentions on them by commiting heinous crimes because you feel morally superior."

It is- but particularly during the '50s, '60s, and '70s, Australia seems to have made the leap.

If you start talking about how children should be taken from their parents for their own good, if their parents are unqualified to raise them, where do you stop? Clearly, well short of this point. But during those decades, a single mother was considered a priori less fit to raise a child. Because obviously the child needed a father, and none was in sight. And obviously, under the social mores that dominated decision-makers of the time, the mother was likely to be some promiscuous ne'er-do-well, or she wouldn't be pregnant, now would she?

We can look back at this and say "bullshit," and well we should. But it follows all too predictably from applying the cultural biases of the time to the premise "it is right to take children from their parents when the parents are unfit."

Something to think about the next time you hear someone say that people ought to need a license to raise children, or the like.

[Zixinus]

What possible profit would there be for the RCC for this? I simply cannot fathom why they would think this would be a good idea.

[Cecelia5578]

What possible profit would there be for the RCC for this? I simply cannot fathom why they would think this would be a good idea.

I think for the same reason the RCC is against marriage equality, despite the fact that no country with religious freedom laws and same sex marriage would ever force the Catholic Church to marry homosexuals. They just feel like butting into and interfering with other people's lifestyles and personal lives. Because (insert Catholic metaphysical bullshit) non-Catholics living lives contrary to what the RCC teaches is somehow damaging to society overall and someway, somehow hurts the feefees of Catholic believers.

[Serafina]

What possible profit would there be for the RCC for this? I simply cannot fathom why they would think this would be a good idea.

Well, several potential profits, aside from the obvious "we know what's best and will force our moral views upon others"-angle:
- The children were more likely to be raised catholic when given to catholic families
- The adoptive families might have "donated" notable sums out of "gratitude"
- The adoptive families might not require resources potentially provided by the catholic church for those in need, which might include single mothers

Of course, the "we know what's best and will force our moral views upon others"-angle is most likely quite sufficient. The people responsible for it probably thought that they were genuinely doing the best for the children, and potentially for the mothers. After all the child would never know what happened and grow up with a "better family", and the mother would be spared the problems that come with being a single mother.

[Simon_Jester]

And, it bears repeating, this was in an era when there was a powerful social stigma for being a single mother. Broomstick or someone else in her age bracket could talk about this better than I, but it's very much there.

You'll notice that these children were not taken away from married couples.

[ChaserGrey]

Just to reinforce Simon's point- astronaut Mike Mullane, in his memoirs, talks about his wife's experience being an unwed pregnant teenager in a 1950s Catholic American family. She was taken out of school and sent to a Catholic nursing home, where she earned room and board taking care of the residents there while she went through her pregnancy while the family (with help from a friend who was a college professor) covered by saying she was away at university. Before she left her grandmother told her "When that's baby is born, don't look at it. I don't want you getting attached!"

Now, as far as Mullane tells the story she never wanted to keep the baby, so it's a different story from the Australian women talked about here. But it does illustrate the attitudes of the time, and there's not a whole lot of distance between Point A and Point B.

[Eulogy]

And, it bears repeating, this was in an era when there was a powerful social stigma for being a single mother. Broomstick or someone else in her age bracket could talk about this better than I, but it's very much there.

You'll notice that these children were not taken away from married couples.

Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it excusable. Attitudes don't make people blameless.

How would the poor mothers have felt?

[LadyTevar]

So where are these Children? They'd be in their 30s-50s now, and may never have known they were adopted, much less the truth behind the adoption.

[Simon_Jester]

And, it bears repeating, this was in an era when there was a powerful social stigma for being a single mother. Broomstick or someone else in her age bracket could talk about this better than I, but it's very much there.

You'll notice that these children were not taken away from married couples.

Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it excusable. Attitudes don't make people blameless.

How would the poor mothers have felt?

Did you catch my earlier post?

My entire point is that this sort of thing happens because people who think they know better decide that single mothers are, by definition, unfit to raise children. And so they take it upon themselves to snatch the children of single mothers out of those mothers' arms.

How on Earth did you get the idea that I was saying that such a thing was 'right,' 'excusable,' or 'blameless?'

[Skgoa]

It's a pretty cruel irony that Australian egalitarianism and the tradition of state welfare it spawned was essentially responsible for these acts - the road to hell and good intentions etc.

Its a big leap from "rendering help to those in need" to "forcing your own good intentions on them by commiting heinous crimes because you feel morally superior."

It is- but particularly during the '50s, '60s, and '70s, Australia seems to have made the leap.

If you start talking about how children should be taken from their parents for their own good, if their parents are unqualified to raise them, where do you stop?

My point is that I don't think its enough to say "we started this with good intentions and it got out of control." Because 1) state welfare did not lead to such acts in other countries and 2) its not a slippery slope, the very first time someone thought of doing this, it was already 100% evil.

[Serafina]

Actually, a few similar cases happened in Germany. A specific one (don't recall the name now) revolved around child protecive services taking away a child from her two parents (who had no education and little income, but had done nothing wrong) at an age of 6 or 7 and giving it to a richter family.
That case had to be taken to the European Court of Human rights for the parents to get their child back.

So state welfare DID lead to such acts in other countries, but hardly at the same scale.

Edit: Found a german text about the case, and an english one

[Eulogy]

Did you catch my earlier post?

My entire point is that this sort of thing happens because people who think they know better decide that single mothers are, by definition, unfit to raise children. And so they take it upon themselves to snatch the children of single mothers out of those mothers' arms.

How on Earth did you get the idea that I was saying that such a thing was 'right,' 'excusable,' or 'blameless?'

I was talking about the social stigma part.