Catholic Church abducted 150,000 Australian babies

[Simon_Jester]

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.

In other countries you did see things like nonconsensual sterilization, which is worse than this.

Now, I don't have a big problem with the idea that "the state never has a right to take a mother's child away at birth." As long as it's recognized that this is, as you say, automatically 100% evil- and the implications of that are accepted.

Being determined not to let something like this happen again is a good thing. But we need to recognize what that means, and how nominally civilized people wound up doing it in the first place, or it'll just happen all over again.

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.

So... you did not get the idea that I was saying that taking children from their mother at birth like that was 'right,' 'excusable,' or 'blameless?' OK, fine then.

But remember this the next time someone mouths off about how Group X shouldn't be allowed to raise kids- because this is exactly what happens when you follow that through to its logical conclusion.

[MrDakka]

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

A secret army of the Knights Templar.

They need to manpower to fight the Illuminati.

I'm just surprised the Church was able to keep this quiet until now.

[Skgoa]

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.

And thats still not state welfare being at fault.

[Mayabird]

And it happened in Spain and also in Ireland (where many of those children basically became slave labor for the church) and likely lots of other places as well. The sheer scale for one country might be boggling but this was happening in many and they got away with it completely.

[Lord Zentei]

And it happened in Spain and also in Ireland (where many of those children basically became slave labor for the church) and likely lots of other places as well. The sheer scale for one country might be boggling but this was happening in many and they got away with it completely.

150000 in Australia, plus 300000 in Spain...

How many worldwide? Wow, this is just crazy. This has the potential to turn into another scandal on the level of the rampant pedophilia coverups.

[Haruko]

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.

I saw that TheJester posted a related article. As he said: "Removing children from their parents without said parents consent was hardly the sole work of the Catholic Church during this period...."

Well, recently I read Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine's book Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages, and there is a passage that also relates to these forcible removals of children from their parents in Australia. Although my post quoting this passage had to do with endangered language, it also had to do with Australia's systematic sterilization and displacement policy aimed at the Aboriginals who spoke endangered languages. I quote the relevant portions below:

[...]

Also, interesting that the authors should put a spotlight on the Aboriginals of Australia in particular, as it reminded me of a passage later in the same book (p. 123) which went into great detail about the "inhabitants [of Australia who] were hunted and killed, poisoned, imprisoned, or driven from their lands." To give but a taste of the pathetic past that cannot be swept well enough under the rug:

... A Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission report in 1997 revealed a systematic campaign of abuses against Aboriginal families which lasted most of the present century. Between 1910 and 1970, up to a third of Aboriginal children, perhaps 100,000 in all, were forcibly removed from their parents in an orchestrated attempt to destroy their societies. They languished in white missions, cattle stations, and foster homes, often in terrible conditions, with no access to friends or relatives, who had not been told where they were. Elsewhere, Aboriginal women were forcibly sterilized to stop the multiplying of what the professor of anthropology at Sydney in 1930 still called "the lowest race."

Almost all of the Aboriginal languages did, amazingly, persist in some form well into this century, but, disrupted and displaced, they were unable to recruit new speakers or even keep their old ones. Of the 260 or so unique languages of precolonial Australia, at least 100 have already died out. Another 100 are close to extinction, and fewer than 20 are now being learned by children.

For anyone who thought this subject were a matter of the most ancient history in the most alien of lands.

So you see, it may seem odd to you that "they [would] manage to get away with that", but far from being so unusual it is business as usual.

[Simon_Jester]

Haruko, that doesn't really address the part that stuns me.

I know perfectly well about the Stolen Generations. But the explanation for how it was possible for Australia to do that to the Aborigines involves a lot of very obvious factors- especially racism. Until the very end of the period of the Stolen Generations, there was simply no public outcry among the enfranchised, socially respected and acknowledged part of Australian society, because the Aborigines had effectively no voice.

What I don't understand is how these child-kidnappings didn't attract attention given that they were happening to white mothers. Racism cuts both ways, you see, and in this case it doesn't explain why members of the dominant race would get the same kind of treatment as the victimized one.

So I just have trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that out of 150,000 single Australian mothers, no significant fraction of them were able to raise enough outcry to make trouble for the Church while they were doing this. I know why Australian Aborigines couldn't accomplish that, and pointing it out doesn't explain it to me.

[Haruko]

Ah! Sorry about that, Simon. I was not aware that the case I was talking about is this Stolen Generation business that members in this topic have already been discussing.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, you are under no obligation to boldface my name.

[Soontir C'boath]

I forwarded this story to a friend of my this morning and apparently in those times, his 16 year old mother in Massachusetts had her baby daughter taken away at a Catholic convent. It seems it was occurring everywhere back then.

[Zaune]

What I don't understand is how these child-kidnappings didn't attract attention given that they were happening to white mothers. Racism cuts both ways, you see, and in this case it doesn't explain why members of the dominant race would get the same kind of treatment as the victimized one.

So I just have trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that out of 150,000 single Australian mothers, no significant fraction of them were able to raise enough outcry to make trouble for the Church while they were doing this. I know why Australian Aborigines couldn't accomplish that, and pointing it out doesn't explain it to me.

The short and simple answer is that the victims were pariahs for having got into that situation in the first place. Nobody cared if they were horribly mistreated for it, or worse, thought they deserved it.

[Broomstick]

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

Once upon a time, western society regarded giving birth out of wedlock a criminal or near-criminal event. Children were labeled "bastards" and treated as second-class citizens all their lives for something they had no control over. Women were arrested, sometimes kept in prisons, shuttled off to convents afterwards, declared "ruined", and yes, had their children forcibly removed and were never permitted to see them again. Happened in Europe, North America, and yes, Australia. Eventually, things "improved" to where the children were taken away from their mothers at birth "for their own good" and put up for adoption. If they were lucky enough to actually be adopted their origins were considered a deep, dark shame and ideally never, ever to be revealed to anyone - even, in many cases, those very same children. The mothers, meanwhile, were still treated as shit and criminals. Even after it stopped being a criminal offense, such women might be further barred form any education, or institutionalized against their will, especially imprisoned without trial.

Basically, not only did society allow it, it was considered the right and proper course of action. Obviously, things have changed. But it wasn't that long ago, really, only 40 or 50 years. I'm old enough to remember when girls who got pregnant in high school were summarily expelled and the only comments were along the lines of "she deserved it", "she had it coming", "what did she expect", and "that will teach the slut/whore a lesson."

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.

And there you have it - that's how a lot of the time they "got away with it". The drugged woman either wouldn't remember who took the baby, or her testimony could be questioned, and the official story could be "baby died at birth, already buried" when in reality the kid was shipped off to an orphanage or adopted.

It wasn't just the church that did these sorts of things, it was often official social policy. I do believe the church's influence had a lot to do with these sorts of things, of course, but it wasn't just the church involved.

[Simon_Jester]

Sigh.

I'd figured on something like this,* it's just the... airtightness of the extent to which they were able to do this without outcry that rattles me.

And, once again, this should be a cautionary tale for anyone who starts pointing to large chunks of the population and saying "they shouldn't be allowed to raise children, they're obviously unqualified."

*Witness some of my earlier posts.

EDIT: It reminds me of how some people with technocratic leanings like the idea of restricting the vote to a qualified minority, a la Starship Troopers.

To me, the problem is that every generation has its own particular fetishes and obsessions. There are usually activities defined as "moral turpitude" that would be assumed to disqualify you from the vote. Once upon a time, homosexuality (or, heck, motherhood out of wedlock) was one of them. I don't know what examples would show up today- drug abuse, perhaps?

It's something to watch for. We can say that our society is just, but the one recurring pattern of the past hundred years on social affairs is that every new generation finds something to criticize and call unjust repression in the behavior of its ancestors. That makes it very dangerous to start disenfranchising people, just as it's dangerous to take their children away.

[Broomstick]

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.

I think you're mistaking an explanation for why it happened for some sort of condoning of the practice. It's not. Societal mores of the time are why - that can be stated without making a value judgement.

You're making the temporal equivalent of ethnocentric thinking - at the time it wasn't considered an evil act, it was considered a good act. At this point in time the opposite values hold sway. The people taking babies away from young, unwed mothers were often viewed as heros, not evil. It may be hard to wrap your head around a mindset 180 degrees away from your own, but one reason this was so widespread is that the actions were seen as correct by many people.

That said - I agree, it was a bad thing to do. That's why such social changes occurred, the sentiment these actions were good were not universal, and eventually majority opinion swung to our current stance of trying to keep mothers and children together, even in less than ideal circumstances.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I should mention that in this era and even, I believe, later, Canada did quite similar thing with our First Nations people, except that with us, agents of Indian Affairs abducted the children to deliver them to (usually) Catholic residential schools. So our government was the human trafficker, the Church was only the endpoint.

[Lord Zentei]

Different social mores or not, I very much doubt that anyone would have been considered a "hero" during the 50s, 60s and 70s for drugging a pregnant woman and abducting her child when she came to them for medial assistance WRT the birthing.

Besides, if the values of the time were that depraved, then would they not have legislated against single mothers keeping their children? And in my experience of this board, any "technocrats" advocating that such and such a group shouldn't be allowed to raise children is pretty tounge-in-cheek. And when it's not it's hardly made to justify extralegal kidnappings with the parents put on knock-out-drugs, FFS.

[Broomstick]

Different social mores or not, I very much doubt that anyone would have been considered a "hero" during the 50s, 60s and 70s for drugging a pregnant woman and abducting her child when she came to them for medial assistance WRT the birthing.

Yes, as a matter of fact, such people were considered heroes for saving the children from the horrors of being bastards raised by a shameless slut of a mother. That's really how a lot of people thought back then, whether you accept that or not. No, it wasn't a universal sentiment, but it certainly existed and that's why such practices were tolerated.

As late as the early 1980's, when a classmate of mine became pregnant and continued to attend high school with her growing belly some outraged parents actually went to the school board and demanded she be expelled from the district. (Oddly enough, they did not insist on this for her boyfriend and the father of the child) As it happens, the school board refused. When she had the audacity to attend the graduation ceremony in person (8 months along) some people threw stuff at her while she was walking across the stage and had to be removed by security. These were adults acting this way. Upstanding members of the community frothing at the mouth to see a pregnant 17 year old woman daring to complete her high school education.

This used to be considered perfectly normal behavior

(Though by 1980 these people were a minority, they were still numerous and vocal enough to make life hell for a young pregnant woman)

Besides, if the values of the time were that depraved, then would they not have legislated against single mothers keeping their children?

What, pass a law saying all children of single mothers be removed at birth? But that might affect the offspring of the wealthy at times!

It wasn't just single motherhood - it was recognized that a wealthy family could provide for the little harlot and her bastard and thus they were allowed to make choices (though giving the baby up was forced on a lot of wealthy young women). No, poor women were those most greatly impacted because, really, since she was unable to finish any sort of education, and she was "ruined" her marriage prospects were unlikely, so poverty was her lot and likely she'd wind up a prostitute, if she wasn't one already (after all, how else does a single women get pregnant than by fucking around with everyone?) so it was best for the baby to be snatched away, given to a responsible married couple, and his/her origins and shame hidden (hopefully) for lie.

Yes, that is how it was seen. I realize it's an alien viewpoint to those growing up today.

At the time, these actions weren't seen as bad. It wasn't "kidnapping" babies, it was seen as saving them from a horrible life.

[K. A. Pital]

Different social mores or not, I very much doubt that anyone would have been considered a "hero" during the 50s, 60s and 70s for drugging a pregnant woman and abducting her child when she came to them for medial assistance WRT the birthing.

Nop, he could. Many thought the Ku-Kluxers were cool, too. They were 'standing up to those negroes'. Duh.