Forced adoption survivors should be compensated, WA parliamentary inquiry recommends
A WA parliamentary inquiry into the devastating forced adoption scandal of last century has recommended financial redress for mothers, adopted people and some fathers. It comes 14 years after WA became the first state in Australia to apologise for the practice of removing newborn babies from their young mothers, many of whom were coerced into signing adoption papers.
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00:00Behind each of these faces is a harrowing story.
00:07I was 17. You don't know where your baby is, you haven't seen your baby. No one comes to visit you. No flowers.
00:16I was 50 years old when I received a phone call to tell me that, along with my brother, I was also adopted.
00:24I only found out four years ago that I was Aboriginal.
00:28From the late 1930s to the early 80s, tens of thousands of babies were removed from their mainly unmarried young mothers.
00:36Now in the WA Parliament, some recognition of their trauma.
00:40Consent was not freely given because women were isolated, disempowered, pressured, coerced and threatened.
00:48The landmark WA Parliamentary Inquiry received more than 200 submissions.
00:54Its final report makes 39 recommendations, including financial redress and specialised counselling for mothers, adopted people and some fathers.
01:04I'm very pleased for the suggestion that he would like to see redress for adoptees.
01:10It's just such an amazing feeling. I feel like everything that I've gone through has been worth it.
01:19If all of the recommendations in this report are enacted, Western Australia will have the strongest compensation in the country for people affected by forced adoption.
01:29Victoria has the first redress scheme, but there, only mothers are eligible.
01:33Whatever we can do as a community to continue to support those mothers who have relinquished their children under very complex and difficult circumstances, I think we should take the opportunities to support them.
01:44Survivors don't want to see the report gather dust.
01:48We need to move quickly, otherwise people are not going to see justice in their lifetime and they deserve justice after the cruelties they've experienced.
01:58The Government is expected to respond to the inquiry within two months.