Lost adoption records stymie mothers
Mothers forced to give up their babies for adoption have hit a bureaucratic stumbling block in their efforts to force a national inquiry into past abuses.
Officials from the Ministry for Vulnerable Children, Oranga Tamariki, have told them they need to provide written evidence to show their babies were stolen from them in the 1950s and 1960s.
But the mothers say many of the records they need have been lost by churches and courts.
Three ministry representatives gave evidence at Parliament yesterday in answer to a petition from Maggie Wilkinson, demanding an inquiry into forced adoption.
They told a social services select committee hearing they were not denying social attitudes at the time, and that ‘‘reluctant adoptions’’ would have occurred.
But while officials could find records of how many adoptions there were – more than 3000 in 1969, for instance – they did not know how many were reluctant.
National MP Jono Naylor asked the representatives whether it was possible to prove which adoptions were illegal. They said proof would require an examination of historical adoption documents.
But Green MP Jan Logie questioned how that would occur, given women had already told the committee of trying to get adoption records from religious groups, state services and courts, ’’without satisfactory outcomes’’.
‘‘For these women and their children, there is no functional redress in our system at the moment, is there?’’
The next stage is for the com- mittee to consider its response to the petition.
Ultimately, Wilkinson and her supporters are hoping for a formal apology for forced adoptions, along the lines of the one given to Australian women by then-prime minister Julia Gillard in 2013.