Why forced adoption Is not settled history
Forced adoption in Australia is generally considered a closed chapter, but records tell a different story. Behind the apology lies a system that punishes mothers, erases children, and continues to bury its own evidence. Michael Costello writes.
FORCED Adoption in Australia has never been a welfare failure or a tragic misunderstanding. This was a State-Church project built on a moral logic that treated unmarried mothers and their babies as foreign substances to be removed from the social structure.
The Seven Deadly Sins are not a metaphor here; it is a map of the institutional desires and punishments that power the system. This is not history. This is the live control of power.
Forced adoption has never been just the transfer of a child. This was a State-engineered rupture between biology and identity. The separation of mother and baby created a double trauma: a mother was separated with a pain she was forbidden to express, and a child was separated with a deprivation too early for him to name. Newborns were stripped of the only sound, smell, and heartbeat their bodies knew, while mothers endured the clinical destruction of their own flesh and blood.
To name these results “misfortune” is meant to echo the language of a State intent on purifying its own violence. wrath — the moral violence of a system that punishes women for straying from its script.
For mothers, the loss was not a momentary loss but a life sentence. They were told to get married and “as if the child taken from them were interchangeable. But the body does not forget. The loss is not a memory, it is an amputation; a sore phantom limb in the chest. Birthdays turned into secret vigils and crowds turned into search parties.
The identities of the adoptees were not discovered; They were appointed. Many lived with persistent, unspoken anxiety, the physiological echo of a separation from which they could never escape. To survive, many built a version of themselves to please and prevent a second abandonment.
To understand the initial removals, we must go beyond the clinical language of social policy and confront the anatomy of a machine. Archives do not show “well-intentioned” individuals but a cold, organized, and deliberate system. Unmarried mothers’ files were often pre-stamped with adoption outcomes long before birth.
Aspect Senate Inquiry into Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices recorded:
‘…hospital files of single pregnant girls are frequently marked ‘BFA’…we assume that the child of an unmarried mother will be adopted long before consent is obtained.’
Birth rooms were the system‘front line Young women were named, deprived of support, and forced to do physical labor. “Consent forms were signed while women were drugged, restrained or lied to in the uncertain environment of traumatic births. Religious injunctions provided moral cover; The state provided the administrative teeth. Together they eliminated children on a large scale.
Baby appetite was framed as a virtue. Adoption was encouraged as the only acceptable outcome for unmarried mothers. Social workers and policy documents routinely describe them as: “inappropriate”, “immature” or “incompetent”, not as an evaluation, but as an excuse for suspension. lust — institutional, not sexual, hunger; the desire to take what was never theirs.
The state not only supervised adoptions; managed a human supply chain adjusted to meet the demands of ““deserving” middle-class infertile couples. Vulnerable mothers were treated as a resource to be harvested, not as citizens in need of protection. gluttony A system that drains the lives of the defenseless to meet the demands of the powerful.
The economy has sharpened the knife. Adoption has become a financial tool; a way to reduce welfare obligations while reshaping society according to a narrow moral script. Unmarried mothers were routinely denied financial assistance to enable them to have their babies. Many were not told they were legally entitled to Maternity Allowance. Poverty was not an accidental situation; Designed to ensure compatibility.
Receiving a child in the official book “win-win: reduction in welfare spending and transfer of a baby from another family ““responsibility” “presence”.
The State lies beneath these engines‘Resentment towards women exercising autonomy outside their own moral code. Unmarried mothers were viewed as social problems to be managed, not as citizens with rights. Many were sent to maternity homes not for support but for control. Families, clergy, and outreach workers moved to keep them out of sight, often under the “language of Islam.” “saves face.
Their pregnancies were framed as moral failures; their independence as an aberration that needs to be corrected. this was that envy – State‘Resentment towards women who use their independence outside their command.
Later National Apology for Forced Adoptions The system was not reformed in 2013; retreated. Laziness It became policy. The laziness here was not idleness but design; The state has discovered that doing nothing is the most effective way to bury the past. The public accepted the theater of regret as an ending, not a beginning. Projects documenting the history of forced adoption have been quietly retired. Exhibitions have been removed.
Government websites removed references to the Apology, leading the public into an archival impasse. Silence was no longer the drift of time; it was an administrative strategy.
Greed in the modern system is not about the money taken, but about the money withheld. After the apology, the State replaced physical pressure with bureaucratic obstruction. Missing files, destroyed documents, and inconsistent record keeping have become a tactic. The state takes advantage of the passage of time by delaying access to records, delaying recognition, and delaying redress.
As survivors age, the financial cost of justice decreases. As witnesses die, it becomes impossible to meet the burden of proof. Greed is a calculation that exhaustion will succeed where coercion once succeeded.
And finally, pride – ghost crime. ““Forced adoption” sounds like recognition, like the beginning of an accounting, but in the cold reality of the law, it is a trap. ““forced adoption” in any criminal statute, any retroactive statute, or any federal compensation scheme. This is a social hashtag – a “sorry” was designed to carry no cost invoice.
By encouraging survivors to use this language, the State distanced them from words that carry legal weight: kidnapping, aggravated fraud, deprivation of liberty, and human trafficking. The government apologized “A lawsuit cannot be filed for “forced adoption”.
While the survivors seek justice, they discover they are fighting a ghost. They are forced to translate the systematic theft of a human being into the trivial language of categories of civil torts—neglect, trespass—designed not for the destruction of a family but for the breaking of fences. When the evidence of fraud is too overwhelming to ignore, the State retreats to its most brazen defence, the standard of the time. Cruelty is reframed as legality simply because it is popular.
The National Apology was not a new beginning; It was camouflage. While the people are reassured that the nation is finally reunited “bureaucracy was quietly eliminating evidence. The Forced Adoptions History Project was decommissioned. without consent The exhibition has been removed. Physical evidence (photographs, defense letters, hospital files) was boxed, taped shut, and buried in the basement of national memory.
Perhaps the most meaningful action is the quiet elimination of the state.‘his own confession. Attorney General‘The National Apology has been removed from the website and replaced with a new statement. Cold forwarding to Trove – archive of the dead. This is not a technical update; This is an act of political silencing. Regardless of the lives left in the rubble, the state decided when the story would end.
The Australian system has not failed; It worked exactly as intended. What we see is nothing “a sad chapter of history but a vivid check of power. The notebook is still open. If the State, along with the Church at its side, can wipe out a family without consequences, none of your rights are safe.
The scandal is no longer what was done, but what is still done to bury it. A nation that congratulates itself on justice has spent decades perfecting the art of disappearing babies, records, and accountability. The apology was a performance; bureaucracy is real. And within this truth lies a simple, devastating truth: A State that can steal a child and walk away untouched is a State that can do anything.
The institutions that set up this mechanism think they have outlasted the witnesses, survived the pain, and left the law behind. But history is not their curation. Memory is not something they can extinguish. And no matter how deep they bury the evidence, no matter how carefully they script the silence, it will get in the way of the real story.
A national class action lawsuit addressing post-apology harm is beginning to take shape. His first steps can be seen at: https://secretsliesandshame.com.
Michael Costello’s life and work are shaped by a deep commitment to truth; not just what the truth is, but how we experience, retell and preserve it.
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