‘Why didn't you tell me?': the Australian push to have all adopted people told their full history and identity

The Guardian

2 days ago

Merrilees Ritchie describes it as an 'out of body experience'. It felt as if she was watching from above her kitchen table in Albany, Western Australia, as her brother explained to her that the pair of them had been adopted as babies, nearly 40 years before.
Over a cup of tea he revealed they also had different biological mothers. They were not biologically related.
'I was absolutely shell-shocked,' Ritchie recalls. 'I'd basically lived half my life by then, believing I was part of this family I'd grown up with.'
By the time her brother made the revelation, 32 years ago, their adoptive mother had been dead for 10 years. Ritchie had kept a photograph of her up on the kitchenette. 'I looked at the photo and just thought: 'You liar, you liar, why didn't you tell me?''
After her brother's disclosure, she has spent years jumping through hoops trying get hold of crucial documents that would help her claim back her identity. She even had to pay for her real birth certificate, since adoptees were given fabricated versions with their adoptive parents' names on them.
Ritchie is a late discovery adoptee, a term given to people who find out as adults that they are not who they thought they were. She is one of a number of people born during the secretive forced adoption era from the 1940s to the early 1980s, when thousands of babies were removed from their single mothers and given to married couples. For many late discovery adoptees, the truth is only discovered after an adoptive parent dies or by accident. Now Ritchie is part of the Great Southern Adoptee Support Group, calling for all adoptees to be notified of their adopted status.
'It's like a bomb going off,' says Caroline de la Harpe, a senior counsellor with the WA-based Adoption Research and Counselling Service. Suddenly, she says, grown adults have to navigate two different worlds, that of their adoptive family and their newly discovered biological kin.
'That kind of turns their world upside down in terms of who they think they are.'
The plight of late discovery adoptees was highlighted at a WA parliamentary inquiry into the forced adoption polices of last century, with its report released in August last year.
Among its 39 recommendations, Broken Bonds, Fractured Lives recommended the WA government notifies all adult adopted persons not already aware of their adopted status. A system of automatic notification would be the first of its kind in Australia.
Although no clear pathway for notification was outlined in the report, advocates say mandatory notification would tackle the ongoing harm to people who may find out the truth without warning or support, or are denied the truth about their origins for their whole lives.
The recommendation was rejected by the WA government two months later due to its potential to 'cause significant psychological harm and distress.'
Bernadette Richards, associate professor of ethics and professionalism at Queensland University medical school, says while the argument about potentially traumatising unsuspecting people by telling them they are adopted is persuasive, doing nothing breaches adopted people's fundamental human rights. Not least their right to know their family medical history.
'There is also that risk there of benevolent paternalism,' she says. 'Trying not to harm someone but taking away a choice. In reality, that's what has happened to these people, isn't it? They've lost the right to know something important.'
However, Richards says comprehensive supports would need to be carefully planned to address the 'real risk of harm' in implementing a mass notification system.
'The age of these people must be respected, as must the fact that this is really something that goes to the core of individual identity and understanding of who they are and how they define that,' she says.
Prof Daryl Higgins, a psychologist who has researched the impact of forced adoption, questions whether there is research to support the case for mass notification.
Higgins, the director of the Institute of Child Protection Studies at the Australian Catholic University, says while adoptees have a right to know information about themselves, if they choose to, he is not convinced that all adoptees would welcome, or benefit from, being told by government authorities.
Instead, he calls for a community awareness campaign – ideally a national initiative – to encourage people who have doubts about their birth status to access services that can help them find out in a supported way.
Dr Ebony White from St Bonaventure University in New York was a co-author of one of the few studies in existence about late discovery adoptees.
White backs the idea of proactively notifying adults, but supports a national awareness campaign to prepare people beforehand. She too underscores the importance of providing counselling and support to those who suspect they may have been adopted and coaching for adoptive families on how to broach the truth with their adult children.
She also warns that for many reasons some biological parents do not wish to be found, and mandatory notification could lead to distress for all parties.
That's an issue also raised by Caroline de la Harpe of the WA government-funded Adoption Research and Counselling Service, who stresses the importance of considering other family members, including half-siblings.
'Absolutely, [the adoptees] have the right to know information about themselves,' she says. 'But you can't just think about notifying that person because there's a whole raft of people who are going to be affected by that notification.'
The senior counsellor and psychotherapist says, for example, biological families would also have to receive support in advance of possible reunification.
'Are you wanting a relationship with them? Are you willing to at least meet them and get to know them? So at least when [adoptees] are notified, you've got some information around their birth family and what the possibilities are for getting to know them.'
So-called 'contact vetoes', which are lodged by different parties to adoption who do not wish to be contacted by each other, would also have to be carefully considered, she adds, with separate management plans put in place to handle those cases. About 700 contact vetoes remained in place in WA at the time of the inquiry.
For Ritchie, now 71, despite the fact that her reunion with her biological mother was imperfect, she is glad she knows the truth about herself.
'I'm only sorry I wasn't told earlier,' she says.
Although she managed to find her biological mother, Nola, she says too much time had been lost. Reconnecting with her biological mother at a younger age, she believes, could have brought them closer.
'I don't think she could actually deal with the fact that I was back in her life,' she says. 'I feel quite cheated. If we'd been given more time, I think she would have softened.'
They never hugged or had any physical contact, until six hours before her mother died when Ritchie was able to visit her in hospital in Perth.
'I just put my hand on top of her hand,' remembers Ritchie.
'I don't even know if she knew I was there, but I knew I was there.'
To contact the Forced Adoption Support Service in your state or territory, ring 1800 210 313. To contact the Adoption Research and Counselling Service, ring [phone]