Forced adoption survivors celebrate inquiry findings in WA
Forced adoption survivor Jennifer McRae is celebrating after a few long, hard years.
Today, a parliamentary inquiry in Western Australia recommended survivors of forced adoption in the state should be compensated in a financial redress scheme.
McRae, who was forcefully removed from her unmarried mother in 1972, led the charge for the inquiry in WA, which began as a petition.
"It's been a really long wait," she tells 9News. "It got tabled earlier than we thought it would be, so this is good news on many fronts."
It comes 14 years after WA was the first Aussie state to officially apologise for the devastating practice of taking newborn babies from their mothers.
McRae led a group of fellow survivors who were there in person to hear the inquiry's recommendations. McRae described the recommendations as "pretty impressive".
"The recommendations have covered virtually everything we've asked for," she said.
"There's a number of really important recommendations that have been supported by the committee. The outcome's far better than I imagined."
McRae reunited with her birth mother at age 19 and says today's result was thanks to their generation.
"We're working off the shoulders of our mothers, who are advocates and activists," she said. "We're just continuing their work."
From the 1930s until 1980s, tens of thousands of newborn babies were stripped from their mothers without consent, mostly from parents who were unmarried.
The Environment and Public Affairs Committee report was tabled in parliament today and found financial redress and specialised counselling was recommended for mothers, the now-adult children and some fathers.
McRae said she was happy to see the children taken from mothers would be included in the recommended compensation.
"We wanted adopted people to be included and seen as equal survivors in what happened to us," she says. "Not to be included is not equitable, because adopted people lost everything.
"They lost families, their identities, their culture. And I think the world's only kind of starting to come to grips with the impacts on us. So this is a really important shift from government."
Lived-experience evidence in the report contained 80 accounts of forced adoption in WA in the last century. It heard from both mothers and children who shared first-hand accounts of the trauma of these practices, which were labelled a "systemic failure".
It follows the historic scheme in Victoria, which provided compensation and support to the women separated from their children due to forced adoption practices.
The redress scheme in Victoria was an Australian first. Only mothers were eligible for compensation in this scheme.
If it is endorsed by the government, the redress scheme in WA will be the most far-reaching in Australian history.
Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a national apology in 2013 to victims of forced adoption practices.