UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide apologises for forced adoptions
On 29 November 2011, the Uniting Church and UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide issued an ‘unreserved apology to mothers who may have been forced to give up their children for adoption and to children who may have been forcibly removed from their mothers’.
The apology was made as part of its submission to the Senate inquiry, currently underway, into the Commonwealth government’s contribution to forced adoption policies and practices in Australia.
Chief Executive of UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide, Simon Schrapel said that church leaders were moved to make this apology, after reading the moving stories in other submissions made to the Senate inquiry. Many of these submissions contain accounts of forced adoptions that had occurred at Kate Cocks Memorial Babies’ Home in South Australia.
To quote from the joint public statement:
If mothers involved in the Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home were coerced or forced to give their children up for adoption we unreservedly apologise to those affected. Furthermore, if children involved in the Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home were forcibly removed from their parents we unreservedly apologise to those affected.
This is the first apology for forced adoptions to come from an organisation in South Australia.