Forced adoption meant Marilyn had to go undercover to attend her own daughter's wedding
Marilyn Rulyancich's baby was taken from her at birth, but she never gave up hope of finding her — hatching an audacious undercover plot to realise her dream.
Most mothers would do anything to be at their daughter's wedding.
Marilyn Rulyancich was no different — except she had never met her daughter.
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For years, Marilyn had only the memory of a few glimpses of her baby.
It's only now, decades later, that Marilyn has found the strength to tell her story — a remarkable tale showing the lengths a mother will go to in order to connect with her child.
"I felt like they couldn't stop me, I had to find her," Marilyn says.
"I had to touch her … I knew she was alive."
Marilyn is a survivor of Australia's forced adoption era. Her story begins in 1960s Perth.
WARNING: This story contains references to sexual assault that some readers may find distressing.
Scars of abuse
Marilyn endured a brutal start in life.
An uncle sexually abused her between the ages of nine and 13. He was eventually arrested and convicted, but the abuse left its scars.
Among them was a complete lack of understanding about sex.
"I always thought then that if you had a man in your life, boyfriend or whatever, you had to let them do whatever they wanted," Marilyn says.
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"I didn't know what was right or wrong. There was no sex education at school. The word sex was a rude word."
When she fell pregnant at the age of 15 to her boyfriend at the time, Marilyn's mother responded violently.
"She hauled me out of high school by the hair, dragging me down the path, telling the headmaster I wouldn't be back," she recalls.
The 'fallen' women
Instead of finishing school, the frightened teenager was banished to the Ngala Mothercraft Home, a maternity home with a separate wing for unwed mothers.
Women like Marilyn were denigrated as having lost their innocence, and fallen from grace.
The prevailing nationwide best-practice for adoption at the time was based on the 'clean break' theory which advocated removing babies from their mothers immediately after birth.
Marilyn recounts her daughter's birth at King Edward Memorial Hospital as a terrifying, lonely and degrading experience.
"They strapped my legs up ... and there's all these people there."
"They said they were all student doctors and they were allowed to be there because I was an unmarried mother."
Marilyn remembers the crowd whispering amongst themselves and speaking about her as though she wasn't there.
She recalls a sheet being drawn in front of her face so she couldn't see the baby.
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"They told me to stop crying because I was upsetting the other mothers," she says.
"I had my baby — I asked what it was, if it was alright.
"I was told I didn't need to know because it wasn't going to be mine anyway."
Marilyn fights back tears as she describes her memories of Ngala, where she returned after giving birth.
"Ngala — a home for unmarried mothers and unwanted children," she says.
"What children weren't wanted? The children were our children."
Marilyn refused to sign the adoption papers — over and over she refused — but says eventually she felt she had no other choice.
However, it didn't take long before Marilyn started searching for the daughter she'd lost.
Marilyn's quest
In those pre-internet days, that meant old-school detective work.
Marilyn sifted through public archives for any scraps of information she could find, advertised in newspapers on her daughter's birthday, and even hired a private investigator.
She discovered her child had an older brother, so she pored through electoral rolls for the names of any girl who had a sibling with the right age gap.
Eventually, there was a breakthrough.
She found out her daughter's name, and an address for a legal firm in Perth's CBD where her daughter worked. Marilyn went there hoping to catch a glimpse.
"I got in the lift ... and there was a girl there in kind of an orange cotton dress with a denim jacket on, and she would've been about the age of my daughter," she says.
The private investigator confirmed the girl in the lift was indeed Marilyn's daughter.
"I realised I had actually just been in the lift with my own child."
That brief sighting was enough to spur Marilyn on.
The wedding plot
She followed her daughter who was visiting a sewing and craft store on her lunchbreak.
"I watched through the window ... she was buying all these white lacy thingies and bits and pieces," Marilyn says.
"I thought — I bet she's getting married."
Marilyn found out which church her daughter was getting married in by calling her work office and pretending she was an old friend.
She spoke with the priest at the church, who divulged the name of the wedding photographer. Marilyn tracked him down.
"He invited me out to his home, and I met him and his wife, and they sat down and I told them the truth," she says.
"They were both in tears and agreed to let me pretend to go to the wedding as his assistant photographer."
This is Marilyn and her daughter Audra's first ever photo together.
"Her veil was blowing in the wind and I went and adjusted it a bit," Marilyn says."I actually brushed her arm and realised that in 23 years, that was the first time I'd ever touched my baby."
"I nearly completely fell apart."
But Marilyn wasn't about to overshadow her daughter's big day. She kept her identity, and her very existence, a secret.
"I went up on the minstrel's gallery in the church and I stood up there by myself, and I watched my daughter get married," she recalls.
"My thought that day was, if this is all I'm ever going to get to see of my daughter, I have at least got this."
Lost years
It took two years for the mother and daughter to finally meet, properly.
They're now close, but it's taken many years for both to navigate the irreplaceable missing years.
"My life would have been so much better. I wouldn't have anxiety, depression, I wouldn't have had bouts of thoughts of suicide," Marilyn says.
"I lost every day — I lost every birthday, I lost every Christmas."
The lifelong psychological burden is often just as profound for adopted people as the mothers who had their children taken away.
This is the lasting, modern-day trauma of forced adoption that survivors hope an ongoing Western Australian inquiry will address.
Marilyn's story is one of dozens that have been shared at the inquiry, which follows a similar investigation in Victoria.
"We were told that we were unmarried and therefore could not look after a baby," Marilyn wrote in her submission.
"That we were disgraceful and promiscuous and should be ashamed of ourselves for getting into 'trouble'."
"My daughter was always led to believe that I did not want her. Who gave anyone the right to tell her that terrible lie?"
Marilyn's daughter Audra was one of tens of thousands of newborns who were removed across Australia under government policies from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Young women were told their newborns would have a better life if they were handed over to a waiting list of married couples desperate for a child.
The children's real birth documents were permanently sealed, and false birth certificates were issued listing only their adoptive parents' names.
Rewriting history
Institutions, including Ngala where Marilyn was sent, are now being held to account for their part in facilitating the government's 'clean break' policy.
Giving evidence to the WA inquiry, Ngala's new chief executive Michelle Dillon acknowledged the charity's role in the wrongful separation of children from their parents last century.
"We're really, really sorry for what they went through, and what they're continuing to go through, because trauma doesn't stop," she told the ABC in an interview.
"It was a dark period in our time."
Ms Dillon says Ngala is preparing to build a memorial to survivors at its headquarters in Perth.
The charity is also planning to rewrite its history book, after complaints it didn't adequately acknowledge its involvement in forced adoptive practices.
"It didn't tell the story of the forced adoption era, and it didn't give any personal stories, and didn't discuss the trauma that was caused by it," Ms Dillon says.
"The 'clean break' theory at that time truly believed that if a mother never saw their child, they wouldn't have feelings, which is unbelievable to believe now.
"As a mother and as a CEO of a parenting organisation, I can't think of anything more cruel than to take a child off its mother, for both."
Today, Ngala is a well-respected and much-loved sanctuary for families in need of help.
The charity wants a government redress scheme that goes one step further than Victoria, which is the only state offering compensation, but only to mothers and not their children.
“The adopted people need to be considered. They are experiencing that trauma and I think the government needs to redress them,” Ms Dillon says.
A 2012 Senate inquiry recommended both governments and institutions like Ngala compensate survivors of forced adoptive practices across Australia.
Finding answers
Several apologies have been issued over the years — from both governments and organisations involved in forced adoptive practices — including a national apology from then-prime minister Julia Gillard in 2013.
Many believe there's still a long way to go.
Western Australia's ongoing inquiry was announced after persistent campaigning from survivors to uncover the truth of the forced adoption era, and for greater support.
The inquiry is working through more than 150 submissions — and counting — many of which are personal accounts from mothers and adopted children.
The inquiry itself hasn't been without controversy, with ongoing concerns about redactions to submissions, and the absence until recently of a research officer.
For Marilyn, sharing her story for the first time to the inquiry — while harrowing — has been liberating.
"It was a relief to get a lot of it out, a lot of old memories that I had suppressed for a long, long, long time, had come out," she says.
"It was good to finally be able to talk to people who look like, and behave like, they were listening to me."
Marilyn hopes the inquiry produces answers, for herself and for the tens of thousands of other survivors.
"Please don't give us a verbal apology, I would cringe to hear another sorry," she says.