Survivors of forced adoption call for renaming of Albany's Beryl Grant Community Centre

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-16/calls-to-rename-beryl-grant-centre-forced-adoption-matron/104451290?utm_medium=social&utm_content=sf275070597&utm_campaign=abc_great_southern&utm_source=m.facebook.com&sf275070597=1&fbclid=IwY2xjawF8jhZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHcq6iXYTP6jOGdpJEwxRGQElLd4PPp-nACNuEuXgHSN1dzI87NZorzS5sQ_aem_wbni3trjr8-uJQDYYKBadA

In short:

Survivors of forced adoption practices in WA are calling for the Beryl Grant Community Centre, named after a woman involved in the practice, to be renamed.

Ms Grant was a long-serving matron at Ngala Mothercraft and Training Centre, during which time unmarried mothers were forcibly separated from their babies.

What's next?

Juniper Aged Care says it is "awaiting outcomes" of an inquiry into past forced adoptive policies and practices in WA to "deepen our understanding of Beryl Grant's involvement".

Beryl Grant is believed to have been influential in past forced adoption practices in Western Australia — so why is her name honoured on a building?

The recipient of multiple Australian and British honours, Ms Grant served a decades-long tenure as matron at Perth's Ngala Mothercraft and Training centre, a residential home for unmarried mothers and wards of the state.

It was this tenure, survivors of forced adoption say, that saw her play an instrumental role in forcibly separating mothers and their young children.

The group is petitioning Juniper Aged Care to rename the Beryl Grant Community Centre in Albany, which was named as a tribute when it opened in 2017, a month before her death.

'She took me from my mother'

Great Southern Adoptee Support Group chair Jennifer McRae started the petition to Juniper, which had 180 signatures as of October 11.

"Beryl Grant is the singular reason that I was adopted," she said.

"Without her and her finely tuned processes and practices, I would have likely remained with my mother."

Fellow adoptee Danae Witherow echoed the sentiments alongside 20 other mothers and children at a rally outside the centre this week.

"It's triggering every time you drive past a sign that's pointing to a woman who separated me from my mother," she said.

Ms McRae was also a key advocate for the petition which sparked the Inquiry into Past Forced Adoption in Western Australia.

The inquiry handed down its report in August, detailing evidence of unmarried mothers being lied to, pressured, and coerced into agreeing to adoption between the 1940s and 1980s.

The committee found "newborns were removed from their mothers at birth without the mothers' consent and institutionalised until they were placed with adoptive families".

The inquiry also found the WA government, private institutions, and health services were all involved in past forced adoptions, including Ngala.

Ms Grant was the matron at Ngala from 1959 to 1980.

Ngala chief executive Michelle Dillon used her testimony before the inquiry to apologise for the organisation's role in forced adoption.

"I would like to acknowledge the considerable trauma, of both adopted people and parents, caused by my organisation delivering forced adoption on behalf of the state," she said.

"Ngala accepts responsibility for its role in the wrongful separation of children from mothers and fathers while in the care of our facilities from 1956 through until the 1980s.

"We sincerely apologise and will continue to sincerely apologise for our involvement in what we now recognise was an extremely damaging practice."

Ms Dillon also said she had asked Juniper Aged Care to remove Ms Grant's name from the community centre in Albany.

Baby stolen while in a meeting

Louise Kirk is one of the young mothers still dealing with the impact of WA's forced adoption practices.

In 1976, she and her boyfriend were being pressured to put their son up for adoption by their social worker and others, primarily because they were unmarried and not wealthy.

When her son was six months old, Ms Kirk agreed to a meeting organised by her social worker to discuss the possibility of a temporary fostering situation.

While inside the meeting, their baby was taken to Ngala.

"There were two young women, they said, 'We'll take Christopher for you while you go in and have your meeting, it's going to be much easier for you to talk,'" she said.

In the meeting, Ms Kirk said she and her partner, both 17, were told they were selfish for wanting to keep the baby when there were "perfectly good married couples" available.

"Then she pushed this form in front of me and said, 'I'd like you to just sign your name there … and you need to go home and think about a lot of things,'" she said.

Ms Kirk said she was naive and signed as she was told.

"I walked out of the office with the nappy bag and his things and I said, 'Where's Christopher?' And they said, 'He's gone to Ngala'.

"That to me was kidnapping.

"Then I thought, 'I'm a bad person. I don't deserve to have him. That's why they've taken him.'"

Ms Kirk called the social worker who told her to "calm down", it was "interim" and that she had a month to find a job and a better place to live.

She did as she was asked and went to Ngala to collect her son 28 days later.

There, Ms Kirk met Beryl Grant for the first time who, she said, told her she was too late and that her son had been assigned a "good family".

"I said, 'No, he was only going to be cared for, fostered, not adopted,'" Ms Kirk said.

Ms Kirk said Ms Grant then produced the form which she had been coerced into signing weeks earlier.

"She said, 'You have 30 days to revoke your consent, it's day 28 [and] it's the long weekend. I can't get someone to go and get him now and by the time I do, Monday's the long weekend and that's the end of your time,'" she said.

Ms Kirk said Ms Grant told her she wouldn't get her baby back and she should "leave now the way you came".

But Ms Kirk refused to leave and forced her way into the ward.

She went home with her son that day. But when he was two years old, she lost him to forced adoption practices.

After her experiences, Ms Kirk said Ms Grant should not have a building named after her.

Grant honoured for lifetime's work

In her final interview in 2011, as part of the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants oral history project, Ms Grant reflected on her time as matron at Ngala.

"There was never any pressure on them to place their babies for adoption," she said.

"We would help them with their decisions and some of them of course were very young and couldn't make those decisions much on their own.

"One hears a lot of bad things [about adoption] but I think a lot of the good things we forget."

Societal pressures were very different when she was matron at Ngala, Ms Grant said.

"In those days single mothers were looked down upon by the community," she said.

"Society has changed [since then], single mothers don't need to go and hide away anymore and now they get an allowance through the Centrelink which they didn't get in those days and society is accepting for better or for worse for some of the kids."

From 1989 to 2003, Ms Grant served on the Uniting Church Homes board, now Juniper, and in retirement continued volunteering at the aged care home.

Juniper chief executive Russell Bricknell said it was this service that the community centre acknowledged.

"Juniper is awaiting outcomes into the current inquiry into past forced adoptive policies and practices in Western Australia to deepen our understanding of Beryl Grant's involvement," he said.

"Upon release of these findings, we will be able to reflect on appropriate actions to be taken."

The government has two months to consider the report titled Broken Bonds, Fractured Lives which was tabled in parliament on August 22.