'It walks with you forever': Mothers sue hospital that took their babies

Shortly after June Smith gave birth, a nurse at the Royal Women’s Hospital gave her two white pills.

She asked what they were for.

“The nurse said: ‘To dry up your milk’," Ms Smith says. "I said: ‘But I’m keeping him’. Her words were: ‘You will not be allowed to keep him’.

Fifty-eight years later Ms Smith, 77, and Lynette Kinghorn, 73, are suing the Royal Women’s Hospital and adoption agencies in the Victorian County Court for damages.

Their legal counsel, Shine Lawyers, says the two women objected to their children being put up for adoption and the medical professionals entrusted with their care should have ensured their wishes were respected.

“Both women have suffered a lifetime of foreseeable psychological harm from these failings,” says Emma Hines, the general manager of Shine Lawyers in Victoria.

Ms Smith repeatedly begged to keep her son, whom she named Michael. “How can you explain to someone what it’s like to have a baby? You have got to give birth to know what it’s like. From that moment on, I would have killed for him.”

But it was 1961 and Ms Smith was an unmarried 19-year-old. “You were almost like lepers in those days.”

Ms Kinghorn became pregnant in 1963 when she was 16. Her breasts were bound to prevent her breastfeeding her daughter, whom she named Sandra.

A week later a nurse came from Berry Street Adoption Agency.

“I just started screaming and going crazy asking for someone to help me. I went to one of the nurses, who I thought had been kind to me, and she said ‘Go home and be a good girl’. So they had to physically drag me out screaming 'no'.”

Later, Ms Kinghorn says, the matron from Berry Street yelled: “Well, I hope you’ve learnt your lesson.” So she believed that was the punishment.

In 2012 the Victorian Parliament expressed “our formal and sincere apology” to those harmed by past adoption practices in Victoria, vowing to “never forget what happened”.

A year later, prime minister Julia Gillard delivered a historic national apology to the “mothers who were betrayed by a system that gave you no choice”.

Branding it a “cruel and immoral practice”, Ms Gillard said many mothers were tricked into signing the papers, drugged and shackled to their beds.

The national apology was recommended by a 2012 Senate inquiry.

It found there were about 140,000 to 150,000 adoptions between 1951 and 1975, but said it was impossible to estimate how many of these were forced.

The Senate inquiry also recommended that where illegality was alleged, the prosecution of those responsible should not be limited by statutes of limitation.

But Ms Hines says the Royal Women’s Hospital is using the statute of limitations defence as an excuse to withhold compensation.

“This legal barrier to justice has been removed for many victims of child sexual abuse and the government should do the same for those affected by forced adoptions.”

The Royal Women’s Hospital and Berry Street both said they could not comment on specific cases before the courts.

However they have both issued apologies for past adoption practices.

“Whatever the intentions and beliefs of the time, past adoption practices involving single girls and women have had devastating consequences for many women and adoptees,” Lisa Lynch, the hospital's acting chief executive, told The Age this week.

“The Women’s acknowledges the ongoing pain, anger and loss experienced by these women and apologises unreservedly.”

A government spokesperson says the issue of historical forced adoptions has been referred to the Legal and Social Issues Committee in the Legislative Assembly.

“We believe this will give people affected by forced adoption the opportunity to tell their stories and to consider the best way to respond to the harm caused by forced adoption.”

But the two mothers say another inquiry will prolong their pain.

“I will be nearly 80, that is unfair and unjust,” Ms Smith says. “They know what they did, they have admitted it in an apology.”

In the late nineties, Ms Smith managed to track Michael down. “He wrote me a beautiful letter and said he didn’t want a relationship. It tore me to bits. I remember sitting on the floor and I just sobbed my heart out.”

Michael wrote that it must have been a hard decision. “I thought ‘You know nothing, there was never a decision on my part'.” But she could never tell him this because there was no return address on the letter.

Ms Kinghorn met her daughter, who had been renamed Christine, when she was 20.

“She told me that when she was a little girl she used to throw the blankets over her head and think ‘When I throw the blankets back my mum will be there’,” Ms Kinghorn says.

Ms Kinghorn says Christine remains a part of her life but “it’s really difficult”. “We have said we know it’s really hard and that’s what it is, it’s just hard.”

Both women went on to have other children. But they were haunted by fears they would die and leave their younger children without a mother.

“It’s like because you weren’t there for the first child, something was going to take you from the others,” Ms Kinghorn says.

Ms Smith says the loss never stops hurting. “You have no idea how much it hurts. It tears you to pieces in the middle of the night. You eat it, you breathe it, it walks with you for eternity."