Initial Social History
The Initial Social History, as it was known at my adoption agency, Eastern Child Welfare Society (now Eastern Social Welfare Society), gave key details about the child to be adopted, their birth parents, health status and reasons for “abandonment.” Without any evidence or suggestion to the contrary, a lot of adoptees grow up believing that the contents of their Initial Social History are true and accurate. Many come to find out upon reunion that details have been fabricated by their adoption agency.
My Initial Social History was created when I was five weeks old.
Most Initial Social Histories created in the 1980s have a section called “History of Admission” that outlines the basic details of the birth parents and the story behind why the child was relinquished for adoption. My History of Admission tells the quite clinical tale of a young woman and man meeting on the introduction of a friend, having a brief relationship followed by a swift break-up due to personality differences. Only after parting ways does the young woman learn that she is pregnant. With the child’s future in mind, the young woman makes the difficult and anguish filled choice to let her baby be adopted overseas.
I did a very unscientific straw poll in an Eastern Facebook group and found out that many other adoptees have a strikingly similar narrative spelled out in their History of Admission. It looks like Eastern created sanitised back stories that they thought would be digestible for adoptive parents. They were perhaps also covering up their unethical means for how they were actually getting babies. It’s a little ludicrous that they didn’t consider that the repetitive stories were being read by the same social workers processing our adoptions on the Australian side. What’s more ludicrous though is that the Australian authorities knew that these obviously fabricated stories were being sent through for each child but it didn’t raise any high level alerts about the actual origins of these children or why Eastern was consistently presenting untrue information as fact.
Josie McSkimming, a social worker who was part of the New South Wales Department of Youth and Community Services in the 1980s commented that she noticed the similarities in Histories of Admission which aroused suspicions for her. But when she raised concerns with her team, they were dismissed because Eastern was seen as a trusted organisation.
Parental Consent
It is not obvious here, because I’ve redacted my birthday, but my birth and my admission to Eastern as an adoptable baby happened on the same day. This means that I was handed over to Eastern possibly at birth or within hours of it and my birth mother possibly never got a chance to hold me or see me before I was taken from her. I can only conclude that my relinquishment was planned and signed off on before I was born.
The state law of New South Wales where my adoption was processed Adoption of Children Act 1965 No 23 s31 (3) (now repealed) specified that consent would be defective if “an instrument of consent signed by the mother of the child on, or within three days after, the day on which the child was born unless it is proved that, at the time the instrument was signed, the mother was in a fit condition to give the consent.” In South Australia, where my adoption was finalised, the law required no less than 5 days to have passed before consent from a birth mother could be signed s26(2) and specifies that consent cannot be given before the birth of the child S26(1)(f) Adoption of Children Act (SA) 1966 (now repealed)
Even 1960s Australian legislation recognised that it was inappropriate for a birth mother to be giving consent on the day she gave birth or while pregnant. Practices in Korea were not in line with Australian law and the documents showed this on their face. But adoptions in Australia were still governed by these laws and they were ignored by the Australian social workers and civil servants responsible for facilitating adoptions from Korea and from the judges in the courts who were tasked with legitimising and finalising the adoption.