True Crime Conversations · Mamamia Podcasts

Australia's Dark History Of Forced Adoptions

·44 min·3 clips

Di gives birth on a sterile bench, and hospital staff tell her, 'your baby's died.'

1. True Crime Conversations examines Australia's forced adoptions, a practice the episode places from the 1940s through the 1980s. 2. Clare Murphy hosts the episode, and journalist Amelia Oberhart joins because her family photo search became a personal investigation into forced adoption. 3. The episode asks what happened to women who were pregnant without a husband and what that history means for the children who later found out they were not given up voluntarily. 4. Amelia describes seeing a photo of her mother at a wake with a man she did not know and a baby in her arms. 5. She says the image was timestamped 1973, when her mother would have been 17, and it made her suspect a hidden marriage and a hidden child. 6. Family members gave Amelia conflicting stories, including that the baby died at one, that there was never a baby, and that there had been a miscarriage. 7. Amelia says people kept telling her to stop asking questions, while friends also said her mother had disappeared for periods of time. 8. She connects the search to Julia Gillard's 2013 apology in Parliament and says the apology was an effort to correct the historical record. 9. Amelia distinguishes forced adoption from the stolen generations, saying the two practices are similar in harm but different in law and method. 10. She says women from many backgrounds were coerced, lied to, threatened, or shamed by doctors, nurses, social workers, and religious authorities. 11. Di's story stands out because she was training to be a veterinary surgeon in Sydney when she became pregnant and did not tell anyone. 12. Amelia says Di gave birth on a sterile stainless steel bench, was left bleeding and shivering, and was told her baby had died. 13. The episode returns to Di 40 years later, when an email reading 'I think you could be my mother' leads her son back to her. 14. Amelia says a photo of Di at four and a photograph of the son's daughter showed the same curly hair and helped confirm the match. 15. Lillian's case adds another layer, because she was charged with 'moral danger' while living with her partner in a de facto relationship. 16. The episode says Lillian was locked in a Magdalene laundry, her letters were read, visitors were blocked, and her partner was turned away twice. 17. The tone is investigative and interview-based, with Amelia answering Clare Murphy's questions across family history, institutions, and legal records. 18. The style relies on documentary detail, quoted testimony, and long-form explanation rather than fast-paced dramatization. 19. People interested in Australian social history, Catholic institutions, and adoption records will get the most from it. 20. Listeners wanting a light true-crime format or a short, simple mystery may skip it.

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