Cath, I can’t imagine what you went thru and I can understand your anger as well as that I’m sure your friend feels.

I am reunited with my son (happy reunion of 4 years now). You are right about the anger thing. I felt defrauded out of my son (I did not sign any consent papers nor did his father- yet the agency said we were good parents). Anger about that grew for years as I felt helpless – the system had won and I couldn’t understand how. Someone suggested that I aim my anger at the culprits and start digging for the truth. What I found was horrific but now I understand that it was not me – it was the system itself that was the culprit. Adoption corruption was widespread in many places – particularly Ontario. Even the Ontario government has now admitted this in Hansard. It is one of the reasons they are opening the records.

I personally cringe when I hear that mothers like me had a choice – no we didn’t and I guess some of the anger comes from there. I took my case to the UN, not expecting a lot.
It was the best thing I ever did. The UN has now classified me as an official adoption fraud victim. To my surprise, they said that I was also a victim of violence against women because of the way the hospital staff treated me. They put my complaint on their web site. They asked me to find more cases – and I did. I found cases far worse than my own.
The UN were “appalled” (their words) by these cases and sent a delegation to Canada about it.

In my own case, the agency now admits that they took babies from fit mothers WITHOUT consent on a routine basis. Mine was just one of many. They are silent about if any bribes were taken in my case. The non-id that my son received was a pack of lies that were designed to put him off ever wanting to meet me or his father. They claim that I didn’t know who his father was – I can’t tell you how angry that made me and his father when we found that out. The agency admits that non-id “can be inaccurate for a number of reasons”. One of the reasons they list is that “some workers can’t speak English and may have got their information wrong because of this”!! (and that’s OK?? ruining people’s lives in a job where communication is essential?)

Even worse (and I am staggered about finding this out) is that the same agency now admits that they did pay bribes to doctors to tell mothers that their babies had died at birth – and then put the “dead” baby up for adoption. It happened to a friend of mine. For 30 years she thought her son was dead. Recently, her father died and she received a death certificate for him. She realised that she had never received one for her son. She went back to the hospital and asked for an explanation as to why she did not receive it. The hospital staff checked their records – my friend was shocked by their reply.

“Your son did not die – according to our records, he was healthy and you took him home.”

She went straight to the police – who did NOTHING!!!

This happened in Toronto.

2 hospitals in Montreal now admit that they did this too.
Many native women were also told this – only to have their sons and daughters show up years later. BC seems to be very guilty of that in this regard.

Finding out that some of the bribe money came from the adoptive parents does colour the view of the mothers who lost their children to them in this way- just like my friend.

By the way, if you are wondering which agency, it is the CCAS of Toronto.
You know, the same one who put James Baldwin with convicted child abusers.
And we know what happened there!