As an Australian adoptee who found her biological parents before the laws were changed here, I find this absolutely unbelievable and totally unacceptable in 2025. Most adoptees regard it as a human right to know their identity which is why the laws were changed in the first place. Why would they perpetuate this injustice when DNA tests are widely available ? It makes no sense to me.
no sense to anyone - unless you are a bureaucrat tasked with keeping the lid on the tens of thousands (in NZ) of forcibly adopted people from rising up and demanding equal rights with the non-adopted.
Building on Barbara's reply below (and acknowledging that all of what follows I've learned from reading Barbara's articles).
My understanding is that the walls that have recently, and sneakily, grown higher, are to impede access to papers that go wider than the birth mother's name on the 'Original' Birth Certificate. These papers give more of the story of the decisions, sequences, parties involved and (maybe even) the BF's name. So we can still apply for our OBC - please, Miss, yes, cap in hand, I'm listening to your counselling - but it's becoming even harder than before to get the wider context. That context, I'm learning, could make it clear that the law wasn't followed, that coercion took place, that drugs were administered etc.
DNA lets some cats out of bags, but it doesn't give this context.
Context is everything. Our records reveal all you mention and more. I was able to construct a timeline that began 18 days before I was born - I can follow Dr Gerald Gleeson's maneuvering to traffic me to his nurses sister. I can see there was not one social worker involved with my mother, but a facilitating 'child welfare officer' 1300 km's away working with my adopters to smooth the path. My mother is invisible in all of this until three days after I was taken and she finally signed the paper.
The remarkable thing about the 1985 Adult Adoption Information Act is how it was sold as being the only information available and we freaking believed it. But information and records are not the same thing.
YES YES YES - this is it exactly. The records are fascinating in the context they bring, the timeline to being taken, the processes used to ensure your mother had no agency.
It’s deeply concerning that adopted people are kept from accessing information about themselves. That isn’t right. Even here in the United States, our rights are already limited. I was born in New York, and now I live in Washington State — but to learn that Washington has sealed Original Birth Certificates is disheartening. I strongly disagree with this. Adopted people should never be denied access to their records, medical history, or personal information.
My records were sealed for life, except for when the state’s AG was also adopted and wanted access to his own records, so he then open the lot. I had to petition the court and pay for a copy of my OBC. Luckily, I could afford to do that and it wasn’t much but that’s not always the case for adoptees. So much was taken from us yet the system wants more. We are constantly being punished for some manufactured societal wrong WE committed by being conceived outside of the expected ‘norm’. None of it makes any sense.
If you were born in NY, your OBC would be filed in their vital statistics, right? What are the laws there? Bastard Nation resources may help. I seem to remember a law recently trying to open records, if it passed bastard nation will have that information and how to petition for your records.
Closed adoptions only exist to protect the adoptive parents. They don’t consider the child’s needs. Adoptees are not ‘allowed’ to know their true stories. While I didn’t start my search until after both adoptive parents were passed on, I had done a lot of research on how to search prior to that opportunity and everything seemed to happen so easily.
I wish it was that way for all adoptees. Once we know our stories, we have the opportunity to takeover as the author of our own lives and the sooner we can do that, the better.
I think ALL adoption is to benefit the adopter/childless one. There are other forms of care such as guardianship that does not require the sealing of records and severance of identity.
There is absolutely a problem with these social workers, specifically their (lack of) training and ability. When I first started the drawn-out and stressful process to access my S23 file I realised that I had to play their game. Firstly I needed the reason, the 'special grounds'. That was relatively straightforward, lucky for me there were two different dates of birth, one on my original birth certificate and the other on the social worker's report. Then I had to speak with a social worker from OT. I live in Northland and was automatically directed to the Auckland office. That first social worker did not seem to have a clue what I was talking about and kept making weirdly inappropriate jokes about my birth father being 'John Key or Donald Trump' and that they had a duty to protect him which was offensive on so many levels. I ended up pushing pause after that until I read on a Fb page that the Christchurch office had more empathetic staff. As I was adopted in Christchurch I decided to try again and it was a very different story. The social worker I spoke with knew what I was talking about. Within a few months I was able to view my complete, unredacted file. In the end the file had more about my adoptive parents than anyone else, however that is not the point. As your article notes as adults we should all have a human-right to this information.
I’m so sorry for all the adoptees in New Zealand! It is outrageous that a non adopted social worker can sit back and play God! Only other adoptees can understand the loss of self that we endure! I thought it was bad in the United States but it is worse for NZ! It’s dehumanizing to treat adoptees as if we are subpar human beings. We had absolutely no choice into being forced into a family of strangers. Yet, in the year 2025 the treatment of adult adoptees is horrendous. What other group of people are lied to, judged and treated as second class citizens? I would be absolutely livid if a social worker got to decide whether I have
the right to know my heritage. Shame on New Zealand! Thank you Dr. Barbara for exposing the truth!
it is tragic...queensland is going through some trouble with adoption law right now where the insane premier is attempting to use adoption as a family planning method for aboriginal people and young people who are having difficulty in their family who are in the foster/jail system....the adoption law system in australia is just as immoral as the new zealand system
It is nothing short of outrageous that in New Zealand, the most intimate and life-defining truth of an adopted person’s identity is left in the hands of social workers. We are talking about people who have carried a lifelong wound of not knowing their roots, being forced to hope someone with no personal stake, no lived understanding of the trauma of adoption, and no accountability will decide their fate. This is not compassion, it is bureaucracy at its coldest. How dare the state reduce human identity, family history, and the right to know one’s own story to a form stamped “approved” or “denied” by a social worker behind a desk? No other group in society is subjected to this kind of gatekeeping over their very identity. It is paternalistic, demeaning, and cruel. Let’s be clear: these decisions should not rest with judges either, no matter how impartial a few may try to be. The truth of one’s origins is not a legal matter to be weighed—it is the birthright of every human being. Anything less is an act of violence against the very core of human dignity.
Thank you Barbara for your endless and relentless battles to win this fight, and for sharing so much of yourself and your story with us.
Blimey. It was insulting enough to have to meet a social worker before I could even view my records. In order to get full access I appeared before a judge. I agree with you that having to be assessed at all - in order to gain access to your own information, is wrong. Having that job delegated out to Ministry for Children is a total nonsense.
It is pure nonsense on a human level. It may make fiscal sense, but surely it is wrong for the organisation with it's 7 decades of rubber stamping the separation of mothers and babies to now be inserted into this process. Previously you could write up your own affidavit and take it to your local district court and a judge would (eventually) make a decision.
Take my outrage as read, though my outrage gland is sorely overworked. This feels like a glaze of sewerage over the sh*t pudding we have long had to face. Please can you explain more: why were FCAs introduced in the first place (to reduce judge workload?). Why did adopted people and their record requests get caught up in the FCA process (legions of us making requests? Which might indicate something, ya'd think). Is the FCA being asked to rule on those tricky "special grounds" ... surely not because elsewhere you have described that each judgement on special grounds creates precedent, and surely that's a job for a judge.
More lies & deceit, in order to cover their stealing our identities, in the world's worst social experiement. Thanks for all the endless work you do to uncover the traumas attached to being ripped out of your family's heritge and stuck in a strangers home. To play a lie. All consented by goverments worldwide.
This is insideous. You are doing an amazing work here, Barbara, in trying with every bit of that intellect, to get people to listen and change. Where are they? The listeners. The readers? I understand that many of us are dead or addled but there is some kind of treason towards our freedom, from human beings of an utterly other species. Surely that's the reason for the constant control over freesom. The queen's/king's men did wrong. So they have to keep building on that in order, in such a limited brain function, to somehow keep doing it. Where's the lobby to parliament. This has been YEARS in secret.
Hi Lore - the reason I think, is because we are a threat - a financial threat to the state - our records reveal the illegal practices performed by people who, at the time, were THOUGHT to be fine, upstanding and trustworthy govt workers but clearly (given the Australian Association of Social Workers BS "apology" about a month ago - in which they referred to us as "children" and for some incomprehensible and inexplicable reason (my "complaint" was dismissed by a phone call to listen to me repeat myself) they were all working for their clients - prospective adopters - so the state, IMO, is afraid of how many adult adoptees will analyse their records and will then know that they were trafficked. Where indeed, is the lobby to parliament?
I've also come to the conclusion that Adoption has made us "bastards" forever - we are "fatherless" and we threaten subsequent offspring of our fathers and mothers with our presence - we are too often asked "what do you want?" and I think the threat is because most people have no idea we have no right to inheritance from our families of origin.
Overdue to a catch up - where are you - text me. Busy tonight but...let me know. Al x
Insidious is right. It really is. And it is not improving. And it does not matter if the left or the right are in power, the bureaucrats and their internal cultures that advise and write the legislations do not change
That is horrendous Barbara! You are doing amazing work in exposing this. These stealthy changes are happening in Australia too - and fighting it or bringing it to anyone's attention is further diluted by the fact that there are eight separate jurisdictions! People say it's different here. But when the legislation we are forced to live under is examined - no, it's not.
Only this year in Victoria significant changes were snuck in with an Omnibus Bill that amended more than 14 different Acts, covering subjects as varied as recycling, environmental sustainability, domestic animals, electricity, minerals, housing – and adoption : https://adopteerightsaustralia.org.au/omnibus-bill-victoria-2025/
As an Australian adoptee who found her biological parents before the laws were changed here, I find this absolutely unbelievable and totally unacceptable in 2025. Most adoptees regard it as a human right to know their identity which is why the laws were changed in the first place. Why would they perpetuate this injustice when DNA tests are widely available ? It makes no sense to me.
no sense to anyone - unless you are a bureaucrat tasked with keeping the lid on the tens of thousands (in NZ) of forcibly adopted people from rising up and demanding equal rights with the non-adopted.
Building on Barbara's reply below (and acknowledging that all of what follows I've learned from reading Barbara's articles).
My understanding is that the walls that have recently, and sneakily, grown higher, are to impede access to papers that go wider than the birth mother's name on the 'Original' Birth Certificate. These papers give more of the story of the decisions, sequences, parties involved and (maybe even) the BF's name. So we can still apply for our OBC - please, Miss, yes, cap in hand, I'm listening to your counselling - but it's becoming even harder than before to get the wider context. That context, I'm learning, could make it clear that the law wasn't followed, that coercion took place, that drugs were administered etc.
DNA lets some cats out of bags, but it doesn't give this context.
Context is everything. Our records reveal all you mention and more. I was able to construct a timeline that began 18 days before I was born - I can follow Dr Gerald Gleeson's maneuvering to traffic me to his nurses sister. I can see there was not one social worker involved with my mother, but a facilitating 'child welfare officer' 1300 km's away working with my adopters to smooth the path. My mother is invisible in all of this until three days after I was taken and she finally signed the paper.
The remarkable thing about the 1985 Adult Adoption Information Act is how it was sold as being the only information available and we freaking believed it. But information and records are not the same thing.
YES YES YES - this is it exactly. The records are fascinating in the context they bring, the timeline to being taken, the processes used to ensure your mother had no agency.
So glad you know your truth! Is there anything you can do to advocate for adoptees and change the laws there?
It’s deeply concerning that adopted people are kept from accessing information about themselves. That isn’t right. Even here in the United States, our rights are already limited. I was born in New York, and now I live in Washington State — but to learn that Washington has sealed Original Birth Certificates is disheartening. I strongly disagree with this. Adopted people should never be denied access to their records, medical history, or personal information.
Couldn’t agree with you more.
My records were sealed for life, except for when the state’s AG was also adopted and wanted access to his own records, so he then open the lot. I had to petition the court and pay for a copy of my OBC. Luckily, I could afford to do that and it wasn’t much but that’s not always the case for adoptees. So much was taken from us yet the system wants more. We are constantly being punished for some manufactured societal wrong WE committed by being conceived outside of the expected ‘norm’. None of it makes any sense.
If you were born in NY, your OBC would be filed in their vital statistics, right? What are the laws there? Bastard Nation resources may help. I seem to remember a law recently trying to open records, if it passed bastard nation will have that information and how to petition for your records.
Closed adoptions only exist to protect the adoptive parents. They don’t consider the child’s needs. Adoptees are not ‘allowed’ to know their true stories. While I didn’t start my search until after both adoptive parents were passed on, I had done a lot of research on how to search prior to that opportunity and everything seemed to happen so easily.
I wish it was that way for all adoptees. Once we know our stories, we have the opportunity to takeover as the author of our own lives and the sooner we can do that, the better.
I think ALL adoption is to benefit the adopter/childless one. There are other forms of care such as guardianship that does not require the sealing of records and severance of identity.
There is absolutely a problem with these social workers, specifically their (lack of) training and ability. When I first started the drawn-out and stressful process to access my S23 file I realised that I had to play their game. Firstly I needed the reason, the 'special grounds'. That was relatively straightforward, lucky for me there were two different dates of birth, one on my original birth certificate and the other on the social worker's report. Then I had to speak with a social worker from OT. I live in Northland and was automatically directed to the Auckland office. That first social worker did not seem to have a clue what I was talking about and kept making weirdly inappropriate jokes about my birth father being 'John Key or Donald Trump' and that they had a duty to protect him which was offensive on so many levels. I ended up pushing pause after that until I read on a Fb page that the Christchurch office had more empathetic staff. As I was adopted in Christchurch I decided to try again and it was a very different story. The social worker I spoke with knew what I was talking about. Within a few months I was able to view my complete, unredacted file. In the end the file had more about my adoptive parents than anyone else, however that is not the point. As your article notes as adults we should all have a human-right to this information.
I’m so sorry for all the adoptees in New Zealand! It is outrageous that a non adopted social worker can sit back and play God! Only other adoptees can understand the loss of self that we endure! I thought it was bad in the United States but it is worse for NZ! It’s dehumanizing to treat adoptees as if we are subpar human beings. We had absolutely no choice into being forced into a family of strangers. Yet, in the year 2025 the treatment of adult adoptees is horrendous. What other group of people are lied to, judged and treated as second class citizens? I would be absolutely livid if a social worker got to decide whether I have
the right to know my heritage. Shame on New Zealand! Thank you Dr. Barbara for exposing the truth!
my genuine concern and sympathy for new zealand adopted people at this very dark news...from australia
thank you. We are so far behind Australia in adoption law reform.
it is tragic...queensland is going through some trouble with adoption law right now where the insane premier is attempting to use adoption as a family planning method for aboriginal people and young people who are having difficulty in their family who are in the foster/jail system....the adoption law system in australia is just as immoral as the new zealand system
It is nothing short of outrageous that in New Zealand, the most intimate and life-defining truth of an adopted person’s identity is left in the hands of social workers. We are talking about people who have carried a lifelong wound of not knowing their roots, being forced to hope someone with no personal stake, no lived understanding of the trauma of adoption, and no accountability will decide their fate. This is not compassion, it is bureaucracy at its coldest. How dare the state reduce human identity, family history, and the right to know one’s own story to a form stamped “approved” or “denied” by a social worker behind a desk? No other group in society is subjected to this kind of gatekeeping over their very identity. It is paternalistic, demeaning, and cruel. Let’s be clear: these decisions should not rest with judges either, no matter how impartial a few may try to be. The truth of one’s origins is not a legal matter to be weighed—it is the birthright of every human being. Anything less is an act of violence against the very core of human dignity.
Thank you Barbara for your endless and relentless battles to win this fight, and for sharing so much of yourself and your story with us.
Blimey. It was insulting enough to have to meet a social worker before I could even view my records. In order to get full access I appeared before a judge. I agree with you that having to be assessed at all - in order to gain access to your own information, is wrong. Having that job delegated out to Ministry for Children is a total nonsense.
It is pure nonsense on a human level. It may make fiscal sense, but surely it is wrong for the organisation with it's 7 decades of rubber stamping the separation of mothers and babies to now be inserted into this process. Previously you could write up your own affidavit and take it to your local district court and a judge would (eventually) make a decision.
Take my outrage as read, though my outrage gland is sorely overworked. This feels like a glaze of sewerage over the sh*t pudding we have long had to face. Please can you explain more: why were FCAs introduced in the first place (to reduce judge workload?). Why did adopted people and their record requests get caught up in the FCA process (legions of us making requests? Which might indicate something, ya'd think). Is the FCA being asked to rule on those tricky "special grounds" ... surely not because elsewhere you have described that each judgement on special grounds creates precedent, and surely that's a job for a judge.
Wow, is all I have to say! Another slap in the face…
More lies & deceit, in order to cover their stealing our identities, in the world's worst social experiement. Thanks for all the endless work you do to uncover the traumas attached to being ripped out of your family's heritge and stuck in a strangers home. To play a lie. All consented by goverments worldwide.
:0(
This is insideous. You are doing an amazing work here, Barbara, in trying with every bit of that intellect, to get people to listen and change. Where are they? The listeners. The readers? I understand that many of us are dead or addled but there is some kind of treason towards our freedom, from human beings of an utterly other species. Surely that's the reason for the constant control over freesom. The queen's/king's men did wrong. So they have to keep building on that in order, in such a limited brain function, to somehow keep doing it. Where's the lobby to parliament. This has been YEARS in secret.
Hi Lore - the reason I think, is because we are a threat - a financial threat to the state - our records reveal the illegal practices performed by people who, at the time, were THOUGHT to be fine, upstanding and trustworthy govt workers but clearly (given the Australian Association of Social Workers BS "apology" about a month ago - in which they referred to us as "children" and for some incomprehensible and inexplicable reason (my "complaint" was dismissed by a phone call to listen to me repeat myself) they were all working for their clients - prospective adopters - so the state, IMO, is afraid of how many adult adoptees will analyse their records and will then know that they were trafficked. Where indeed, is the lobby to parliament?
I've also come to the conclusion that Adoption has made us "bastards" forever - we are "fatherless" and we threaten subsequent offspring of our fathers and mothers with our presence - we are too often asked "what do you want?" and I think the threat is because most people have no idea we have no right to inheritance from our families of origin.
Overdue to a catch up - where are you - text me. Busy tonight but...let me know. Al x
This is exactly true. And exactly what my records proved. Trafficked. And ring fencing inheritance for legitimate heirs is at the core.
Insidious is right. It really is. And it is not improving. And it does not matter if the left or the right are in power, the bureaucrats and their internal cultures that advise and write the legislations do not change
I am confused - aren't PhD's usually available on the university's website? Would your publication be bound/hard copy or digital?
Thanks, Gil. Thesis out of Modern Letters are withheld. I am completing an edit. And yes it will be released as a book.
That is horrendous Barbara! You are doing amazing work in exposing this. These stealthy changes are happening in Australia too - and fighting it or bringing it to anyone's attention is further diluted by the fact that there are eight separate jurisdictions! People say it's different here. But when the legislation we are forced to live under is examined - no, it's not.
Only this year in Victoria significant changes were snuck in with an Omnibus Bill that amended more than 14 different Acts, covering subjects as varied as recycling, environmental sustainability, domestic animals, electricity, minerals, housing – and adoption : https://adopteerightsaustralia.org.au/omnibus-bill-victoria-2025/