All the Records You Cannot See

The Adult Adoption Gaslighting Act - Part 3 of 4.

You can’t remove a child from her mother, severing her entire family and history for all time without at least some paperwork.

I have issues. If you’re reading my columns, you’ll know where this is going.

In many ways, the New Zealand Adult Adoption Information Act represented a valve release to quell the rising discontent of forcibly separated mothers and their children.

But as with so much around human adoption – the Act was a piece of masterful gaslighting.

As recently as 2021, the Ministry of Justice said the Act set out the rules on how people who have been adopted and birth parents can access adoption information.

The problem is that the Ministry left out a vital word: identifying.

Because that is the only thing the Act delivers.

The name of a mother and the original name of her child. Unless, as we’ve seen, she has exercised her right to remove her name and your surname from your original birth certificate.

And that’s it.

The Act does not grant adopted people the intrinsic right to access their adoption records or any other information.

It expressly does not allow extended family, a sibling or grandparent, to search for their lost relative. Nor does it provide a defined pathway between adopted people and their families of origin.

But the messaging was so seamless that I was among the many who believed this “enlightened” legislation –this one piece of paper, my proof of life - was the only adoption information available.

A delusional idea.

You can’t remove a child from her mother, severing her entire family and history for all time without at least some paperwork.

Of course, there are records. Lots of them.

Three government departments hold paperwork that includes, but is not limited to:

· Correspondence between welfare officers / social workers,

· Correspondence to and from child welfare officers / social workers,

· Correspondence to and from doctors,

· Correspondence between adopters and child welfare officers,

· Child Welfare Officer report on adopter suitability,

· Maternity home records,

· Report on Child Available for Adoption,

· Authorisation in respect of adoption,

· Application for an Adoption Order,

· Notification of Birth

· Particulars Required for Registration,

· Notice to Register a Birth

· Details of an Illegitimate Birth,

· Adoption placement recommendation,

· Adopter referees,

· Adopter police reports,

· Letters to adopter’s lawyer from social workers,

· Letters between adopter’s lawyer and lawyer ostensibly appointed for the mother,

· Evidence of who engaged and paid the mothers lawyer,

· Consent and affidavit signed by the mother,

· Receipts,

· Notification of Adoption Order,

· Adoption Order,

· Transit and Summary sheet,

· Long-form birth record with additional information, such as who registered the child’s birth.

· And more – or less – depending on the various applications of the Privacy Act.

I know about these records because I spent years trying to prove I had a reason considered ‘special’ enough to make an application to the Family Court to open my records. In a future column, we’ll dive into the absurdity of ‘special reasons’.

Eventually, a persistently obstructive social worker slipped up and gave me that elusive ‘special reason.’ I went to court and ultimately obtained some of them under S23 of the Adoption Act.

However, to thwart full access to my records, Oranga Tamariki went to Crown Law for an opinion to override the court order and deny me six records. In future posts, we’ll also explore the weaponization of the Privacy Act and the Official Information Act.

Still, I have 54 pages of evidence that reveal the timeline and manoeuvring to create the circumstances of my acquisition. They reveal:

The steps taken by a child welfare officer 1300 kilometres away from where I was born.

The complete lack of welfare. No visit to my mother or any attempt to ascertain her freedom to choose adoption without coercion.

One adopter home visit at the last minute and one in the six months of interim adoption.

The demands made by my future adopters weeks before my birth and the outright fabrications made by a child welfare officer.

There is even one document that describes me as “this transaction.”

The physical work my mother was forced to do while incarcerated in the home of the “kindly” doctor.

The doctor’s correspondence with the child welfare officer.

The efforts of a Salvation Army matron and two sets of lawyers, neither engaged by my mother.

Investigative journalist Melanie Reid talks about the power of a “pull-together.”

Taken together, these documents expose manipulation, potential illegality, and coordinated collusion between the individuals involved and the state.

Without them, I had only vague suspicions. With them, those suspicions are substantiated by evidence of what has been deliberately concealed.

The identifying information available under the Adult Adoption Information Act delivers just one possibility – reunion – without ever addressing the profound complexities of that process. Or the fact that those we reunite with are, by law, not related to us. Our connections are considered no more than social.

The Act ignores the equal rights of adopted people to the same authentic identity as non-adopted people.

The Adoption Act and multiple associated Acts, the recent Royal Commission and the Ministry of Justice continue to deny the numerous structural, emotional, physical, and legislative restrictions endured only by adopted people.

One thing my records confirmed was that to obtain the child of an unsupported woman as a remedy for their infertility, my adoptive parents fabricated key aspects about themselves. Later, they lied about me and to me, with the state formally legitimising those falsehoods.

There is a unique weight to knowing that while most people honour their ancestors, over 100,000 New Zealanders were selected to be without antecedents. No stone circles, burial mounds, inherited silverware, family lore, portraits, or rituals handed down. The travails of existence are carried alone, unshared by previous generations. And nothing but a fake family tree to pass on to descendants.

The idea that the Adult Adoption Information Act 1985 provides access to adoption information is a networked distortion of reality. Like so much in human adoption, it is bureaucratic doublespeak, state-sanctioned, codified deception designed to manipulate the truth.

Recently, I was asked why all this information matters. Why is it so important? It’s in the past, after all.

The answer is simple – because that’s all there is.

Along with the permanent severing from all family, ancestors, and hereditary information – we, the adopted, are stripped of our birth stories.

We might as well have been gestated and born in an artificial womb, a lifeform in a pod, ala The Matrix.

Except, like everyone else, we were formed from viscous blood and lineage. We come from somewhere, and our histories are as complex and storied as any non-adopted person.

For so long, I was uncomprehending of the impact of this imposed identity.

I did not understand that to be supplied to stranger adults and forced to live as the child they might have had, to pretend I was someone else entirely, complete with a falsified identity, was a unique, peculiar, and damaging experience.

I did not understand the impact of knowing the State lied and continues to lie about me and to me. And to you, if you are an adopted person.

Is it any wonder some of us have issues?

So, ask me again why free access to all adoption records matters.

More (much more) to come.

Next up:

*As If The Child Came From My Own Body – How Adopters Responded to the Adult Adoption Information Act. Part 4 of 4.

Coming soon:

*The Adoption Information Manual – how they decide what to redact.

*All Reasons, Preferably Special Ones – how to make a S23 application.

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