Transcribe, Restrict, Redact, Refuse, Deflect and Evade
Personal stories of adopted people attempting to access their records.
Part 2.
For the adopted person, the desire to know can be overwhelming. We don’t just want bare facts – the names of our mothers and fathers, of siblings and grandparents – we want to connect, to belong, to understand the story of why and how we came to be and came to be adopted.
The NZ Ministry for Children website provides instructions for requesting information:
“As an adopted person, once you turn 20, you can legally apply for information about your birth parents. We can help you with this process and with requesting other information about your adoption from our records.”
Similarly, beneath the heading, Finding Your Birth Parents,” the Aotearoa New Zealand Government website says:
“If you were born in New Zealand and you’re adopted, once you turn 20, you can request your original birth certificate and any information about your adoption records held by Oranga Tamariki Ministry for Children”.
The Ministry for Children, in turn, advises regarding their records:
You can ask Oranga Tamariki Ministry for Children for any information they have about your adoption. To do this, contact an adoption social worker and give them a copy of your original birth certificate. They’ll find your adoption records and give you any details recorded at the time of your placement.
The New Zealand Family Doctor website continues the theme:
“If you are an adopted adult, or the birth parent of an adopted child, the Adult Information Act 1985 gives you the right to information about the adoption.”
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is also concerned with access to information. Partnered with the Office of the Ombudsman, they joined the International Right to Know movement. Privacy Commissioner John Edwards said of International Right to Know Day:
“… the right to access government-held information is an important human right, necessary for the enjoyment and expression of other human rights.”
Perhaps it is repetition that has blurred reality to the point that multiple government departments appear convinced by their own constructed narrative.
Is this deliberate obfuscation, or is failure so systemic that no one comprehends the distinction between information about records and the records themselves?
In 2022, Angie McGahey requested assistance from the Ministry for Children in locating her records. They sent her a handout titled “A Basic Guide to Searching in New Zealand”. It suggested using the phone book and heading to the library for “access to online resources”.
The document also suggested visiting the local registry office, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, NZ Post Shops, and National Archives in Mount Wellington, despite this location having closed seventeen years prior. Angie says the document was clearly written over twenty years ago:
“It is utterly disrespectful to provide this to me. When I received it from the adoption service supervisor, I was appalled and horrified that this outdated document was all they had to offer adoptees. It made me feel very hurt, humiliated, angry, and extremely unsupported. The document is so out of date that it was obvious to me that they are incompetent and unable, or unwilling, to provide adequate support to adoptees. I am utterly dumbfounded that the Ministry website states, “We’ll help and support you where we can.” Clearly, that is not true. It’s tantamount to dereliction of duty and a clear breach of their statutory duty.”
Claire McCarthy is in her 50s. She has been seeking information about her adoption since she was 19. When she requested her files from the Ministry for Children in 2020, she described the outcome as a “big fail”. She received three pages of transcribed summary and no copies of the original documents. In her next attempt, the ministry provided ten blacked-out pages:
“The social worker agreed the system is archaic and it is wrong that she can view all my records when I can’t. She stated that this was in accordance with their service policy.”
Bev Reweti, a Māori woman adopted into a Pākehā family, began trying to access her adoption records in 1981. She has documented dozens of exchanges with social workers and interactions with the Ombudsman, the Privacy Commissioner, and the judicial courts in her attempts to access her file.
In August 2022, she thought she had finally succeeded. The Ministry for Children sent her a single document – a copy of an index card recording her birth. Bev says her initial euphoria on seeing the index card, her proof of life, was quickly replaced by the feeling of rejection and being infantilised and patronised:
“I’m 66, and they won’t allow me to view the file they have, which is under my adopted family’s file. They’d have me believe there’s nothing much there. But surely I should be the one to make that decision.”
The photocopy of the index card came with a one-page summary compiled by a staff member who said:
“There is very limited information about your adoption because, in 1956, the requirement was enough information to fill an index card.”
The team member, with full access to Bev’s adoption records, then acknowledged the ministry did hold a family file:
“Family adoption files contain substantial information about the adoptive applicants and information about any other adoptions that occurred in the family. For this reason, we are unable to provide a copy of the “entire file” as that would be providing you with information about other people, and we are required to maintain their privacy.”
When commenting on the ministry’s use of transcribed summaries in place of actual historical records, Bev says:
“I have to source ‘true certified copies’ of any original documents in my quest to have my father added to my original birth certificate, but they can basically give me anything a social worker feels like.” The social worker ends her cover letter by asking: “Is there something specific you are looking for in terms of information?”
On a private adoptee Facebook group, eleven adopted people provided their experiences attempting to access their adoption information from Oranga Tamariki:
· The ministry told me there was a veto on my file. Later, when I met my birth mother, she hadn’t put one on. She wrote a supporting letter with me to the Family Court, where we obtained a Court Order. We discovered lies and changes to documents that led to my illegal adoption. How many others have they done this to?
· I recall being shown (not given) a single piece of paper, nothing much I didn’t already know, but I can’t recall much more detail. I know what was shown was very limited and shed no new light on anything.
· Contacted them in 2004 after obtaining my original birth cert. Got a printout with the same information from the little orange book that I came with (like I was a Cabbage patch doll). Tried again this year. The ministry did a big dramatic yes, we will get all your info. Thought I’d struck the jackpot. Had to go in to receive it like a 2-year-old! Social worker gave me a big spiel about how distressing it can be to get your file. It was the same printout from 2004. She said that’s all I’m entitled to, and my real file was going back to archives. I want to go to court, but from reading others’ experiences, I feel that is futile!
· I had to go to their offices to receive a 2-page summary of info. The social worker had googled my birth relatives’ names and printed out what they had found. I felt patronised.
· I’m in the process of getting my files though they keep stalling. Last week they rang to give another delay. Saying they needed more time to check with BDM as to whether the person mentioned by my mother is alive or dead – even though I’ve met my biological father and mother. I asked if she confirm his name is Geoff, as that’s what I’ve been told for the last 33 years. She said she couldn’t and was bound by privacy. I can’t believe how hard they are making it. I’m guessing when I do get my files, they will be blacked out.
· I am getting my records from the ministry, but first they are being redacted by someone in Palmerston North. I was taken by surprise at the process. I didn’t really investigate it and just emailed them to ask for my file, naively thinking they would just give it to me.
· I walked into a Social Welfare office. They said my file was not accessible. They acted like it was weird that I was wanting to access my records. Then they said there was a veto on the file, but they didn’t look it up, so now I realise it was just something they would say to put you off. I eventually found my mother. She said there was never a veto. Also, the orange book in my birth book is half fiction.
· Last year, I was able to see mine (requested more than once, after a couple of attempts and quite a wait, and still unsure if it has all the info). When I applied for my original birth certificate a few years ago, I was relieved to receive it and see my first name and a little background info. But I was curious to read that “some personal information relating to others has been excluded”. I tried again a couple of years ago, to learn my whakapapa and the natural curiosity around heritage and genealogy. This time I received my original birth certificate again and a little more info (I wasn’t adopted until seven weeks), but still the same sentence of some information being excluded showed up in the reply.
· It has been a long, drawn-out process, not sure what if anything will be revealed. It should not be this difficult, convoluted and expensive. I have been assigned several social workers over the years to “look into and analyse my file(s)” to “decide” if the courts should release them.
In 2015, Rose, an adopted person attempting to get her father’s name on her pre-adoption birth certificate, gained a court order to inspect her adoption records under section 23 of the Adoption Act 1955 and to view records held by the Ministry for Children. She contacted the then Child, Youth and Family (CYF) seven times over a fifteen-month period. Each time, they replied that her file was “under review”. It turned out her file had not been forwarded from her birth region to her local courthouse. Eventually, five months after discovering this, CYF invited her to view her file:
“When I arrived, I was instructed that no copies were to be made. I copied every single word by hand. I held up the supervising court staff for over an hour. A few months later, in March 2017, I reapplied to see my file again to check that I’d recorded everything accurately. I waited another four months. Apparently, my file was not sent to a city archive centre as previously informed but returned to my birthplace.”
Rose says the inadequate tracking of her file was distressing. It heightened her anxiety around the possibility of it getting lost or mislaid in transit:
“This time, there were 18 additional pages. Again, “no copies are to be made”, and I was not allowed to take photos. When you include my experience with Internal Affairs trying to get my birth father’s name added to my original birth certificate, they are bleeding our hearts dry. Not knowing is far worse than knowing. I believe they will never offer an apology for the heartache and utter frustration inflicted by not releasing our records. Or allow us to own our identity. We are jumping through hoops, begging and pleading to satisfy judges who may interpret special grounds narrowly while others more liberally. Our birth parents are passing away. We are passing away.”
Rose also spoke of the invasion of her privacy, given the many individuals and organisations who can view her personal records: “They talk about privacy, but what about my privacy?”
The policy of redactions not only affects adopted people. Annette Cuthbert sought information about her mother, who was adopted. Annette, who is 61, explained that adoption affected her mother in such deeply negative ways that it affected the whole family.
Her mother was adopted five years before the Adoption Act 1955 came into being. While the intergenerational impacts of human adoption remain largely unexplored, the social worker assisting Annette wrote, “I’ve gathered and assessed the information you’ve asked for.”
Annette says she was excited to receive the password-protected file. She opened it to discover all three pages entirely blacked out:
“They gave me a password as if there was something important to read. My mother died 18 years ago; her adopted and bio-family all died over half a century ago. There is no one left to be offended. There’s just me and my sister. This is like a bad joke. My mother was adopted over 73 years ago.”
The secrecy eliminates the experience, structures and functions of human adoption from our collective history.
We rarely engage with the social, utilitarian, and eugenic undertones that support human adoption.
This history of loss is hiding in plain sight. Our cultural understanding of adoption is shaped, controlled and viewed through the lens of the State and its faith-based facilitators, with their hidden histories, moral certitudes and codes of legal secrecy.
Human adoption is so entrenched in secrecy that every adopted person’s story is a runaway train cut loose from its origins.
And it feels as though, as Craig Finn sings - “I’m riding a train I’m not on.”
Craig Finn, “Messing with the Settings”, YouTube video
Image “Paperwork” by Tom Burstyn, print available. DM me for details.
Adoption Deconstructed© is copyrighted. Please DM me, Dr Barbara Sumner, if you wish to reprint.
It makes me so angry to read these stories of patronising, patriarchal denial. Adoptees deserve so much better. We’ve had so much taken from us, and yet the truth still remains hidden and “protected” from so many. I cannot fathom why. Thank you, Barbara, for your relentless dedication to the pursuit of the truth, and your incomparably brilliant writing.
What is most glaring to me is the (NZ), 'Ministry for CHILDREN'.
Similarly in AUS, adoption records are held by state 'Child Protective Services' (WA) for example.
Why are our records held by govt departments that see people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, as if perpetual children? Who is being "protected" and who "excluded" by an archaic legal construct which denies our adulthood/citizenship?
If our parents are deceased why aren't our records automatically made available to us - transferred to us, upon request - completely un-redacted?
Because...we would then see "other parties" who are also protected by adoption law. We would be able to analyse the content and take legal action against the state and/or religious institutions, whose employees were in the business of covert human trafficking.
We would see the illegal actions of those who manipulated our mothers - the "almoners", the doctors, the hospital/mother-baby-home staff and the many adopters who were "given" babies despite evidence of their inadequacies.
FYI Barb, I am currently preparing to apply to CPS in WA for my paternal (deceased) sister's Adoption file. But, I first have to sign a legal document so that a search can be done by authorities in NSW - for my "putative" father's name in my adoption file.
I can only apply for my sister's WA file IF my "putative" father's name appears somewhere in my NSW file.
The required document makes a legal declaration that I, 'will not contact him or any of his family'. But, I cannot swear that I will not contact my deceased father - who's name I already know - nor any of his family - my other (deceased) sister and brother in Greece. Additionally and adding to the absurdity, his grandchildren in WA are NOT (legally) his family, because their mother was adopted.
I have known my father's identity since 1988 (my mother told me his name) and I have since proven his paternity via Ancestry DNA with one of my WA sister's sons. But to get my sister's Adoption file (she was taken from our then single father when she was 5.5yrs of age) I must PROVE to CPS WA that my sister and I have the same father.
I have his DC - because he died in 1986.
So, I'm not going to sign the document - it is not only inadequate but nonsensical. I have ALL four of my parents DC's - my sister's DC - my mother's medical records upon which my father's name is written on several pages and I am going to apply without signing the blatantly inappropriate legal document - declaring that I will not contact my deceased father.
It's a joke and oddly enough, I now find it FUNNY that we know so much more than all of the "Departments of Secrets" (crediting Sue S for the term).
Adoption did not remove the stigma of our "illegitimacy". Adoption has made us forever "bastards" - forever fatherless - forever, "children" by the law and forever "suspect" - like bastards of the 14th and 15th centuries - we are forever "outside the law".