Adoption
1999
I
remember being adopted to Fetcher’s at St.
Joseph Orphanage.
Just
look at this piece of paper. Is this all I was worth as a child? To be dumped
from one person to another, and when they were tired of me, they took me back
to the orphanage, for more torment and pain.
I
wasn’t even given a chance. I was only there 5
days! I have now been ripped apart. I feel like a little girl again, going
through that abuse again, but this time it’s
different. It's heart wrenching. I also asked for my medical records and any
other records they had about me, and Sister Teresa told me that they had no
medical records about me at all. I have copied it as it was on the paper, it
was as though it was a photocopy out of a notepad. And there is the evidence
that it was not my mother that handed me over to the orphanage. I was taken
away from my mother, as she told her children years later. See the name:
Ann
Shirley. WHO AM I??
The
feelings we had when no-one picked us, are something that I will never be able
to explain, but I felt it again on 4 May 1999. I phoned Sister Teresa in Auckland, the
Good Shepherd nun, and requested details of the time I spent at St. Joseph’s orphanage. I never expected what I received in the
mail to my request, and I experienced again the feelings of rejection when I
read the report.
873
THOMASON. ANN SHIRLEY
Admitted
30 – 5 – 1941. Born 31 – 3 – 1941 at
Wellington. Mother Joan
Thomason, Nelson.
Baptised St.
Ann’s, Newtown, Wellington by
Rev. J.
Kelly 1 – 5 – 1941 Mary
Fitzgerald
Sponsor.
First Holy Communion 8 – 12 – 1950.
Brought by Mrs. Boyle,
St. Vincent de Paul Society
Wellington.
Left
31 – 12 – 1946 for adoption by Mrs.
Fletcher. Returned
5
– 1 – 1947. Left for Nazareth House 14 – 5 – 1951.
***
This
is all I have of my 24 years in the two catholic church orphanages. How does it
make me feel? Worthless. No health
records, No school records. I wrote to
the Good Shepherd Order of nuns and this is what they sent me in 1999, it was
all they had about me. Not even my First Holy Communion Certificate did they
send me. Not even my Birth Certificate.
I was nothing, I meant nothing to them. I was worth nothing to them, just
another unwanted girl of the catholic church orphanages.
Nazareth
House had a little note as well, They had not a word in it about my time spent
down in Timaru with the Taylor family at 15years old when I was raped by a
priest. It was well known that every person who came to the door to take their
children out, or who had come to take other children away for the day had to
sign their name in a book and the name of the children they took with them
which was left at the from desk. There was always a nun at the front door she
answered the phone as well as the front door, a girl or two work there as well. The front door was well attended and no
one could get in or out as they had to ring the door bell and the door was
opened for them, the front door was kept locked at all times. Ann
***
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Survivors of abuse in Australian children's homes and orphanages have called for a new national strategy to secure the release of their own historic personal records held by churches and charities.
As the landmark royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse prepares to hand its report to the federal government by Christmas, a national summit has discussed how to give a voice to adults whose lives have been impacted by failings of record keeping and archiving systems in institutions around the country.
Care Leavers Australasia Network chief executive Leonie Sheedy said many survivors, including those who have given evidence to the royal commission process, have spent years trying to track down records about their time in institutional care.
http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/4660909/abuse-survivors-want-their-own-personal-records-handed-over-from-institutions/?cs=7