‘I pleaded every day to see her. She was not a mistake’

CAROL HELMRICH is adamant she didn’t give her baby away for adoption in 1968. ”We couldn’t give our baby away because we weren’t given our baby. I pleaded every day to see her,” she says.

When she went into labour as a 16-year-old at the Paddington Women’s Hospital, her 15-year-old boyfriend left work and tried to ”sneak-in” to be with her. ”He was outside my room, but they had security take him away,” Mrs Helmrich recalls. ”I never saw him and he never saw the baby.”

After a 17-hour labour she was given a brief moment of skin contact with the infant as a nurse laid the baby girl on her stomach. But the Bondi teenager was prevented from even holding the newborn, with nurses whisking the baby away ”to clean her up”.

Mrs Helmrich was drugged. A day later, a bureaucrat turned up at her bed to demand she sign adoption papers. She said no. ”I woke up in a ward with mothers with babies. I was constantly crying. They just left me there,” she says. ”They came back constantly for the next three days. They told me I couldn’t provide for this baby.”

Mrs Helmrich’s boyfriend had a job, and wanted to marry her. ”We could provide for the child. It was not a problem. My daughter was not a mistake. I knew there was a chance I could become pregnant,” she says.

Instead, their lives were torn apart. Her boyfriend was reported to police after she attended her first pre-natal examination, and the social worker automatically marked her papers ”baby for adoption”. He lost his job, and was placed in the custody of his father who refused to let the couple meet.

Decades later, he was listed on the sex offenders register because of the under-age sex charge, and had to challenge the listing in court to keep his taxi driver’s licence.

Mrs Helmrich supported his court challenge, and the pair, who are married to other people, kept in contact. Yesterday she phoned him after the federal government report on forced adoptions was released.

Mrs Helmrich is angry at what happened. She eventually signed the adoption papers because she was told there was no other choice. ”They treated me like a criminal the whole time I was in the hospital,” she says. She discovered her daughter had been kept in the nursery for three weeks, and she had been lied to when she was told the baby was already gone.

She hopes the report will help build understanding – particularly among the children adopted out – of what the health system forced unwed mothers to do.

Her daughter has refused contact. Mrs Helmrich and the father hope she will change her mind.

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