My newborn daughter was stolen from me – and returned to steal my life.
In 1973, new mum Linda Davis, woke from a caesarean to discover that her newborn daughter was missing – one of 150,000 Australian babies stolen from young unmarried mothers under the Government’s illegal forced adoption practices of the era.
Today, more than fifty years later, Linda, 70, shares her horror story on a new true crime podcast aimed at shedding new light on the crimes Australia tried to hide.
“I went into hospital expecting to come home with my baby, only to find she had been earmarked for adoption and the only person who did not know about this, was me,” Linda reveals on the Somebody’s Daughter Podcast, which delves into the mass destruction caused by historic forced adoption practices on the lives of thousands of grieving mothers, their stolen children and their wider families.
In the podcast, hosted by Gold Coast radio personality Moyra Major and multi-award-winning true crime author Megan Norris, Linda reveals for the first time the trauma of being shamed, shunned and punished because she was pregnant out of wedlock.
Linda was seventeen in 1973 when she discovered she was four months pregnant from a single sexual encounter with her first boyfriend.
Immediately abandoned by her baby’s father, she was forced to spend her pregnancy confined to her bedroom to avoid the shame illegitimacy would bring on her family.
“I was made to stay there, even on Christmas Day, and only allowed out to attend medical appointments,’” she tells the podcast.
“My mother would bring the car into the garage and sneak me out to the doctor’s so nobody would see me.”
The shaming continued at the GP’s surgery where she was forced to sit away from the married mothers and ignored.
When Linda finally gave birth at Paddington Hospital in Sydney, her newborn daughter was immediately hidden in the hospital nursery where the teenager’s please to see her child fell on deaf ears.
‘I remember a social worker raising the subject of adoption, and when I refused, she told me I’d be the worst mother in the world,” she says.
Dosed on a powerful cocktail of psychotropic drugs, sedatives and drugs to suppress her breast milk, Linda was too drugged to remember signing her much-wanted baby for adoption.
“I returned home without my baby and the subject was never mentioned again – it was as if it hadn’t happened,” she says.
This unspoken grief plunged Linda onto a roller coaster of depression, anxiety and therapy as she struggled to come to terms with a loss too taboo to talk about.
It would be another two decades before a now married Linda was finally reunited with her long-lost daughter -though it did not bring the happy ending she’d dreamed of.
“She told me I was no more than an incubator and only wanted to meet me to find out her medical history,” Linda says, by now forty and expecting her second child.
Hoping to strengthen the bond with her adopted daughter, the family moved to Queensland where Linda later discovered her first born had embarked on an illicit affair with her husband that was about to bring her life crashing down.
“She took my husband, my family home – everything,” says Linda who immediately packed her bags and left, reliving her loss all over again.
To hear this tragic story of heartache, loss and the ultimate betrayal, tune into Somebody’s Daughter, a series created by Origins Australia (Supporting People Separated By Adoption).
“Forced Adoption remains one of the biggest human rights issues in Australian contemporary history, yet despite the 2012 National Apology from then Prime Minister Julia Gillard there has only been limited redress and nobody has ever been held accountable for what they did to us,” says Origins CEO Lily Arthur, whose newborn son was stolen from her in 1967.
“That’s why this podcast series is so unique – it gives a voice to casualties like myself and Linda, who were shamed into silence for years, in effect protecting the perpetrators of these crimes.”
Arthur, who also lives on the Gold Coast, has taken the fight for justice which is currently before the Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
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The Somebody's Daughter Podcast: Season 1
Hosted by Megan Norris and Moyra Major
Supported by Origins Australia
Audio Production & Sound Design by Wood Work Digital Studio
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
