Somebody’s Daughter

On our final episode of the season, we resume our conversation with Queensland adoptee Michael Costello, whose quest to unravel the truth behind his horrific childhood has left him with more questions than answers. We hear how after reuniting with his mum, they embarked on a fight to turn back the clock, overcoming a mountain of red tape in order to be legally recognised as mother and son again. -...

When Michael Costello made his debut at the Women’s Hospital in Brisbane in August 1970 he was immediately separated from his teenage mother before she could even hold him and spent the next three months in the hospital nursery crying and alone in his crib. A sickly infant who had never known what it was like to feel a mother’s love, Michael was transferred to a children’s home a...

The heady romance that blossomed between Cameron Horn and his high school sweetheart, Mary was a real-life Romeo and Juliet love story with an equally tragic ending. When the 20-year-old university student discovered the love of his life was expecting his baby, the lovebirds agreed they would marry and raise their love-child together, living the dream on Sydney’s northern beaches. Sadly, tho...

Between 1949 and 1990 more than 150,000 babies were systematically stolen from young vulnerable mothers in hospitals and maternity homes around Australia under the Government’s historic forced adoption policies. In 1969, seventeen-year-old Wendy Pankhurst’s beautiful newborn baby was one of them. Distressed and sedated, the grieving teenager was separated from other mothers at the smal...

In this episode we welcome adoptee, Colleen Barnard who was born in the same Magdalene Home in Brisbane where last week’s guest, Lily Arthur, was incarcerated for the crime of being pregnant and unwed. Colleen describes her adoption journey as a Magdalene baby, the challenges of finding her own identity in a manufactured family and how the search to find her mother took her halfway around th...

In this episode we welcome back Lily Arthur, CEO of Origins Australia, long term political activist and best-selling author whose book, Prisoner of the State, gives a voice to 150,000 Australian unmarried mothers whose babies were systematically stolen from them under the Commonwealth Government’s past forced adoption practices. Today, Lily shines a light on the unlawful use of dangerous psy...

On this episode we continue our conversation with Moses Farrow, the adopted son of US actress Mia Farrow and Director Woody Allen, as he exposes the truth behind the multi-billion dollar adoption industry - a euphemism for a criminal global child supply market in which babies are commodities to be sold, trafficked and abused in one of the biggest human rights crimes of our generation. At a time wh...

In 1980, two-year-old Moses Farrow was among the 200,000 babies and children taken from South Korean orphanages and children’s homes and sent overseas - sold to new families who promised to give them the sort of lives they could never have in their own country. Moses, who had been born with Cerebral Palsy, was flown to the United States where he was welcomed into the large, blended family of...

Somebody’s Daughter – Someone Else’s Child This season, the fight for justice is far from over. We hear more heartbreaking stories from the survivors of forced adoption, about loss, lies and cover ups. We go global, speaking with some of the brave individuals leading the crusade for justice and truth. Join us, and help give a voice to the hundreds of thousands of parents and adop...

In the final episode of the season, Megan and Moyra are joined by the Honorable Naheem Mushin, former Family Court Justice of 21 years, who was appointed by the Attorney General to head the committee investigating the practice of forced adoption and the claims being made by so many women, children and extended families. He travelled the country multiple times over 2 years to hear submissions in pe...

Rosalie Wilson shares her own unique experience, firstly living in a home where her mother adopted other children. She recalls how her mother had given birth to two girls (herself & her sister), but instead wanted boys - so she simply decided to adopt one she liked from the public hospital in Melbourne. Rosalie then goes on to describe the twist of fate that led to her being for...

Megan & Moyra are joined by Sophia Fletcher, who was forcibly adopted during this period. Born in Brisbane in 1962, she was removed from her birth mother - who she has never found despite 40 years of searching. She speculates that her mother may have been an illegitimate child herself, making it incredibly difficult to connect the lines of her family history. Sophia shares her subsequent exper...

In 1969, Queensland teenager Dianne Wells was in love and dreaming of a happy new life with her first boyfriend where she’d have children and a home of her own. Tragically, those dreams came crashing down when the sixteen-year-old discovered she was pregnant out of wedlock. Abandoned by her partner, and shamed by both families, Dianne was sent to live with strangers in another town where she...

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 sto...

Between 1940 and the late 1980’s, 250,000 newborn babies were surrendered for adoption – most of them unlawfully stolen from young unmarried mothers in one of the most shocking mass violations of human rights in contemporary Australian history. One of those babies was Lily Arthur’s eight-day-old son. In this episode, Megan Norris and Moyra Major speak at length with Lily about he...

Between 1959 and the late 1980’s more than 250,000 Australian babies were surrendered for adoption – most of them illegally stolen at birth from young, vulnerable unmarried mothers. Now, with a campaign underway to expose the dark truth behind the crimes Australia tried to hide, veteran Gold Coast radio personality, Moyra Major and award-winning author, Megan Norris, launch a controver...

Coming soon: 150,000 stolen babies - The truth behind the crimes Australia tried to hide. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.