Lawyers Prepare Class Action Over Forced Adoptions

ABC News Online - Claire Moodie Updated July 04, 2012 20:16:35

A law firm is preparing a class action for about 100 women who say they were forced to give up their babies during the 1960s and 70s.

Porters Lawyers, a Canberra-based firm, is representing the women who claim they were forced to give up their babies at a number of institutions and hospitals run by charities and church orders around Australia.

They include about a dozen women in Western Australia who claim their babies were taken away from them by the Catholic Church order of Sisters of Mercy.

Others, including the Church of England and the Presbyterian Church, are alleged to have been involved.

Lawyer Jason Parkinson says the legal action follows the recent Senate inquiry into forced adoptions.

"We'd like to get a legal resolution as well as getting them some proper psychological treatment," he said.

He says the class action hopes to secure financial compensation for the women.

"We'd like to get some kind of symmetry and just finalise the legal situation for them," he said.

"And, at the same time get them some proper counselling so that they can say that there was something awful that's happened in the past but finally there's been a resolution."

References

Courtesy of Australian Broadcasting Corporation, News, 2012

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