@prisonadoptee
I was born to an incarcerated mother. Many adoptees like me—especially those whose mothers were labeled 'juvenile delinquents'—remain unaware of their carceral birth because youth protection laws prevent disclosure. https://andrewmercerreformatory.org/
🥚In Canada, disclosure laws have protected the identities of “juvenile delinquents” since 1908. For many adoptees, the true story of their birth and adoption can remain hidden—without that knowledge, they can’t take the next step to access records through the courts.
cPTSD is common in #SixtiesScoop adoptees and survivors of child welfare. More health supports are needed to treat our #adoption and relational racism trauma now 🥚
www.erudit.org/en/journals/...
Justice for Girls promotes social, economic and environmental justice and an end to violence in the lives of Canadian teenage girls who live in poverty.
Learn more here: www.justiceforgirls.org/about/our-mi...
🥚Where did the babies placed for adoption come from? The maternity home scandal—𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐲𝐞𝐭 𝐟𝐮𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐝—including girls in asylums and the Mercer Reformatory exposes a hidden history of state control, confinement, and forced adoption—shielded behind the YCJA and the CYFSA.
🥚Children’s Aid Society, couple in murder trial and doctors sued for $4M by family of 2 brothers.
#CYFSA
#adoption
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Closes today March 5, 2026, at 3:16 p.m. (EDT)
www.cbc.ca/news/indigen...
Error should be CYFSA
🥚Where did the babies placed for adoption come from? The maternity home scandal, not yet fully told, and the girls at Mercer Reformatory expose a hidden history of state control, confinement, and forced adoption—shielded behind the YCJA and the CFSA.
🥚Do you really know the truth about your adoption? 👇
Proposed $60 Million Settlement for Former Residents of Ontario Training Schools
www.newswire.ca/news-release...
🥚Do you really know your whole adoption story?
Honestly, most unwed mothers went to hospitals to deliver because they were NOT from families of significant means. Other girls were literally incarcerated in maternity homes because they were criminalized or were wards of CAS/OTS, with the government paying the full rates. 2/2
🧵Where did the money come from? The witness fumbles her way through the question but does admit it came from girls from families of significant means and from the provincial government.
But why the provincial government if families were paying? See next thread.
1/2 🥚
🥚Do you really know the truth about your adoption in Ontario? The most marginalized & vulnerable women and girls—incarcerated in various institutions under a web of federal and provincial laws—are erased from the narrative about the forced adoption of their children.
#HIddenHistories
Coming soon...
🥚The maternity home scandal & adoption are far more complex than many realize. Too often, the story is told by those whose families had significant means—not by those who were criminalized or wards of CAS or OTS. The most marginalized voices remain unheard under CYFSA and YCJA.
More coming soon.
This includes any facility—even maternity homes or asylums. If a juvenile (now called a youth or young person) was criminalized or a ward of a Children’s Aid Society, disclosure laws can block this info from adoption records. Do you know the whole truth about your adoption?
🥚Reading Criminalized Mothers, Criminalizing Mothering. In my experience, most women incarcerated at the Mercer Reformatory lost their children to adoption. Alarming: youth disclosure laws bar info to adoptees if their mother was criminalized under 18.
#HiddenHistories
It’s a class action—interesting!! I will never forget the day I received my file and found out I had two other siblings, and a third—the firstborn—whom they never told me about. Two siblings were adopted together, and I, being the baby, went elsewhere. archive.ph/Ftke6
🥚Who was in maternity homes? Wards of the Children’s Aid Society, Ontario Training School girls, and girls the Salvation Army diverted from a sentence. Disclosure laws hide wardship and sentencing records. Other girls? Parents of means. The truth about maternity homes is not being told correctly.
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I know I've flooded my TL with news sources about my dear friend, Iranian adoptee sister, and now DHS target.
If you want to help, contact her California Representative Young Kim at 714-984-2440 and give her an earful! This is an injustice, and Rep. Kim can get involved. Make your voices heard! 🥚
🥚The Child Welfare Act, 1965 provides that the Children's Aid Society gains temporary or permanent custody of a child when a parent is imprisoned. In the year ending March 1964, 559 women and girls were imprisoned in Mercer; once CAS took custody, it was often difficult for mothers to regain it.
Yahoo has a piece on my Iranian adoptee friend who is in the removal process! Please share!! 🥚
www.yahoo.com/news/article...
🥚Criminalize & disappear a mother to make it look like a no show for a court hearing regarding her child
• your mom had been...charged with being intoxicated... went to Fort Saskatchewan jail for two months
• that’s why there was a two month period we didn’t hear from her
www.nfb.ca/film/foster_...
Incorrigible: A Film About Velma Demerson
In 1939, Velma Demerson was sentenced to one year in prison for her relationship with a Chinese man. Decades later, she fought against injustices suffered by her and other "incorrigible" women in Canada.
2/2
www.knowledge.ca/program/inco...
🧵🥚Want to hear an unbelievable story? Let us tell you Velma’s.
Many pregnant women and girls, like Velma, were incarcerated under the Female Refuges Act in institutions such as industrial refuges, the Andrew Mercer Reformatory, and even maternity homes. Full story in thread. 1/2
vimeo.com/728649147
