My heart goes out to you Kerri. I was adopted in the 1950’s and like you was subjected to a great deal of abuse. The assumption always seems to be that adopted children are loved.  After all, weren’t unmarried mothers asked how they could be so selfish as to want to keep their children when there were families out there wanting to give them loving homes. My memories go back to the age of two and a half and there is not one happy thing I can remember. I was so alone, fearful and powerless, tormented, abused and manipulated by my adoptive parents and brothers. We have rightly had apologies to stolen aboriginal children, child migrants, children in state care and mothers whose children were stolen and adopted out. We are to have an enquiry into child sexual abuse in institutions and by the clergy. I was stolen, I was sexually abused but nobody mentions me because I was adopted into a “loving” family.