We farewelled Jennie on Friday evening at Leichardt Town Hall 11/02/2023. In attendance were members of The NSW Memorial Committee, the Apology Alliance, which included myself: Dr Christine Cole as well as family, and her many friends.

The short video below are a few words I spoke to Jennie’s contributions to our cause on the evening.

Jennie was a warrior for the cause of gaining justices for the mothers whose babies were kidnapped at birth then placed with strangers via illegal adoptions.

Jennie began an organisation in the mid 1980s, ‘Mothers for Contact’, which fought to have the files of mothers and their stolen adult children opened. This enabled them after many years of separation the ability to find each other. She went on to fight for the exposure of the brutal practices employed by social workers, doctors, nurses and all those who worked in the adoption industry illegally taking the babies from single mothers to give them to married infertile couples She fought, corrupt medical staff, bureaucrats and all those engaged in Australia’s biggest child trafficking racket, to make them accountable for their crimes and to gain justice for all those they intentionally harmed.

Jennie wrote numerous submissions to Government and fought as an Apology Alliance member to gain all the state and the federal apologies. This campaign was successful and we received a fulsome apology from Prime Minister Julia Gillard, March 21, 2013. The Prime Minister acknowledged the brutality of the separation of mothers from their newborns and the lifelong pain caused to both because of the misguided governmental policy and the illegal acts of those working in the adoption industry An industry that became Australia’s greatest child trafficking network – both government and medically sanctioned.

Jennie was part of the NSW Memorial Committee organising a Statue of a Mother and Babe to be placed in Hyde Park. Unfortunately she passed away before seeing the project completed and the Memorial installed.

Jennie presented at Sydney Museum to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the NSW Apology, September 13, 2022. She gave me a book of poems she had edited and published by Mothers for Contact in 1994. I will be posting the poems over the next few weeks. Thank you Jennie.

Jennie’s contribution to the survivors of illegal adoption cannot be overstated. She worked for decades for justice and we who are part of the Apology Alliance will carry on her legacy. She cannot be .replaced, but she will be remembered.