Releasing the Past: Mothers’ Stories of Their Stolen Babies (2008) was edited by Australian academic Christine Cole & funded by the NSW Dept of Community Services.

The book resulted from a NSW parliamentary inquiry examining forced adoptions between the 1950s & 1990s & explores how unwed mothers in maternity hospitals were systematically coerced, drugged, shamed, and lied to so their infants could be taken for adoption.

Releasing the Past highlights lifelong grief & trauma experienced by both the surrendered babies & their biological mothers whose legal rights were routinely ignored.