Bruce Salisbury, of Taranaki, says nuns at a Wellington hostel took him off his parents. Photo / John Weekes
Bruce Salisbury, of Taranaki, says nuns at a Wellington hostel took him off his parents. Photo / John Weekes
Bruce Salisbury, taken at birth in 1955 and adopted, seeks answers from the nuns involved.
Salisbury discovered his biological parents at age 36 and claims the church obstructed earlier reunions.
The Sisters of St John of God, lacking records, express regret but offer limited assistance.
A man taken from his parents on the day he was born and later adopted by a wealthy family says he wants answers from the nuns who took him and other babies.
“In 1955 the nuns stole me off my mother. She saw me for about15 seconds,” Bruce Salisbury, of Taranaki, said.
He has been on a quest for years to get more answers about his early days, to hold the Catholic Church to account and raise awareness about the so-called orphanages.
He said the Salisbury family adopted him after he was put in the care of the Sisters of St John of God at a Wellington hostel.
The Salisburys were wealthy and linked to the Tegel chicken business.
But he was only able to track down his biological parents when he was 36, and it turned out he was one of many children born out of wedlock and taken into so-called orphanages.
He said in the late 1980s or early 1990s he went to the Ombudsman to help find his original birth certificate.
The then Ombudsman helped him track down his biological parents.
He said he discovered his mother Phillipa Ricket was Ngāpuhi and a devout Catholic, and his father was Robin James Landy, a red-bearded Scottish sailor.
It transpired that when he was born in 1955, two nuns from the Sisters of St John of God were in attendance.
“My father was working away at sea, never to see his first-born son for another 36 years.
“As soon as the umbilical cord was severed, so was my relationship with my mother.”
Salisbury said he was able in the early 90s to meet half his immediate biological family but then his health deteriorated.
He said he had suffered several major heart attacks.
“I’ve got pancreatic cancer, which I can’t believe hasn’t knocked me over.”
Salisbury said he should not have been taken from his parents and be denied the right to see his family for so long.
“This is wrong. It should never have happened.”
As a child, the Salisburys never hid the adoption from him – they were as Anglo-Saxon as could be, and he was visibly Māori, so there was no point pretending.
He said his father tried tracking him down decades ago but believes the church obstructed those efforts.
“He tried to get me back and they said, ‘No, because you conceived out of wedlock, that’s the price you pay’.”
And he has also learned the Sisters of St John of God left New Zealand for Western Australia.
He said his approaches to the Catholic Church in New Zealand were largely fruitless, but he has been getting some help from the office of local MP Carl Bates.
The Sisters of St John of God, writing to the MP’s office from Perth, said Salisbury’s grievance was the only one raised with the order in relation to the Wellington hostel.
“One issue for us has been that all the sisters who were involved in the hostel for unmarried mothers in Lower Hutt between October 1954 and August 1965 have passed away,” the order added in a letter last July.
“We also do not hold any records in relation to persons who accessed the hostel. Notwithstanding this, we are of course sorry for the hurt that Mr Salisbury is experiencing and we have tried to respond to his concerns.”
Bruce Salisbury of Taranaki is on a quest to find out more about his early years after he says nuns took him from his parents when he was born. Photo / John Weekes
The order sent a statement to the Herald.
“Sisters of St John of God have been supporting an individual who contacted us three years ago seeking information and responses to concerns relating to his adoption from a hostel in Lower Hutt in the 1950s, which was administered by the sisters for a decade,” a spokeswoman said.
“We understand the importance of this information and while we have no records relating to the hostel, we have been engaging openly to support him in accessing records and navigate a complex setting with limited record-keeping.
“We remain committed to providing further assistance, where we can, in his search for answers.”
Salisbury said it was hard to believe all records had just vanished.
“There’s got to be a bloody record somewhere.”
He said he was grateful the Salisburys had adopted him.
He said he wanted redress, and although compensation might be part of that, redress also meant an admission the church was wrong to take him as a baby, and the Crown was wrong to be complicit in that.
“At the end of the day, I was stolen by the Catholics like an African slave.”
Bruce Salisbury of Taranaki says nuns took him off his parents before he was adopted by a wealthy family. Photo / John Weekes
A religious historian said other children born out of wedlock were taken into the so-called orphanages and young mothers were heavily pressured into giving up their babies.
“Orphan never meant orphan. The parents were quite keen to remove the embarrassment. The families were just desperately anxious to hide evidence that their child could have been naughty and had a child out of wedlock,” Professor Peter Lineham told the Herald.
“A few might have been but effectively the orphanages were staging places for adoption.”
Lineham said in those days nuns often put significant pressure on young pregnant Catholic women.
“It would have been standard. They would go into the home quite a long time before the child was born. A lot of the unmarried mothers would work hard doing washing or other menial jobs.”
Asked if children like Salisbury were stolen, Lineham said: “Certainly there were significant pressures put on every mother who had a child out of wedlock.”
It was often taken for granted at the time, Lineham said.
“They were in effect baby farms,” Lineham said. “Effectively what happened is the nuns took in work and then got the pregnant mothers. Typically, the unmarried mother would come into the convent, maybe up to a month before the birth so she was out of sight, there’d be no social scandal.
“They would give birth in the convent then surrender the child, sign papers... They would never be permitted to find out where their child was sent.”
Lineham said at that time it was widely believed the best thing for the child was to forget their biological parents as quickly as possible.
“It was only really in the 1960s that opinions began to change.
“It varies from order to order but after 1955 they were required to keep records. I don’t think you can make a single generalisation. Some were better than others,” Lineham said.
“Unfortunately, the simple situation is that we’re talking about thousands of children probably in this period of New Zealand’s history. That was simply established practice.
“We can think this is a crazy practice, looking back at it,” he said. “It was required that the mother give consent.”
But in practice many of these mums were poor and had few real choices, he said.
“For wealthy children, there were significantly better options available but the adoption procedure would still go the same way.
“Methodist and Anglican orphanages carried out the same proceedings on behalf of people from their churches.”
So did the Salvation Army, he said, which ran Bethany Homes in Grey Lynn’s Dryden St.
