These girls were erased and hidden from society—and still are, their records locked behind youth disclosure laws. The true story of maternity homes remains untold.

🧵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 🥚

🥚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.

🥚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

As Mercer babies & descendants retrieve records, we uncovered a document in the Mercer Reformatory files: the Children of Unmarried Parents Act (CUPA). Its stats were used to track babies born to unwed mothers in maternity homes who were forcibly adopted. Our findings on these stats are coming soon.

From 1880–1969, many women and girls who had already experienced 𝐍𝐨𝐧-𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 were still criminalized and incarcerated at Mercer, only to be released back into the conditions they had endured. #Prostitution Learn more about #NST here: nonstatetorture.org/what-is-nst/...

Lecture: Prison Born: Understanding Colonial Racism according to a Systems Theory of Law Speaker: Robin Hansen, associate professor, USask Law Date: September 23, 2024 at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNzs...

🥚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.

🥚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_...

🧵🥚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

Economic ideology of the child-saving movement: women’s reformatories & prisons functioned as institutional pipelines within a system that controlled, institutionalized, and redirected labor & lives, including using their children as a supply for the placing-out system. 🥚 archive.org/details/proc...

Unique to Ontario was the Female Refuges Act, which unjustly incarcerated females 15–35. This overview (with errors) is a starting point. Missing is the plight of Indigenous women, including the forced adoption of their children. #Incorrigible grokipedia.com/page/female_...

History shows that when children are transferred—through placing-out or adoption—abuse follows. Orphan Trains, British Home Children, Convict Orphans… what about kids of incarcerated women in Canada? No one has studied this. Hidden history!!🥚 www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/...

1953: Members of the Legislature made a surprise visit to Mercer and praised it, even touring the “hole.” Less than three weeks later, my mother—newly confined in the Ontario Training School wing—escaped with three other “incorrigibles.”👇🥚1/2 Source: The Globe and Mail, May 23, 1953 ·Page 5

Thread 🧵 Although Velma Demerson eventually received compensation, her case stands as an exception rather than evidence of systemic accountability. 1/6 www.ola.org/en/legislati...

🥚Prison Born calls attention to the colonial and gendered assumptions that continue to underpin the legal system—assumptions that so frequently lead to the violation of the rights and denial of personhood for children and their mothers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV1S...

Exhibition explored hidden stories of women at Toronto’s Mercer Reformatory www.cambridgetoday.ca/local-news/e...

The intensive five-year study saw over 150 witnesses give evidence resulting in 71 recommendations aimed to stem abusive and discriminatory practices that dehumanize prisoners while inhibiting their rehabilitation and community integration. doreenn.substack.com/p/senator-wa...

🥚"cruel historical adoption system existed during the 20s to 1990's throughout Northern Ireland" Meanwhile, in Canada, adoptions involving children of incarcerated mothers held in various institutions have been concealed and largely ignored. www.assemblyresearchmatters.org/2025/11/24/i...

My own group - the largest in the Senate - is the Independent Senators Group or @senindepend.bsky.social - and we were the first parliamentary caucus in Canada to quit X. (Please reward our audacity with a follow.)

🥚In Ont, hidden behind the disclosure of adoption records—sealed under the guise CYFSA and the YCJA protections—are scores of mothers criminalized as “juvenile delinquents,” as well as wards of the Children’s Aid Society, many of whom were literally incarcerated in maternity homes. What did I miss?

For an adoptee to learn about a carceral birth, they can only hope that a Children’s Aid Society will disclose it when releasing portions of their file. But CAS definitely won’t if the mother was considered a “juvenile delinquent” or even a ward of CAS.

Female Refuges Act? Learn more in this podcast, created by Queen’s University undergraduate student Annie Dowd, about the history of the Female Refuges Act here: www.queensu.ca/history/site...

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering a bill that would stop parental incarceration from being used as the sole reason to terminate parental rights. When punishment extends to children, the harm doesn’t end at sentencing. #adopteesky

JFMR Statement Regarding a Significant Error in Testimony Documentary 🥚 jfmresearch.com/testimony/jf...

Testimony JFMR Statement: Testimony Documentary to be released in Irish and UK Cinemas More info here: jfmresearch.com/testimony/ 🥚 www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5_A...

Serena’s story is a stark reminder of how Canada’s criminal legal and penal systems continue to retraumatize and criminalize Indigenous women – failing to meaningfully account for their lived experiences. Read Serena's Story here: linkedin.com/pulse/serena... #JusticeReform #SenCa #TonasLaw

🥚Report covers “Acquiring children from adults in institutional care.” Canada tracked some adoptions from “unwed mothers,” but not those involving forcibly institutionalized parents (including juveniles) or unmarried parents more broadly—very different categories.

it’s been a while since I mentioned that i created a feed for posts by people who are adopted/trafficked/purchased out of their original families. please consider adding it. And if you would like to post to it, please let me know in a reply. 🥚

The Quebec Superior Court has authorized a class-action lawsuit on behalf of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children who suffered abuse at the hands of Quebec’s youth protection services since 1950. www.aptnnews.ca/national-new...

This person was fortunate to learn what most adoptees never do: across Canada, many incarcerated mothers’ babies were adopted, yet knowledge of remain hidden behind youth privacy laws. Royal British Columbia Museum, BC Archives (Re), 2021 BCIPC 38 (CanLII), canlii.ca/t/jhrt7 @moonlyfe.bsky.social

Inmates helped generate $97 million last year for the Correctional Service of Canada’s employment branch known as CORCAN. But inmates earn no more than $6.90 a day. Fields of Confinement - Watch: youtu.be/fgdPG4M9bp8?...

🥚For all those adoptees punished in utero, whose carceral birth histories were hidden as they suffered innumerable harms and whose lives were cut short — may their truths be unearthed, their stories honored, and the silence end for those still unaware of their carceral beginnings.

In Ont., Mercer Reformatory records were denied under the YCJA—but teens 16–17 weren’t considered “youth offenders” then. We appealed—and won. Orders PO-4749, PO-4750 & PO-4751 force a new access decision. 1/2 #FOI #SecretCanada #HiddenHistory

This article aims to untangle the complex relationship between government, economics, related policy and politics and the criminalization of Indigenous people in Canada. www.tamarackcommunity.ca/articles/res...

4 girls — including my mother — escaped Mercer’s OTS wing but were caught and locked in the dungeon, where another desperate escape was attempted. It’s time to end these brutal, inhumane isolation conditions that disproportionately affect Indigenous, Black, and disabled people. #S205 #EndSeg

Some of the records coming in from Mercer indicate that the Children of Unmarried Parents Act (CUPA) was applied to Mercer babies. Could CUPA help us understand how many were born to incarcerated mothers? We’re working on it!

🥚Adoptees of Bluesky: Horrendous case of Ashley Smith! 👇For those who don’t know, she was an adoptee too.

What would Canada uncover if it examined carceral births—children born to incarcerated mothers, especially those labeled “juvenile delinquents”? These histories are still sealed under youth protection laws, leaving adoptees unaware of their institutional origins.

𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐫: Incarcerated women, their descendants & a Mercer Baby. A firsthand account + intergenerational voices from the Andrew Mercer Reformatory. Excerpt: “Your work dress consisted of patches upon patches...” – Audrey D., Rebirth & Change andrewmercerreformatory.org/reading-mate...

𝐕𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐌𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐫: Incarcerated women, their descendants & a Mercer Baby. A firsthand account + intergenerational voices from the Andrew Mercer Reformatory. Excerpt: “Your work dress consisted of patches upon patches...” – Audrey D., Rebirth & Change andrewmercerreformatory.org/reading-mate...

🥚Adoptee born of a mother at a Salvation Army home? They ran a wide network of maternity and receiving homes, often with the courts, to house girls labeled “delinquent” or mothers on remand or released from jails or reformatories. YCJA prevents disclosure. #HiddenHistories

🥚Note to adoptees: Youth protection laws will prevent you from learning your mother’s circumstances—whether she was criminalized or not. As one account explains, "girls found wandering the city streets are picked up by police and convicted of vagrancy even though they committed no criminal offence.”

🥚Thousands of Canadian adoptees with carceral birth origins remain unaware — their stories sealed by the Youth Criminal Justice Act and rendered invisible within adoption disclosure practices.

In 1905 in Ontario, a little girl was placed out for the first time. J.J. Kelso’s vision was to rescue children from unworthy families and give them “safe homes.” But that vision fell short — she was shuffled through home after home, only breaking free by marrying.

𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑺𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒕 — A 1957 film unseen for nearly 70 years, now public (2025). Found via Library & Archives Canada, we requested a digital copy from the NFB & had it made public It follows a woman released from Mercer connecting with the new Elizabeth Fry Society andrewmercerreformatory.org/reading-mate...

🧵The Andrew Mercer Reformatory was one of many carceral institutions in Ontario that imprisoned over 20,000 women and girls. To read the text beneath the photos on the heritage plaque, please visit: andrewmercerreformatory.org/heritage-pla... 1/2

🥚All these countries—including Canada—need to investigate what happened to the children of criminalized and incarcerated women and girls, particularly in cases of adoption concealed under youth privacy laws that prevent disclosing whether the mother was criminalized as a "juvenile delinquent."

An abused Italian woman was jailed, her child “placed out” by CAS — learn more about her fight to regain custody of her child. 👉 Re D’Andrea, 1916 CanLII 479 (ON SC) A story reflecting injustices faced by thousands of criminalized & incarcerated women & girls www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAeF...