About the Author

Beverly Wardle-Jackson was first removed from her family and taken into Child Welfare care in 1952 at the age of eight. Four years later she was permanently separated from her brothers and sisters and made a state ward. She spent the next five years being beaten and locked up in state-run children's homes, before she was eventually admitted to Porirua Hospital for so-called psychiatric treatment. She did not regain her freedom until she was 17, at which point she was pregnant. Now a grandmother in her sixties, Beverly has bravely decided to share the story of her lost childhood.