My baby was stolen from me

At the notorious Magdalene home for wayward girls in Brisbane, Lily McDonald's newborn baby was wrenched from her arms forever and so began one mother's crusade for justice that ultimately led to a national apology. Ten years later, Lily tells the whole story.

- MEGAN NORRIS

Seventeen-year-old Lily.

The hot, lazy days of 1967's 'summer of love' were filled with endless possibilities for dreamy teenager Lily McDonald, who was deeply in love and happily immersed in the new pop-rock scene of swinging '60s Brisbane.

Lily's favourite memories of those heady summer days were of curling up in bed at the inner-city flat she shared with the handsome young guitarist she planned to marry, while he serenaded her to sleep with the love song he had penned for her.

Tragically, however, on a sultry February night, the summer of love came to a sudden, terrifying halt for the lovebirds when Lily - who was a month shy of her 17th birthday - was woken by two burly policemen and hauled off to jail.

Her "crime" was that she had fallen in love and was six weeks pregnant. The following morning, Lily was frogmarched before a magistrate, charged with being "exposed to moral danger" and remanded in custody to the notorious Magdalene home for wayward girls in Wooloowin. There, she spent a harrowing week locked in an empty dormitory while the authorities made half-hearted attempts to locate her mother, who had recently moved to Sydney with Lily's stepfather and seven younger siblings.

With her father in jail and her mother's whereabouts unknown, Lily was made a ward of the state and ordered to serve a period of indefinite detention at the Holy Cross Retreat, where the Sisters of Mercy were committed to correcting the ways of erring young delinquents like herself.

While her stricken boyfriend, Steve Blenko, 20, headed to Sydney to obtain her mother's permission for a special marriage licence that would secure Lily's immediate release, the bewildered teenager disappeared behind the walls of the institution, and into the system.