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KERRY O'BRIEN: More than 500,000 Australian children were
raised in orphanages and children's homes between 1920 and
1980.
Now, a Senate inquiry has concluded that many of
those children were victims of shocking brutality at a very
tender age - punched, kicked and sexually abused by many of the
very people entrusted to care for them.
After 18 months of
hearings, members of the Senate Committee on Community Affairs
were visibly moved by the testimony given by hundreds of orphans
and former wards of the state.
How was it allowed to
happen?
And is an official apology enough?
Mark
Bannerman reports.
RALPH DOUGHTY: Can I say something
before the - I think that all of us here before - this media
conference concludes - from the bottom of my heart, I just want
to thank the senators.
MARK BANNERMAN: It's not every day
that a Senate committee is wildly cheered and then, in turn,
breaks down in tears.
But that's precisely what happened
in Canberra when a Senate committee delivered a report on
children in institutional care.
The reason for this
outpouring of emotion isn't hard to find.
It begins with
the story of people like this.
How would you describe, in
a few words, your childhood?
LIZ VICHA: Thrown to the
wolves is what comes to mind.
I feel like I was thrown to
the wolves.
MARY GESCH: There wouldn't be a day go by that
someone was being flogged.
RALPH DOUGHTY: Well, the
institution was hell upon earth.
MARK BANNERMAN: In the
decades following the First World War up to 1980, more than
500,000 children grew to adulthood in orphanages, homes and
halfway houses across Australia.
This was the image carers
like the Salvation Army tried to convey.
The reality
though, it seems, was rather different.
RALPH DOUGHTY:
There was no love whatsoever in the institution.
MARK
BANNERMAN: Ralph Doughty was seven years old when he arrived at
the Salvation Army Gill Memorial Home in Goulburn.
His
mother had died in childbirth, and his father, a veteran of the
First World War, was unable to look after him.
Inside the
home, Ralph Doughty became a number, bound by an extraordinary
set of rules, all the time threatened with violent
punishment.
RALPH DOUGHTY: If you stood and you eyeballed
an officer - I'm talking about 5-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 10-year,
12-year-old kids you would get a smash in the face, you
know.
MARK BANNERMAN: Punched in the face?
RALPH
DOUGHTY: Punched in the face and then if you went down they put
the boots into you.
MARK BANNERMAN: Violence in this and
other Salvation Army homes was not random though - indeed, it was
institutionalised.
Brothers were made to bash brothers and
children were forced to run the gauntlet.
RALPH DOUGHTY:
Then you had to run up the centre of the two lines and every boy
was expected to punch you, to kick you, and if a boy failed to do
that, he ran -
MARK BANNERMAN: ..the gauntlet as
well.
RALPH DOUGHTY: ..the gauntlet up behind.
MARK
BANNERMAN: The Salvation Army was not the only one guilty of
brutality.
MARY GESCH: I don't think we could ever forget
what went on in there.
MARK BANNERMAN: Today, Mary Gesch
is revisiting the former Presbyterian girls home at Chelmer in
Brisbane where she grew up.
It's now over 60 years since
she first came here but the memories of the home and the matron
who ran it are still strong.
MARY GESCH: She used to flog
us and make us stand with our arms above our head for quite some
time.
Our arms would be very stiff and very painful.
She
would hit us with a cane, a ruler, a cat-o'-nine-tails, whatever
she could get her hands on.
MARK BANNERMAN: Mary Gesch and
Ralph Doughty are not alone in their experience.
According
to the support group Clan, it's likely of the 500,000 people in
care, more than half were abused in some way.
DR JOANNA
PENGLASE, CARE LEAVERS OF AUSTRALIA NETWORK: It was systemic, it
was across the board, it was across Australia, it was across all
denominations of homes, it was across State homes.
MARK
BANNERMAN: How you would describe what happened to these
children?
SENATOR ANDREW MURRAY, COMMUNITY AFFAIRS
REFERENCES COMMITTEE: Well, devastating, I think - that's the one
word.
MARK BANNERMAN: Senator Andrew Murray is a key
member of a powerful Senate committee that's been investigating
children in institutional care.
When the committee was set
up 18 months ago after lobbying from groups like Clan, Andrew
Murray thought he understood something of the dimension of the
problem, but nothing prepared him or the committee for the wave
of submissions and the stories that people told.
SENATOR
ANDREW MURRAY: The sheer scale of it, um, the understanding that
so many depraved and sadistic people were let loose upon these
children and that so many depraved and sadistic people were in
the institutions that you would expect to have trust in.
MARK
BANNERMAN: Liz Vicha knows that betrayal of trust first hand.
In
her evidence to the Senate committee, she told how, as a
5-year-old child in the early 1970s, she was placed in care in
regional NSW.
There, the head of the orphanage began what
could only be described as a campaign of psychological abuse
against her.
LIZ VICHA: He told me that my father had
hanged himself.
He told me that my father's neck didn't
snap and it would have been 10 times the size of his normal head
and gone black.
And he told me that he died up above a pub
and that's what would happen to me - I would be an alcoholic end
up killing myself just like my father.
MARK BANNERMAN:
What - when you now look back as an adult - what could possibly
be the purpose of him doing that?
LIZ VICHA: Well, the
only thing that I can say is that it's amazing what people think
they can do to nobody's child, to a child that doesn't belong to
anyone.
MARK BANNERMAN: It's Monday morning as another
tourist bus heads for the national capital, but this is no
ordinary group of tourists.
These are the members of the
support group Clan and today they have come to Canberra for the
release of the Senate report into children in care.
Emotions
are running high.
RALPH DOUGHTY: They will say to you that
this is closure.
CLAN MEMBERS: No, it's not.
RALPH
DOUGHTY: It's not.
CLAN MEMBERS: No, not at all.
MARK
BANNERMAN: Inside the Parliament building as Senators prepare for
the release of the report, it's clear this will be no ordinary
media conference.
SENATOR JAN McLUCAS, COMMUNITY AFFAIRS
REFERENCES COMMITTEE: You can tell by the way that we have -
dealt with - this material that it will change our lives forever
in the way that it's changed the lives of the people who sit
before us.
MARK BANNERMAN: But if the committee was having
trouble keeping its emotions in check, it remained absolutely
clear about what needs to be done: First, a formal apology led by
the Federal Government is needed, States should amend legislation
to increase the statute of limitations for prosecutions, and
establish a national reparations fund for victims of abuse funded
by the Federal Government, the churches and various
institutions.
But will groups like the Salvation Army
commit themselves to a public apology and a reparations
fund?
Well, today the Salvation Army refused us an
interview, saying in a statement they were regretful for any
incident of abuse and at the same time refusing to discuss the
issue of money.
It's not the response Senator Andrew
Murray wants to hear.
SENATOR ANDREW MURRAY: Governments
have means to make people do what is right.
MARK
BANNERMAN: Could that be a royal commission?
SENATOR
ANDREW MURRAY: Yes, if people won't come voluntarily and do
what's right.
I mean, I would expect churches who say they
believe in the love of Jesus - they shouldn't have any difficulty
with actually exhibiting that love and giving up some of their
money and their assets to make good the harm they did.
RALPH
DOUGHTY: They actually have to do something positive for the
people that they've hurt.
The hurt that they've done me -
forget about that.
That's not so important.
It's -
Just look around.
Just look around.
I've got a -
good family, I've got good friends.
But the pain stays in
you.
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(
31.08.2004 )