Why me; why was I taken? It's like a hole in your heart that can never heal.
Confidential evidence 162, Victoria.
Actually what you see in a lot of us is the shell, and I believe as an Aboriginal person that everything is inside of me to heal me if I know how to use it, if I know how to maintain it, if I know how to bring out and use it. But sometimes the past is just too hard to look at.
Confidential evidence 284, South Australia.
Evidence to the Inquiry presented many common features of the removal and separation practices. Children could be taken at any age. Many were taken within days of their birth (especially for adoption) and many others in early infancy. In other cases, the limited resources available dictated that the authorities wait until children were closer to school age and less demanding of staff time and skill. Most children were institutionalised more typically with other Indigenous children and with primarily non-Indigenous staff. Where fostering or adoption took place, the family was non-Indigenous in the great majority of cases.
Because the objective was to absorb the children into white society, Aboriginality was not positively affirmed. Many children experienced contempt and denigration of their Aboriginality and that of their parents or denial of their Aboriginality. In line with the common objective, many children were told either that their families had rejected them or that their families were dead. Most often family members were unable to keep in touch with the child. This cut the child off from his or her roots and meant the child was at the mercy of institution staff or foster parents. Many were exploited and abused. Few who gave evidence to the Inquiry had been happy and secure. Those few had become closely attached to institution staff or found loving and supportive adoptive families.
In this Part we detail the evidence and the research findings relating to the effects of these experiences. The Inquiry was told that the effects damage the children who were forcibly removed, their parents and siblings and their communities. Subsequent generations continue to suffer the effects of parents and grandparents having been forcibly removed, institutionalised, denied contact with their Aboriginality and in some cases traumatised and abused.
It is difficult to capture the complexity of the effects for each individual. Each individual will react differently, even to similar traumas. For the majority of witnesses to the Inquiry, the effects have been multiple and profoundly disabling. An evaluation of the following material should take into account the ongoing impacts and their compounding effects causing a cycle of damage from which it is difficult to escape unaided. Psychological and emotional damage renders many people less able to learn social skills and survival skills. Their ability to operate successfully in the world is impaired causing low educational achievement, unemployment and consequent poverty. These in turn cause their own emotional distress leading some to perpetrate violence, self-harm, substance abuse or anti-social behaviour.
| In the hard copy version of this report there is a reproduction
of the following item:
Garadjari baby - a fortnight old
|
I've often thought, as old as I am, that it would have been lovely to have known a father and a mother, to know parents even for a little while, just to have had the opportunity of having a mother tuck you into bed and give you a good-night kiss - but it was never to be.
Confidential evidence 65, Tasmania: child fostered at 2 months in 1936.
It never goes away. Just `cause we're not walking around on crutches or with bandages or plasters on our legs and arms, doesn't mean we're not hurting. Just `cause you can't see it doesn't mean ... I suspect I'll carry these sorts of wounds `til the day I die. I'd just like it to be not quite as intense, that's all.
Confidential evidence 580, Queensland.
Eric Eric's story is told by his psychiatrist. Eric was removed from parental care in 1957 when he was aged one. [All of his mother's children were eventually removed: one younger sister went to live with her grandmother; the other sister and a brother were fostered and later adopted. Eric and his older brother Kevin were placed in an orphanage in South Australia.] Eric recalls being in an institution from the age of two and a half to six before he and Kevin were placed in the care of foster parents who Eric stayed with until the age of 11. Apparently he was then transferred to the care of an uncle and aunt. Kevin in the meantime had become `out of control', and Eric and Kevin had been separated, with Kevin being sent to a boys' home while Eric remained in the care of his foster mother. When Eric was sent to his uncle and aunt he stayed with them until about the age of 13 or 15 when he recalls running away because `there was too much alcohol and violence'. He ran back to Adelaide and refused to return to the care of his uncle and aunt. He was then placed in a further foster placement which he remembers as being slightly better for the next 3-4 years, but left there at the age of 17. At 17, Eric became a street kid and once again he met up with his brother Kevin. Not surprisingly, Eric felt very attached to his brother Kevin because it was the only family contact available to him at that time. He tells me that Kevin was mixing with criminals in Adelaide and that in 1972 Kevin just disappeared. Eric never saw him again, but Eric then returned to stay with his foster parents for a while at the age of 18 or 19. He then recalls becoming an itinerant for a few years ... When he returned to South Australia, he was told that Kevin had died in the custody of police in Castlemaine whilst an inmate of the prison there. Eric is brought easily to tears as he recalls the events in his life. In his own words, the most significant pain for him has been the loss of family and the separation from his own kin and his culture. When speaking of members of his family he feels a great emotional pain, that in fact he doesn't believe that there is anyone left close to him, he feels as if he has been deprived of contact with his mother and his siblings by the separation at a young age, and he feels acutely the pain of his brother's death in custody. The cumulative effects of these events for him are that he feels a great difficulty trusting anyone. He finds that when he turns to his own people their contact is unreliable. Whilst at some levels supportive, he doesn't feel able to trust the ongoing contact. His brothers have no long term training to be part of a family so that from time to time, out of their own aching, they will contact Eric, but they do not maintain contact. Eric finds these renewed contacts and separations from time to time painful because in a sense they give him a window of what was available to him in the form of family support and what has been taken from him. In some ways he yearns to be closer to his family and in other ways he feels that whatever contact he has, always ends up being painful for him. He tells me that he feels constantly afraid with a sense of fear residing in his chest, that he is usually anxious and very jumpy and uptight. He feels angry with his own race, at the hurt that they have done to him, he feels that particularly the members of his own tribe exposed him to a life of alcohol, drugs and violence which has quickly turned against him. He says looking within himself that he's a kind-hearted person, that it's not him to be angry or violent, but he certainly recalls a period of time in his life when it was the only behaviour that he felt able to use to protect himself ... He feels that throughout his life he has had no anchor, no resting place, no relationship he could rely on or trust, and consequently he has shut people out of his life for the bigger proportion of his life. He tells me that the level of rejection he has experienced hurts immensely. In fact, he says, `it tears me apart'. He tries very hard not to think about too much from the past because it hurts too much, but he finds all the anger and the hurt, the humiliation, the beatings, the rejection of the past, from time to time boil up in him and overflow, expressing itself in verbal abuse of [de facto] and in violent outbursts. Eric often relates feelings of fear. He remembers from his childhood, feelings of intense fear. He has related to me incidents from his foster mother who he was with from the age of 6-11. He specifies particular details of physical cruelty and physical assault as well as emotional deprivation and punishment that would, in this age, be perceived as cruel in the extreme. Eric describes to me that, throughout his childhood, he would wet himself and that he had a problem with bed wetting, but he also would receive punishment for these problems. He lived in fear of his foster mother. When he was taken away from her and brought again before the welfare authorities he was too afraid to tell them what had happened to him. At that stage, he and his brother Kevin were separated and Eric found that separation extremely painful because he was too frightened to be left alone with that foster mother. One of the effects that Eric identifies in himself is that, because of the violence in his past, when he himself becomes angry or confused, he feels the anger, the rage and the violence welling up within him. He tells me `I could have done myself in years ago, but something kept me going'. In the light of the research findings, Eric's experiences of separation were both highly traumatic for him and also occurred at an age when he would have been most vulnerable to serious disturbance. For Eric too the separation involved a disruption to his cultural and racial identity. It is apparent to me that a fundamental diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is fitting. Eric's symptomatology is obviously severe and chronic. In addition, it is clear that he deals with many deep emotional wounds that do not clearly fit [this] diagnostic classification. His deep sense of loss and abandonment, his sense of alienation, and his gross sense of betrayal and mistrust are normal responses to a tragic life cycle. Having said this, it is also apparent that he deals from time to time with Major Depressive Episodes.
Confidential submission 64, Victoria.
It has been argued that early loss of a mother or prolonged separation from her before age 11 is conducive to subsequent depression, choice of an inappropriate partner, and difficulties in parenting the next generation. Anti-social activity, violence, depression and suicide have also been suggested as likely results of the severe disruption of affectional bonds (Australian Association of Infant Mental Health submission 699 page 3 citing Bowlby 1988 page 174; supported by Dr Nick Kowalenko, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Royal North Shore Hospital, NSW, evidence 740).
The quality of an individual's future social relationships is profoundly affected by a baby's first experiences (Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 34). As early as 1951, John Bowlby identified infant separation from the primary carer and institutionalisation as causally connected to a variety of psychiatric disorders in adulthood ranging from anxiety and depression to psychopathic personality (Bowlby 1951, Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 34). The reason for this seems to be that the primary carer was not replaced by a person with whom the child could form a loving attachment. (This is not to deny that sometimes the infant's primary care-giver poses risks to the child and must be replaced.)
... there is a substantial body of evidence to show that discordant or disruptive family relationships in early life, and a marked lack of parental affection, are both associated with a substantially increased likelihood of both emotional disturbance and personality disorders in adult life (Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 38).
The biological `purpose' of an infant's instinct to form an attachment is `to provide emotional security and social autonomy'. The relationship between an infant and his or her primary carer has been described as `a secure base (a) from which to explore and learn about the world and (b) to which the infant can retreat when "danger" in the form of novelty, fatigue, illness or other distress threatens (Australian Association of Infant Mental Health submission 699 page 2).
The strong and healthy bond that a child develops towards family in early years is the foundation for future relationships with others, and for physical, social and psychological development. When a child has a strong and healthy attachment to family, both trust in others and reliance on self can develop. Most families provide growing children with stories of their past that help children gain a sense of self, belonging and a sense of history. Attachment helps the child to:
achieve full intellectual potential
attain cultural identity
sort out perceptions
know the importance of family
think logically
develop a conscience
become self reliant
cope with stress and frustration
handle fear and worry
develop future relationships (Swan 1988 page 4).
The evidence establishes that attachment occurs in infancy and that disruption to the process of attachment at this stage of development is most damaging. Between one-half and two-thirds of children forcibly removed were removed in infancy (before the age of five years). The following table summarises the available information on age of removal among clients surveyed by the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA and among witnesses to the Inquiry.
| Age at removal |
ALSWA clients* |
Inquiry witnesses |
||||
| < |
1 years |
na |
83 |
22.4% |
||
| 1 - < |
2 years |
28 |
7.5% |
|||
| 0 - < |
2 years |
57 |
11.8% |
|||
| 2 - |
5 years |
137 |
28.4% |
97 |
26.1% |
|
| 6 - |
10 years |
147 |
30.4% |
86 |
23.2% |
|
| 11 - |
15 years |
33 |
6.8% |
34 |
9.2% |
|
| Not recorded |
109 |
22.6% |
43 |
11.6% |
||
| Total |
483 |
100% |
371 |
100% |
||
* Submission 127 page 44.
Separation can affect a range of skills. Some developmental stages regress only temporarily while others can be permanently depressed. Dr Nick Kowalenko, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital, summarised some of the research in evidence to the Inquiry.
In the last 30 or 40 years there has been a lot of work in the psychological and psychiatric spheres particularly in looking at what we call attachment theory. The issues of bonding between parents and their children have been a lot more closely examined originally from observing the separation of infants and younger children from their parents when they were hospitalised. Observations were made about how deleterious even those kind of quite minor infringements on the day-to-day ongoing contact that sustained children's capacity for security and which also allowed them to feel safe enough to explore the world.
What was observed just in the hospital setting was that children would start off yearning very much for their parents. They would protest and they would demand to have the nurses contact their parents or whatever. Eventually they would reach a state where they would just be bereft and not move and become very still and not explore their environment. So one of the responses of kids who may not talk about it is that they cease their exploration of their environment. It greatly impacts on their new learning, their psychological development, their sense of trust ... They learn that the world from an emotional point of view may be quite unreliable ... They will often be disrupted in terms of their previous level of skills. So if they had been toilet trained they might lose that skill for a while. Those kinds of impacts is a sort of snapshot compared to the kind of film that Aboriginal dispossession probably represents (evidence 740).
Psychotherapist Sue Wasterval and her colleagues from the Victorian Koori Kids Mental Health Network told the Inquiry that learning difficulties experienced by many Indigenous children at school may be attributable to resistance to being taught (ie to authority figures) and/or to developmental delays of cognition and language (submission 766 page 7).
When a severe disturbance occurs in the organization of attachment behaviour, it is likely to lead to learning difficulties, poor ego integration and serious control battles with the care giving adults (submission 766 page 6).
When the infant's attachment must be transferred to a large number of ever-changing adults on the staff of an institution or because of multiple foster placements, the objective of attachment behaviour is defeated. `It is not the separation as such that causes persistent psychiatric disturbance. Rather, the poor outcomes arise because the separation leads to poorer quality child care, because it sets in motion a train of other adverse experiences, or because the separation itself stems from a pattern of chronic psychosocial adversity' (Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 46).
While this may explain, in part, the diversity of `outcomes' or long-term effects reported to the Inquiry by people who had experienced separation, the act of separation and its immediate aftermath were frequently traumatic for Indigenous children. Subsequent `carers' rarely responded appropriately to trauma reactions and grief felt for the loss of family.
Unresolved trauma and grief has its own severe consequences. There is an association between bereavement in childhood and later psychiatric disorder (Wolkind and Rutter 1984 page 47). The circumstances and consequences of bereavement render the child vulnerable to stresses, perhaps damaging the child's self-esteem and self-efficacy and often resulting in depression in adolescence and adulthood. The bereavement experienced by many forcibly removed Indigenous children was traumatic and later they were often told they had been rejected or that family members were dead (typically neither was true). They could be punished for expressions of attachment or grief.
I remember when my sister come down and visited me and I was reaching out. There was no-one there. I was just reaching out and I could see her standing there and I couldn't tell her that I'd been raped. And I never told anyone for years and years. And I've had this all inside me for years and years and years. I've been sexually abused, harassed, and then finally raped, y'know, and I've never had anyone to talk to about it ... nobody, no father, no mother, no-one. We had no-one to guide us. I felt so isolated, alienated. And I just had no-one. That's why I hit the booze. None of that family bonding, nurturing - nothing. We had nothing.
Confidential evidence 248, South Australia: woman removed as a baby in the 1940s to Colebrook; raped at 15 years in a work placement organised by Colebrook.
Disrupted parenting in infancy or early childhood renders the person less secure and more vulnerable to adolescent and adult psychological and emotional disturbances. International expert on trauma, Professor Beverley Raphael, advised the Inquiry that due to the trauma they had experienced many separated children would be likely to have difficulties in relationships because their feelings would be numbed (evidence 658). A number of witnesses spoke of this effect on them and of their inability to trust others.
There's still a lot of unresolved issues within me. One of the biggest ones is I cannot really love anyone no more. I'm sick of being hurt. Every time I used to get close to anyone they were just taken away from me. The other fact is, if I did meet someone, I don't want to have children, cos I'm frightened the welfare system would come back and take my children. Confidential evidence 528, New South Wales: man removed at 8 years in the 1970s; suffered sexual abuse in both the orphanage and foster homes organised by the church. It's wrecking our relationship and the thing is that I just don't trust anybody half the time in my life because I don't know whether they're going to be there one minute or gone the next.
Confidential evidence 379, South Australia: woman fostered at 9 years in the 1970s.
I've always been sorta on the outerside of things. I've always had my guard up, always been suspicious and things like that, I guess.
Confidential evidence 168, South Australia: man removed to a boys' home at 6 years in the 1950s.
The consequences can be extremely severe. Bowlby concluded that `childhood loss of mother is likely to lead a person to become excessively prone to develop psychiatric symptoms and to do so especially when current personal relationships go wrong' (1988 page 174).
The youngest member of our family, Jill, was perhaps more traumatised through all this process because she grew up from the age of 9 months being institutionalised the whole time. She actually had some major trauma illnesses and trauma manifestations of institutional life evident in her life and yet nobody knew the root of it, or the cause of it, let alone knew the remedy to it. [The cottage mother] used a lot of mental cruelty on Jill - I mean, through cutting all of her hair off at one time to exert authority and to bring submission and fear into you ... making the kids look ugly and dress like boys. She did that to the younger children - well Jill in particular because she was younger and more impressionable. Jill died because of those policies in law. She committed suicide. She was 34 and death was the better thing.
Confidential evidence 265, Victoria.
| In the hard copy version of this report there is a reproduction
of the following item:
The Governor Sir Charles and Lady Gairdner with Abbot Gomez inspecting the children of St. Joseph's Orphanage, New Norcia, WA Courtesy Battye Library 74244P
|
I remember all we children being herded up,
like a mob of cattle, and feeling the humiliation
of being graded by the colour of our skins
for the government records.
Confidential submission 332, Queensland: woman removed in the 1950s to Cootamundra Girls' Home.