We had been brought up on the surrogate mother of the institution and that whole lifestyle, which did not prepare us at all for any type of family life or life whereby in the future we would be surviving or fending for ourselves; and then the survival skills that we needed in order to survive in the mainstream community, because those survival skills are certainly not skills that you learn in a major institution. And the whole family value system wasn't there and then the practice that comes with that wasn't there and put in place.
Confidential evidence 265, Victoria: four Victorian sisters who were taken into care from their father and grandmother in a brief period of parental marriage difficulties during the early 1960s.
The use of institutions for Indigenous children varied somewhat across Australia. Yet even where foster care was preferred, Indigenous children often spent time in institutions before being fostered. In Western Australia 85% of the 438 clients surveyed by the Aborignal Legal Service had spent at least part of their childhood in a mission following removal. Seventy-five (15.5%) had spent time in a government institution. Only 2.8% had been in foster care and only 3.5% had been adopted (submission 127 pages 46-49). The following table details the placement experiences of witnesses to the Inquiry for whom the information could be retrieved.
| Placement types |
Number |
% |
| Indigenous children's institution(s) |
94 |
25.5 |
| Mixed children's institution(s) |
71 |
19.2 |
| Indigenous & mixed children's institutions
|
30 |
8.1 |
| Foster care |
28 |
7.6 |
| Adoption |
27 |
7.3 |
| Institution followed by foster/adoption |
89 |
24.1 |
| Foster/adoption followed by institution |
15 |
4.1 |
| Other, not recorded |
15 |
4.1 |
| Total |
369 |
100.0 |
Child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr Brent Waters, has interviewed a number of Koori adults who were removed and institutionalised as children in New South Wales in the 1940s.
There was an active discouragement of any kind of personal attachments between the children themselves to some extent, and particularly between the children and carers, and of course there was a turnover of staff as well. There was no positive affirmation of Aboriginal identity nor indeed personal identity (submission 532 page 2).
The 1940s were `the days of the hygiene movement' when the focus was on `discipline and hygiene': `whether you were clean, whether you had clean habits and whether you adhered to the program'. There was no interest in `noticing individuality, individual feelings and individual needs among children'. If an infant's expressions of his or her feelings are not responded to by carers, the child will not experience validation of those feelings as they develop. The result will be suppression of feelings and the child loses `the desire to feel and to communicate feelings and expressions to other people' (Dr Brent Waters evidence 532).
The effects of institutionalisation can be noticed immediately.
Studies of infants who have been institutionalised ... have shown them to be different in many ways from babies reared in a family environment. General impairment in their relationships to others and weakness of emotional attachment have been identified as major abnormalities in their development and behaviour ... The children's behaviour did not indicate the normal development of a sense of self (Australian Association of Infant Mental Health submission 699 pages 3-4).
Akhurst reviewed the English literature on the effects of `long stay' care in 1972. Major findings included,
* in almost every aspect - health, physique, educational progress and a wide range of social conditions - these children as a group were at a disadvantage compared with the general child population,
* a very high level of emotional disorder was present, especially `conduct disorders',
* the level of maladjustment was three times that of a comparable group not in care and affected at least 15-20% of the children in institutional care,
* the group in institutional care was more likely to suffer severe reading disability and `retardation' of other language skills, and
* failure to learn the art of living with other people, making fewer new friends on leaving care.
The effects of institutionalisation have been found to persist into adolescence.
Early studies of children who experienced institutional care in the first 3 years of their life displayed `profound deficits in intellectual and social development'. Follow up studies of these children during adolescence revealed serious cognitive, affective, and social deficits, including disturbances in ability to form relationships, lack of anxiety or guilt over anti-social behavior, poor impulse control, and delinquency (Bloom-Feshbach 1988 page 6).
Dr Ian Anderson of the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service pointed out that all adolescents indulge in risk-taking but that institutionalised children will do so `to a much greater extent ... because they have not been able to develop a sense of self-worth' (evidence 261). The truth of this, he suggested, is borne out in the death rates of young Aboriginal men.
The effects of forcible removal and institutionalisation persist into adulthood, appearing indeed to be life long.
... the individuals I have seen lack a sense of personal identity, personal worth and trust in others. Many have formed multiple unstable relationships, are extremely susceptible to depression, and use drugs and alcohol as a way of masking their personal pain. They see themselves as so worthless that they are easily exploited, laying themselves open to be recruited into prostitution and other forms of victimisation (Dr Brent Waters submission 532 page 2).
My feelings throughout life, of hurt, pain and neglection began as far back as I can remember ... I was taken from my family ... along with my biological brother, he also was with me through everything, if it wasn't for him, I probably would not been alive today to be able to write about my past.
Confidential submission 126, Victoria: NSW man taken to a babies' home in Melbourne at about 12 months in 1971.
Rutter and his colleagues researched the adult experiences of girls who had been institutionalised in childhood in London and found that,
[They] were much more likely than other women to experience serious difficulties in rearing their own children. An appreciable minority could not cope for one reason or another and had to give up the care of their children to other people. At the same time, the outcome proved to be quite heterogeneous, with some women functioning very well (1990 page 137).
The women who functioned well in spite of their disadvantageous upbringing were most likely those who enjoyed the `emotional support of a nondeviant spouse with whom [they] had a close, confiding, harmonious relationship'. Unfortunately, however, few of the women reared in institutions were able to find such a relationship. The women who functioned worst were those who had experienced `marked disruptions in parenting during the first 2 years of life' and `the outcome was particularly bad for girls who spent almost all of their childhood years in an institution' (Rutter et al 1990 pages 137-138).
Michael Constable noted the experiences of Victorian Koori women who had been institutionalised as girls.
[Some have] stayed in abusive relationships simply because of this sort of learned helplessness: you learn that you've got no control over your life because big authorities have said, `You're going to this institution and you're going to live this very regimented life'. You're not able to use your own judgment or initiative. You can't protest. You can't move the authorities. So in a sense some people are trapped in problems that they should be able to solve if they had confidence and belief in themselves (evidence 263).
For boys in particular a common response is delinquency. Dr Elizabeth Sommerlad surveyed Aboriginal Legal Services during the 1970s.
Officers attached to the services in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin maintained that a large majority of clients seeking legal aid for criminal offences have a history of institutionalisation, repeated fosterings or adoption by white families ... their assertion is a reflection of the perception aboriginal officers have of the deleterious effects of removal from the support of the aboriginal community (1977 page 168).
She concluded that feelings of alienation from `white' culture and lack of identity with Aboriginal culture underlie the high incidence of criminal offending among this group (1976 page 161).
It did lead to a career in crime in which, to me, well, it wasn't the crime that turned me on, even though I was successful at it. It was getting back at society. It was kicking `em, y'know? It wasn't the crime, it was the fact that, well, I'm going to pay back now for 20 odd years. Now, I served something like 5 years in the prisons, not because I wanted to be a criminal, but because I didn't know where I was, I didn't know who I belonged to.
Confidential evidence 354, South Australia: man fostered at 2 years in the 1950s; placed in a reformatory at 14.
The Australian Law Reform Commission drew on Dr Sommerlad's work in a 1982 research paper for its Aboriginal customary law reference.
It is not possible to state with certainty that the very high rates of Aboriginal juveniles in corrective institutions and of Aborigines in prisons is a direct result of their having been placed in substitute care as children, but that there is a link between them has often been asserted and seems undeniable. In Victoria, analysis of the clients seeking assistance from the Aboriginal Legal Service for criminal charges has shown that 90% of this group have been in placement - whether fostered, institutionalised or adopted. In New South Wales, the comparable figure is 90-95% with most placements having been in white families (page 6).
Three years earlier another researcher noted that,
There are between 50 - 60 Aboriginal male and female juveniles entering our detention centres every year. That rate has been steady over the past four years. One in every three Aboriginal youth who enters detention as a result of delinquent behaviour is a white family adoption or foster-care breakdown. A further third of the Aboriginal juvenile offending population has a significant history of rearing in Children's Institutions (Palamara 1979 pages unnumbered).
A number of witnesses to the Inquiry had experienced periods of detention throughout their lives.
And every time you come back in it doesn't bother you because you're used to it and you see the same faces. It's like you never left, you know, in the end.
Confidential evidence 204, Victoria: prisoner telling of a life spent in institutions since his removal at 5 years to a children's home.
I reckon all my troubles started when I was living in them homes. That's when I first started stealing because you wasn't allowed to have anything and if I wanted something the only way I could get it is get it off someone else, get me brother or sister to buy it or just take it. We were sort of denied everything we wanted, just got what we was given and just be satisfied with that. I felt second-rate. I didn't feel like I got the love I was supposed to get; like a kid's supposed to get at that age, because they're more vulnerable at that age. They just follow people that seem to look more after them. That's why I got in with the wrong crowd, I suppose. They seemed to care more.
Confidential evidence 146, Victoria: a young father relating how he began stealing when he and his three siblings were in a family group home where all the other children were non-Koori and where he and his Koori brother and sisters received markedly less favourable treatment.
They grew up to mix up with other troubled children in Tardon and didn't know how to mix with us their mother and family, they only knew how to mix with other boys that they grew up with and these boys were into stealing, so my sons went with them, they couldn't do without the crowd that they grew up with. I couldn't tell them anything at this stage cause they felt that coloured people were nothing and that is when they went on the wrong road.
One of my sons was put into jail for four years and the other one died before he could reach the age of 21 years. It hasn't done my sons any good, the Welfare making them wards of the State and taking them away from me, they would have been better off with me their mother.
Confidential submission 338, Victoria: Western Australian mother speaking of two sons taken in the 1950s.
Helen Siggers, a former nursing sister who is now Director of the Aboriginal education centre at Monash University in Victoria, was in a position to compare Aboriginal bridging course students who had been removed with those who had not (evidence 140). She had dealt with 80 students, ten of whom had been removed as children. She observed that those not removed were `together as people', `knew about their culture', had `strong self-esteem' and `positive [intimate] relationships [of some duration]'. On the other hand, those who had been removed had experienced `years of self-destructive behaviour', an `intensity of addictions', `cardiac problems, diabetes and psychological problems', `gaol sentences' and a tendency to move `from one partner to another'. With respect to their progress in the bridging program, those not removed `accelerated in their learning' whereas those removed `were held back because they were still dealing with all the emotional stuff'. Those who were not removed were more likely to complete their planned university degrees.
Michael Constable, a community health nurse in Ballarat, also observed a `higher relationship turnover'. He told the Inquiry that he observed the stolen generations, on reaching adulthood, to be `chronically depressed' (evidence 263).