பாதிரிகள் கற்பழிக்க கன்யாஸ்திரிகளால் வளர்க்கப்பட்ட சிறுமிகளின் கலந்துரையாடல்

ஆஸ்திரேலியாவில் கத்தோலிக்க கிறிஸ்துவ அமைப்புகள் சிறுமிகளுக்கான அனாதை நிலையங்களை நடத்துகின்றன. அங்கு அந்த சிறுமிகளை பாதிரியார்கள் கற்பழிக்க கன்யாஸ்திரிகள் ஏற்பாடு செய்கிறார்கள்.

இதனை பற்றிய கண்ணீர் கலந்துரையாடல் இங்கே.


The forgotten Australians
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About half a million Australians spent part or all of their childhood away from their families -- either in government-approved facilities or in foster care.

They want an apology from the federal government similar to that given to the Stolen Generations.

And, like the Stolen Generations, their entitlement to monetary compensation or redress varies dramatically from state to state. They say that's grossly unfair
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This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Damien Carrick: It's just over a year since Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made his historic apology to the Stolen Generation.

It was seen as a wonderful and long overdue step towards reconciliation, although debate continues about whether or not there should be some kind of compensation.

But there is one group of Australians still waiting for their apology from the PM, the non-Indigenous Australians who were separated from their families as children, the so-called Forgotten Australians.

And a warning: this week's program contains some very disturbing material.

Angela Sydrinis: If you speak to some of them, they are just so bloody angry that they haven't had their apology. I think most of them are happy that the Stolen Generation were given an apology, and indeed I think most of Australia was—it was a very healing moment. But even those who are happy about it, feel very much 'What about us? Our stories were no different.'

Damien Carrick: Like the Stolen Generation, their entitlement to financial redress varies dramatically from state to state. WA has the most generous scheme. But in other parts of Australia, including Victoria, there is no redress.

Leonie Sheedy from CLAN, tell me, we're standing outside the electoral office of the state's treasurer here in Victoria. Who's here and why are they here?

Leonie Sheedy: Today we're joined by people who have been raised in car as state wards or Home Children, and we're called Care Leavers. We're here today to send a message to the treasurer that Western Australia, Tasmania and Queensland have given redress to their care survivors, and we want the Victorian government to address this social justice issue.

Damien Carrick: How many Australians grew up away from their families, say in state care or church-run orphanages, or homes?

Leonie Sheedy: There was a Senate Inquiry Report that was released in 2004 and the Senate Inquiry stated that there were over 500,000 Australians who were raised in the 500-plus orphanages, children's homes and foster care.

Damien Carrick: It's a huge number.

Leonie Sheedy: It's a huge number. It's the population of Tasmania.

Damien Carrick: Leonie Sheedy, from CLAN, the Care Leavers Australia Network.

While all the state premiers have apologised, the federal government has not, despite this being a key recommendation of a 2004 Senate Inquiry, the Forgotten Australians Report.

Angela Sydrinis is a lawyer with Ryan Carlisle Thomas. She acts for many of the so-called Forgotten Australians.

Angela Sydrinis: The Forgotten Australians, they were, in my view, often removed for no good reason. I mean you meet men who were locked up in a youth training facility for two or three years because they stole a bike, and because their parents were too poor or too inarticulate or too absent, they just appeared before a magistrate and they were locked up. And when I'm talking about a youth training facility, many of these people, they became criminals, if they weren't before, in the youth training facility either because of the abuse they experienced or just because of the situation they were in, many of them actually ended up in Pentridge. They have all said to me, 'Pentridge was a doddle compared to the youth training facility'. So when you look back on that, they richly deserve an apology, they need an apology in much the same way the Indigenous people needed an apology, and I think all of these children, the Stolen Generation, the child migrants, and the Forgotten Australians, they need redress, they need healing.

Damien Carrick: Before we get on to the question of redress, is there an argument that well, with Indigenous Australians, it was a policy based on race, whereas what happened to the so-called Forgotten Australians was more generic and it wasn't targeted at people because of the kind of person they are.

Angela Sydrinis: Well it was targeted to them, because of the kind of person they were. It may not have been about race, but it was about poverty, and it was about the underclass, and it was about disadvantage. Rich kids didn't get banged up, they weren't removed. Even if they were suffering terrible abuse at home. So whether it was race, or whether it was class, as far as I'm concerned they were both policies of discrimination.

Damien Carrick: Leonie, I'm wondering if you could introduce me to some of the people who might be able to be comfortable talking about their experiences?

Leonie Sheedy: I'll introduce you to my brother, because I think he deserves to get some acknowledgement, you know.

Damien Carrick: Anthony, can I ask, what was your experience? What happened to you?

Anthony: Well I went in when I was two, and I didn't get out till I was nearly 20, but I went in to ten homes. Apart from that, I had a very hard life. I didn't know how to spell, I didn't even know how to read or write when I left the homes, because we were made to work, like in the vegetable garden, setting table up, I used to do all that, then iron, and working along, doing laundry and that. And it was a terrible life. And when my sister found me after 41 years, and then I started to learn from her, I used to just kick around in the streets and lived off the streets. But she knew I didn't drink much after she met me, and she was very surprised. And I got on very well with my sister since.

Damien Carrick: So it was very important for you to reconnect with her after 40 years.

Anthony: Yes, but I had a very lonely life; in my whole life I never got married, I didn't know how to make love or anything like that.

Damien Carrick: And can I ask, did you experience any abuse personally in the institutions?

Anthony: Yes, I got sexually abused, not once, four or five times. Then I was put in solitary confinement for a week, and I got sexually assaulted by the staff and four of his pet boys, but I got them, I bashed one of them up and then I was sent back into solitary confinement. I was there for three weeks, then I got handcuffed and I went to this last Bendigo home, I was only 14 at the time, I was handcuffed all the way from Norwell Park to Bendigo.

Damien Carrick: So there were problems with both the carers and some of the other kids around there?

Anthony: Oh yes. That's why I never got married or anything like that. And my sister asked me, 'How come you didn't get married?' I said, 'I never found Miss Right yet, or Mrs Left', I said. And then she asked me 'Did you used to drink?' I said, 'Yes, I used to try and forget the homes', but I said, 'It could never go away from me.' So I just gave up the grog altogether, so I don't drink any more. I haven't drank for nearly 17 years.

Damien Carrick: Anthony, thank you.

Anthony: Oh, that's all right, Damien.

Mike Rann: To all those who experienced abuse in state care, we are sorry.

Damien Carrick: Stories like Anthony's have moved all the state premiers to publicly apologise to the Forgotten Australians. The most recent was South Australian premier, Mike Rann, in June last year.

Mike Rann: We need to show these courageous people that the government and the parliament, on behalf of all South Australians, acknowledge what they have been through and say, sorry.

Damien Carrick: Despite calls for a redress or compensation scheme, South Australia has yet to implement one. And in New South Wales and Victoria, it's not even being considered.

Some years back Queensland and Tasmania offered compensation. And WA is currently actively advertising its scheme.

Public announcement: If you've suffered abuse as a child in state-approved care, you could receive a one-off payment through Redress WA. Don't let your suffering be forgotten. Applications close April 30.

Angela Sydrinis: Tasmania set up the first Redress Fund for Forgotten Australians and they also subsequently set up the first and only compensation fund for Stolen Generation. Queensland followed, and most recently, in 2007, the Western Australian government set up a Redress Fund. Now both the Queensland and the Western Australian Redress funds apply to Indigenous kids, child migrants, forgotten Australians, they don't discriminate, provided you were in an institution, or in Western Australian foster care, then you're entitled to claim compensation.

Damien Carrick: So before we talk about what kinds of money you can get from these schemes where they exist; you live in Victoria, you live in New South Wales, you live in the Territories, you live in South Australia, you have the same experience as say somebody in WA...

Angela Sydrinis: But you, those people, have to go through the court system to get compensation, and for a number of rather complicated reasons, the legal barriers that these people face through the court system are significant, which is why in fact all of the Senate inquiries recommended redress funds, because they recognised that our legal system as it stands, will not deliver justice to these people. Now in South Australia they've had the Mulligan Inquiry into sexual abuse, and they've now got a task force which is looking at redress funds, so I think South Australia will almost certainly do the right thing as well.

Damien Carrick: Well when it comes to the statutory compensation schemes which exist in various parts of the country, how do those systems work, and how much money can you get, say if you're living in Tasmania, Queensland or WA?

Angela Sydrinis: Queensland and Western Australia have a two-tiered system. If you can show that you were a victim of neglect or abuse, you're entitled to what they call a first-level payment, Queensland up to $7,000, Western Australia up to $10,000. Beyond that, Queensland pay a maximum of up to $40,000, Western Australia up to $80,000, Tasmania up to $60,000, but to get those higher level payments, you need to show that you have suffered injury as a result of neglect or abuse.

Damien Carrick: And what kinds of injury are we talking about, and how do you establish that, to get that $40,000 or $80,000?

Angela Sydrinis: Well it's largely psychological injury. You need to provide medical evidence that you've suffered a psychiatric injury, and beyond that, for example, badly-deformed feet, because they were given shoes that were just way too small over a decade. Back injuries from the slave labour that they were required to perform, and of course we see, all too often, very bad in the men, colo-rectal injuries from being sodomised repeatedly over a number of years, and in some of the women, infertility. We've got two clients, twin sisters, who were diagnosed as having gonorrhea at the age of four months. It's in their records. They were never treated for it. Now the first question is, how did they get the gonorrhea? And the next question is, well, you knew it was there, you've recorded it; what did you do for them?

So other situations, children who were given massive doses of lithium, really heavy, heavy psychotropic drugs for years, for conditions they never had. It was a way of 'managing' them. Now those people will never recover from that.

Damien Carrick: Now those amounts of money, especially at the first level, they're not huge, but do they make a real difference to the people?

Angela Sydrinis: Well look, I think in terms of the first-level payments, you know, you get a lot of people who say, 'Yes, look, it was shit, but I probably would have been on the streets if they hadn't taken me in. OK, I'm glad someone's recognised that it was not easy for me, I'm happy with this', because they're not alleging that they really suffered. I mean you often hear it's not about the money. It is actually about someone saying 'Look, we know we hurt you, and we're really sorry, and this is a token of our feelings that we did the wrong thing by you.'

And also the other thing you've got to bear in mind is that many of these people have lived in poverty all their lives, like severe poverty. So $7,000 or $10,000, that's a new car, a new second-hand car, or the new fridge, or they can pay off their credit card. So for some people, that's good and that's enough, and they draw a line in the sand and they can move on.

Now of course those people who've suffered much more severe abuse and ongoing serious consequences, for them I think no amount of money is enough. I think the $40,000 offered by the Queensland scheme is pretty crap, you know I think the $80,000 offered by the Western Australian scheme, you're starting to think, well, OK, that's a decent amount of money. But international schemes, for example, the Irish Redress Scheme, that had no monetary maximum, no limit, and the average payments there were A$150,000. And of course, if you successfully litigate these claims and that's a big if, you might be looking at $200,000 for pain and suffering, and claims for economic loss, which might be vastly more than that. So the case of Bruce Trevorrow for example, he was awarded...

Damien Carrick: He was a member of the South Australian Stolen Generation and a few years ago he won a groundbreaking case.

Angela Sydrinis: Absolutely. He successfully sued.

Damien Carrick: But he was one in a million.

Angela Sydrinis: He was one in a million, and the difference in Trevorrow's case was that his records documented, like in big lights, that the wrong thing had been done by him, and what you see with most of the records is they don't have any bearing on reality or what was going on. It's a litany of blaming the victim and justifying actions.

Damien Carrick: But people were acting according to the law when they took these children into care.

Angela Sydrinis: Sure. But in Trevorrow's case, there were admissions in his records that they were acting against the law, that they had no power to remove him. And he was awarded $525,000 by way of damages, so that was a very big judgment when you compare it to the $40,000 you might get in Queensland.

Damien Carrick: Yes, but of course litigation is a horrible roulette for those involved, and...

Angela Sydrinis: And look, I've looked at hundreds of records in these cases, hundreds and hundreds (Bruce Trevorrow's records were one in a thousand), where they damned themselves by their own actions.

Damien Carrick: Now presumably there are other real problems in terms of litigation. A lot of Forgotten Australians, they were in state care because they came from dysfunctional or abusive families, and they may have gone on to lead dysfunctional lives, and it would be hard to isolate the damage they've sustained and connect it to the time in care.

Angela Sydrinis: Well that's the other issue, and lawyers call it causation. And I call it trying to unscramble the eggs, and it's absolutely so, we cannot pretend that many of these kids weren't already damaged when they were put in care. But they were put in care to do better, not to do worse. And what in fact you see is their experiences in care gave them no hope of recovery. But that's the other thing that a lawyer does, we try and unscramble those eggs, we try and apportion and say, well, OK, this is probably what would have happened had you not been put in care, but these experiences made you so much worse.

Damien Carrick: Victorian lawyer Angela Sydrinis. And in the absence of a WA-style redress system, her only option is to commence proceedings in the courts. It's only at that point that the Victorian government sit down, negotiate and sometimes talk money.

Joan Wallace, who now lives in Queensland, recently received $10,000 from the WA redress system.

Joan Wallace: Like all the other dozens of children in institutions, we weren't fed properly, we weren't dressed properly, we worked, we did all the work. You were told you were nobody; your self-esteem was zero. It was very, very lonely. I used to carve my name on a tree, my initials and the year like prisoners do, 1942, 1943, etc. You learned to just accept whatever was done to you, and you couldn't fight back, you couldn't speak up, although I was always in trouble for speaking up; it was miserable, really, really miserable. Not so much physical abuse, but it was just mental abuse really. So finally I broke free and I got away, I went to Sydney, then Auckland, as far away as I could go from Western Australia.

Damien Carrick: And now you live in Queensland.

Joan Wallace: Yes.

Damien Carrick: But you've just recently applied for compensation under the WA Redress system; tell me, what money have you received?

Joan Wallace: Oh, they gave me $10,000 because of my age, because they don't want us to miss out. I'm 80, and I can't believe that they have been so kind, so respectful. It took seven months from when I applied, and reliving it wasn't— it was very difficult. But it was like a load off my shoulders.

Damien Carrick: As part of the process, you had to write down and tell the scheme...

Joan Wallace: You had to explain why and how you were there, and I did that. And it's a relief to unload it. Because the feeling of being abandoned and lost all your life, now my story's recorded, the money isn't foremost in my mind at all, the $10,000 is like a down payment, and perhaps after April, the cut-off point, perhaps they'll give me more. But it doesn't matter to me. But what amazes me that someone cares after a lifetime; it makes me smile.

And you know, a lot of people feel it's hush-money. That's not so. The people responsible are dead, the government responsible are dead; these people want you to apply for the money because if you don't, it goes back to the government. And a lot of people won't apply. Like my sister. And I feel sorry, because they want to ease our pain, and they've treated me with respect and kindness and caring and understanding. I can't speak too highly of Western Australia and Redress; I'm amazed. I'm amazed that a government department would be like this, and I'm very, very grateful, and I'm happy.

Damien Carrick: Good day, can I ask what's your name?

Jenny Tiffin: My name is Jenny Tiffin.

Damien Carrick: Jenny, you're dressed rather unusually; can you describe yourself for me?

Jenny Tiffin: As you see from the photograph on my sign, I was attending my first holy communion at a Catholic-run orphanage in Ballarat. I was aged seven and a half, and I was approached by Gerald Ridgedale, who was a priest at the time officiating at the ceremony, and he approached me afterwards and said to me, 'You'll have to pay for this', and I certainly did that night. He sexually abused me. And several other times during my stay there at Nazareth House. I was sexually abused by him. And I just feel that putting the veil on as I was then, dressed, that it would make a statement.

Damien Carrick: So you're wearing a veil, and you're also wearing a large sign with a photo of you, I guess at your first communion.

Jenny Tiffin: It was a terrifying time in my life. I was only in the orphanage for a year and a half, or two years.

Damien Carrick: You went back to your family?

Jenny Tiffin: Yes, back to my family. I wasn't able to talk about what happened in there, I was made to be put under—swept underneath the rug, so to speak, and wasn't able to deal with it until probably by 2002 when everything came out about Gerald Ridsdale abusing me; he was in the court case and sentenced to 16 years jail. But things started to slot into place about what actually happened, and now I was able to deal with it eventually, through many counselling sessions and time to deal with post-traumatic stress, depression, all those symptoms.

Damien Carrick: Now Angela Sydrinis, as you've pointed out, a lot of these kids were taken, according to the law, by the state, under the authority of the state, but they were handed to church-run institutions. Well what's the liability of the churches, as opposed to the state and territory governments?

Angela Sydrinis: Well really, they're even more difficult claims than the claims we pursue against the state governments. Many churches, including the Catholic church and the Uniting church, have organised their affairs so that the only legal entity that exists in these religious associations, is a property trust. And that property trust is incorporated for the sole purpose of owning and disposing of property and managing the financial affairs of the church. There was recently a High Court decision where a claimant brought a claim for damages for...

Damien Carrick: A Mr Ellis.

Angela Sydrinis: - Mr Ellis, yes, for sexual abuse when he was a child at the hands of a Catholic priest. He wasn't a ward of the state, but the law applies in the same way to my clients, and the Catholic church in effect, made admissions that they had an arguable case to answer, in terms of the legal liability, but the defence that they ran was that they couldn't be sued, because the only legal entity that existed was the property trust. Everyone agreed the property trust had nothing to do with the supervision of priests; the court found that the property trust couldn't be held liable for the negligent acts of the priest, and as there was no other legal entity, Mr Ellis's claim failed.

Now it amazes me that you get a religious institution which holds itself out as being a moral and righteous organisation. They have in effect hidden behind a corporate veil; they've organised their legal affairs more cleverly than James Hardie ever did. You know, James Hardie tried to dispose of their liabilities by moving offshore. Well the Catholic church is alive and well in Australia and hiding behind this corporate veil when claimants try and pursue these claims. So the reality is, at present, unless the law changes, so that by act of parliament the Catholic church is deemed to be a legal entity, the entire Catholic church, claimants, the High Court has said, they've got nowhere to go.

Damien Carrick: Now I understand though that the Catholic church did actually sit down and negotiate with people like you, in a way that some other churches or indeed the government don't.

Angela Sydrinis: Well the Catholic church were one of the first to set up a protocol to try and settle these claims.

Damien Carrick: Financially.

Angela Sydrinis: Financially. George Pell did that in Victoria. He would say, and they would say they did it because they wanted to do the right thing. People who've been involved in the process, including me, would say they did it to control the process and to minimise the backlash, the publicity; that it was damage control, it was protecting the Catholic church brand.

But when you try and step out of their process, which has a maximum payment of $55,000 by the way, when you try and step out of their process, they use every legal defence available to them, including the Statute of Limitations, which is a law which says these claims are out of time but, more importantly, this legal defence that there is no entity that can be sued. You can get an extension of time, you can overcome the Statute of Limitations, you cannot overcome this defence that there is no legal entity that can be sued, because the High Court has said you can't overcome it.

You know, it's hypocrisy. It's hypocrisy. And the Uniting church (in Victoria) is another organisation which has organised its affairs in the same way, and they too will take the defence if you choose to step out of their protocol. And what these protocols do, I mean on one level they would say, Well, the law doesn't let you get anything; we're being really magnanimous, OK? And maybe that's true on one level, but it reinforces for my clients that here they are again, going cap-in-hand, begging for something, because they know that unless it's given voluntarily by these organisations, they've got no way they can force them to do the right thing. And that's what our courts should be about; they should be about delivering justice.

Damien Carrick: Not charity.

Angela Sydrinis: Not charity, absolutely, absolutely. Because what happens at the moment is, it's charity, whereas what these people need is acknowledgement, justice, healing.

Damien Carrick: Sandra, what's your story?

Sandra: I'm actually from New South Wales, and I was in and out of the system since I was about seven years old, until I was just over 16. Just the whole idea was then, it was just take the kid away and stick it in an institution. That's got to be the reason that they're just bad. The kids weren't bad, we were just not listened to. So we're still suffering from this. I have issues with my daughters; they don't want to talk about my past, they don't want to talk about my time in an institution or anything like that, and in fact one daughter doesn't speak to me at all. It's a sad thing, but it's because I had nothing to gauge to raise my children. I did not have anything to measure raising children by. Most of my life I spent in institutions, in dysfunctional families.

Damien Carrick: Sandra, and before her, lawyer Angela Sydrinis.

And if you'd like to contact CLAN, Care Leavers Australia Network, or Redress WA, we'll put their details on our web site.

That's the Law Report for this week. Thanks to Law Report producer, Anita Barraud, and technical producer, Angie Grant.