The Forgotten Children (34 page)
Read The Forgotten Children Online
Authors: David Hill
In contrast, the London Fairbridge Society told the inquiry that it was now a different organisation, no longer concerned itself with the problems of former Fairbridge child migrants, and did not have the resources to care for them. Its director, Nigel Haynes, said Fairbridge was now ‘a national charity which offers long-term personal development to young people aged 14 to 25 in inner cities’ and that the organisation wanted to look to the future and not the past.
Our current expenditure budget is £4.3 million a year. Previously, the Fairbridge Society, which ceased in 1982 and is now under a constitution and re-shifting of goals approved by the Charity Commissioners, operated child emigration to farm schools …
In its submission to the Commons Fairbridge said it could not ‘provide the aftercare and counselling required’ and that it was not ‘economically viable’ to employ a counsellor to help former Fairbridge children.
3
During the course of giving oral evidence to the inquiry Haynes said there was no record of physical or sexual abuse occurring at Fairbridge after 1938. In his oral evidence to the inquiry on 11 June 1998, he said:
Turning to sexual and physical abuse, we have got cases in the records of a case of neglect, it was called, and physical abuse in 1938 in a farm school called Molong. These complaints were received in London, investigated and the staff were dismissed immediately. Molong then became semi-autonomous from 1948 although accepted funds from London. Apart from that, we have no cases of complaint or abuse on record as far as Fairbridge is concerned, other than – and I hate to go back to it – the context of disciplines relevant at that time against what was happening in this country as well.
4
However, the London Fairbridge Society records show that in 1964 the society was advised of the child-welfare investigation that had confirmed abuse by Kathleen Johnstone, the cottage mother who regularly whipped the children with a riding crop and forced the head of a six-year-old girl down the toilet as punishment for bed-wetting. A copy of the report is contained in the minutes of a meeting of the London Fairbridge Society held on 2 July 1965, which are currently stored in the Liverpool University archives.
5
In Australia, an inquiry was conducted by the Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee, which reported in 2001. The report was titled ‘Lost Innocents: Righting the Record – report on Child Migration’.
6
The Senate committee was as critical of child migration as the House of Commons’s committee had been.
The child migration scheme is now universally recognised as having been fundamentally flawed with tragic consequences.
The evidence received by the Committee overwhelmingly emphasised the dark, negative side of child migration – the brutality of life in some institutions where abuse and assault, both physical and sexual, was a daily occurrence and where hardship, hard work and indifferent care was the norm. Living such negative experiences led some child migrants into a life of family and relationship breakdown and domestic violence, of crime and violence, and of substance abuse.
Loss of identity, a sense of belonging and the loneliness of being far from home affected all child migrants.
Barnardo’s Australia, which is independent of Barnardo’s in the UK, had similar views to its sister organisation about the failings of the child-migrant schemes. In evidence to the Australian Senate committee, Mr William Hoyles, Barnardo’s youth services and after care officer, said:
We have no hesitation in saying it was a shameful practice, that it was barbaric and it was completely against any practice that we currently uphold …
We are able to offer an after care service, and we are doing so since the days of the first child migration to Australia …
Our policy is not to just turn them away.
When giving evidence during the Senate hearings, the chairman of the Fairbridge Foundation, John Kennedy, was asked if he agreed with Barnardo’s. He replied: ‘I believe our view would not agree with Barnardo’s.’
7
In its written submission to the inquiry, the Fairbridge Foundation maintained that nothing seriously wrong happened at the farm school at Molong.
The Fairbridge Foundation is unaware of any unsafe, improper or unlawful treatment occurring at the Fairbridge Farm School at Molong. It is also unaware of any serious breach of any relevant statutory obligations occurring there.
8
Yet Fairbridge’s own files reveal they were aware of a number of cases of unsafe, improper or unlawful treatment at Fairbridge over the years. For example, the Fairbridge council minutes record instructions to Woods in 1948 to desist from hitting the children with a hockey stick and to stop public thrashings, practices that were in breach of the Child Welfare Act.
9
And correspondence from 1957 reveals that its chairman at the time refused an investigation into child abuse sought by the Department of Child Welfare.
10
The Senate recommended:
That the Commonwealth Government issue a formal statement acknowledging that its predecessors’ promotion of the Child Migration schemes, that resulted in the removal of so many British and Maltese children to Australia, was wrong; and that the statement express deep sorrow and regret for the psychological, social and economic harm caused to the children, and the hurt and distress suffered by the children, at the hands of those who were in charge of them, particularly the children who were victims of abuse and assault.
Fairbridge didn’t agree. In its written submission to the inquiry it said:
The Fairbridge Foundation cannot find any reason why the present Australian Government should apologise on its own behalf or on behalf of the previous Australian Governments for anything which they have done in regard to the Fairbridge Farm School at Molong.
It thinks that an apology would be both unnecessary and inappropriate.
The Fairbridge Foundation also rejected the suggestion that it has any responsibility for the welfare of former child migrants and expressed its opposition to providing material support for former Fairbridge children in need: ‘The Fairbridge Foundation does not believe that any reparation or monetary compensation in any form should be paid to former child migrants.’
11
The Fairbridge Foundation has assets of several million dollars. Each year the foundation pays out hundreds of thousands of dollars to other children’s charities, but continues to be opposed to spending any of the money on assisting former Fairbridge children who may need help. John Kennedy, who is the chairman of the foundation and was a member of the Fairbridge Farm School Council when the farm school was still operating, says the constitution of the Fairbridge Foundation does not allow it to help individuals.
Amendment of the constitution is unlikely because the foundation’s membership is restricted to the ten men on its board. The only time a new member is invited to join the foundation is when a sitting board member retires or dies. As the foundation stated in its submission to the Senate: ‘The Foundation, though open to Membership from all quarters, is in practical terms, a Council of 10 persons.’
While many former Fairbridge children have struggled through life, a number have, against the odds, overcome disadvantage and managed to turn their lives around. In many cases the turnaround came with the support of a loving partner.
Linda Gidman remembers leaving Fairbridge not knowing how to express love or affection.
There was no nurturing … The cottage mother … didn’t know how to come along and comfort a child in need … The problem with a lot of us, especially with the Fairbridge girls, is you can’t put your arms around each other, even now: ‘Don’t get too close because I’m not used to that sort of thing.’
I found it very traumatic. I had to basically go under psychotherapy in my twenties when I had a breakdown, two breakdowns. I just couldn’t get it out of my system. I think my saving grace has been, in the last eighteen years, meeting my partner. Because my partner has taught me over these years, you know, like, family values. He’s got a very close-knit family and it took me a long time to adjust to that sort of situation. And I think family values were taken away from us there. It was tough. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
Christina Murray, whose diabetes and brain tumour went unrecognised at the farm school, says her life turned around when she received proper treatment and married in her twenties.
The turning point for me was when I was properly diagnosed and when I met my husband; when I got married and I had someone to love. Somebody that had put their arm around you … thinking, ‘She’s not a bad old stick.’ That hadn’t happened before. And just for him to be there, having breakfast and going out together. It was just brilliant.
Smiley Bayliff is also grateful for being able to find comfort in a loving family.
I can’t complain about my life in all honesty. There’s parts of everyone’s life you say you wished didn’t happen, but it happened, but you just move on – but I can’t turn round and say I’d change things that much. All right, it would have been lovely to have had my parents there. It would have been lovely if my parents had the money to be able to bring us up as a family unit, you know, that’s fine; but I’ve done pretty well with my wife and kids and things like that, you know. I’ve got a good wife … I’ve got good kids and, you know, the oldest one, she’s doing law now and the other one, she’s a hairdresser by trade but she’s gone back to TAFE and she’s been accepted for uni next year to do psychology, actually.
Smiley’s brother Syd also feels he got out of Fairbridge moderately unscathed, mainly because of a loving and understanding partner, even though their relationship got off to a rocky start after he left the farm school. ‘When we first got married, we nearly got divorced in the first six months,’ he says. The couple lived in a two-room flat in Marrickville in Sydney and Syd would often have about six former Fairbridge kids around. His wife did all the washing up and cooking, without help or appreciation from any of them. ‘She threw them all out one night. She did her nana one night and it was nearly the end of my marriage but we’ve been together forty years next year.’
Barney Piercy, who spent nearly twelve years at Fairbridge, has bitter memories of the experience but feels lucky that he found great strength and support in his partner.
[It] was like getting out of gaol for something you didn’t commit. I didn’t steal a loaf of bread or anything. I just happened to be born. I didn’t ask to be born, did I? Looking back? A feeling of loss, a feeling of anger. A feeling of all those wasted years. It’s the things I can’t get back – my childhood, teenage years – and [the chance to be] a better man. I had no one to guide me, no one to relate to, no one to love me, no one to tell me I was a good person.
And then when I was twenty-one I came to Sydney and that’s where I met Maggie. That was my breakthrough, for sure. She was my friend; she was my lover, my wife.
Many former Fairbridge children have found comfort and strength in their bonds with other former Fairbridge children. The Old Fairbridgians’ Association was formed in the late 1930s and helps former Fairbridge children keep in touch with each other. It publishes a newsletter a couple of times a year and organises a reunion at Molong every two years. As Daphne Brown who came out to Fairbridge as a seven-year-old, points out, other Fairbridge kids are the only ‘family’ that many of them have ever known:
The Fairbridge kids … have stuck together … We seem to have more of a bond … Most of my good friends are from Fairbridge and I’m on the executive committee of the Old Fairbridgians’ Association … I feel the boys are my brothers and the girls are my sisters.
David Eva, who was at Fairbridge some years after Daphne Brown, feels the same way.
There are a lot of people … from Fairbridge – we see them and they ring us and that sort of thing. We see each other … we have barbecues and birthdays, so the comradeship’s still there.
Religious faith has been critical in the adult lives of a number of former Fairbridge children. What turned things around for Lennie Magee was the discovery of Jesus many years after he left Fairbridge when his life had plunged into drugs and confusion. When Lennie left Fairbridge as a seventeen-year-old he worked on the railways in the west of the state and got involved in the rock ’n’ roll – and drug – scene, becoming lead singer in a number of bands around bush towns. Ambitious to do better, he headed for Sydney. Living in Kings Cross, he joined The Cavemen and slid further into the drug scene. Of that period he says, ‘I was gradually wrecking my life and I still felt incomplete. I felt that if I could find my mother I would be whole.’
To earn some quick money Lennie headed for the Northern Territory and worked on road-building gangs near Tennant Creek in Central Australia. Then he headed back to England, along the hippie trail, in the late 1960s. He recounts: ‘I went from Singapore to Calcutta to Kathmandu with nothing more than a dilly bag and a flute that I couldn’t play and was heavily into speed and hashish.’
Finally, after fourteen years away, he was back in London. He met up with his mother but he says the reunion was a disaster: ‘I was stoned. To her I was like a ghost come back from the dead. It didn’t work.’
