Trust Me (92 page)
The truth, however welcome, was not always kind. The Christian Brothers were not the only ones to suffer as their wicked deeds were finally uncovered. As the truth unfolded, it had to be told through the media. Dark secrets never whispered even to loved ones had to be revealed to the whole world. Facing up to the glare of the TV camera and telling the world that as a child of nine or ten you were raped by a lecherous monk is an act of extraordinary courage. Next day at the local supermarket, the stares and pointed fingers hurt and are hard to ignore. Even harder, perhaps, is the sneering jibe and ribald gesture in the Aussie-macho workplace.
The truth hurt at home too. Wives told me how they were caught unawares, that they knew nothing about the atrocities inflicted on their husbands so long before. One tried to explain to me her anguish and helplessness as her husband broke down beside her as they watched
The Leaving of Liverpool
on TV.
Another wife, who later became a VOICES committee member, wrote:
… one night he told me about his childhood at Castledare and by the time he had finished he was crying and so was I. He told me that every day of his life it had been with him – he could not get it out of his mind. At first I felt cheated. I could not understand why he had not told me before, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized how hard it must have been for him to tell me at all… It will never go away. I still cry for my husband and I know he cries too. Sometimes his tears are silent, it is hard to hide one’s feelings.
In the cruel, bleak and isolated orphanages there was no mother to love and cuddle a crying child; not a grandmother’s knee to climb up on in search of a comforting hug – just sex-starved Christian Brothers wielding monstrous leather straps and committing evil deeds upon innocent boys in the dead of night. In 1948, three inspectors of the Child Welfare Department reported:
Castledare is catering for children who are still little more than babies, who need love, affection, care and attention which a child of such age would get from a mother… there is an immediate necessity for the touch of a woman’s hand.
Another inspector visiting Bindoon reported: ‘… the home is entirely lacking in the necessary female staff.’
There is no doubt that the lack of a female presence in childhood has had a detrimental and lasting effect upon the survivors. Many men and their partners say how difficult their lives have been as a result of the husband’s upbringing. While many have found it impossible to establish and maintain relationships, the parental bond with children has also been difficult.
One man told me that when his wife died after their fifteen-year marriage, he stood by as his fourteen-year-old son and only child wept with grief. He said:
I knew I had to comfort him, put my arms around him, console him. He was my son, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch him. In the orphanage, no one touched us out of genuine love or affection and as my son sobbed in front of me, I was still trapped by the loathsome hand of the orphanage.
In fact, the wounds inflicted in the orphanages never heal. Paul Bennet, a Canadian therapist who treated boys abused by Christian Brothers, wrote: ‘None of these guys will ever be cured and they will probably spend the rest of their lives trying to recover… many of them carry tremendous rage, anger, confusion, guilt and shame.’
This volatility is never far below the surface and is often more wounding to the victim than to those who are subjected to it. Man after man has explained to me how they cannot control the anger which flares up with little reason and no warning. Those they love and those who help them are particularly vulnerable.
A leading Australian forensic psychologist who treated many of the men associated with VOICES spoke of typical symptoms such as flashbacks, chronic sleep disorders, an inability to form and maintain relationships, increased anxiety, low self-esteem and intense feelings of shame, guilt and suicidal tendencies. ‘By and large many of them are ruined human beings,’ he said.
Many of the men have led lonely and deprived lives. Many succumbed to alcohol, some have known the hell of skid row, many have been in gaol, while one of the most common burdens they carry is a lack of education.
When VOICES took its case to the NSW Supreme Court, an eminent QC acting for the Christian Brothers suggested that the motive for the men’s legal action was money. Under this savage grilling one middle-aged man, on the verge of tears, exclaimed to a hushed court, ‘No, I wasn’t after the money at all. I am not after any money. I want to learn how to read and bloody write.’
Girls in the care of the Sisters fared no better than their brothers. Discussing conditions in orphanages run by the Sisters, a 1998 House of Commons report speaks of severe floggings with thick leather straps and of the fifteen-year-old girl stripped naked and savagely flogged in front of fifty other girls, suffering unbearable pain and humiliation. One survivor told the Australian Forde Inquiry:
Living at that hellish place has left me with enduring nightmares, emotional pain and torture, resentment, insecurity and self-loathing. I have never shaken the feeling of worthlessness. They [staff] told me I was no good – that’s what I believe. I cannot express how these feelings have affected my life. I cannot shake feelings of self-hatred and guilt. My education and marriage have suffered, I could not be the mother I wanted to be to my children. On occasions, I know I have let them down by lacking the strength to stand up for the right thing. I get so depressed sometimes, because I know there wasn’t any way to change how things turned out for me, and for those who depended on me. [The orphanage] took away my childhood. It left me no hope.
The House of Commons Committee investigating the Child Migration Scheme heard of one victim’s first experience in Australia: ‘Where it hit me particularly was when they dragged the brothers and sisters from one another, I can still hear the screams.’ In its report, the same House of Commons Committee commented on how survivors often referred to the Christian Brothers as Christian Buggers and the Sisters of Mercy as the Sisters without Mercy.
The scandal of the Child Migration Scheme and the evil which pursued the unfortunate children into the orphanages is a sad story which can never have a happy ending and
Trust Me
reflects that sadness. But Lesley Pearse has a special gift which enables her to capture the personal turmoil in moving, gritty, authentic terms. Dulcie, May and Ross are real people permanently scarred by their childhood experiences.
Trust Me
may be fiction, but every word is engraved with the truth.
Acknowledgements
To Bruce Blyth in Perth, Australia, for your help, knowledge, advice and enthusiasm. Without your passion and commitment I could never have written this book. But then you’ve been helping the survivors of Bindoon for years, an unsung hero, a man of integrity and compassion. After you all men will fall short. My hero and friend.
To Ted and Betty in WA, for allowing me to pick your brains and trawl through your memories and your knowledge of farming. Come to England soon!
To Faye and Geoff in WA, for putting up with a greenhorn jill-a-roo and her many naive questions. I will remember my time on your farm with great affection. If I’ve made mistakes in the farming details, forgive me. I’m just a townie.
Thanks to the Child Migrants Trust in Nottingham, England, for sending me invaluable news clippings and advising me on books for my research. The Child Migrants Trust is devoted to searching out relatives of the children sent to Australia and helps to fund travel expenses for them to meet up. Thanks to Margaret Humphreys, its director, a great many people have been reunited with family back in England. I thoroughly recommend her book
Empty Cradles
to anyone who wishes to know more about the Child Migration Scheme.
Finally, extra special thanks to Peggie Rush, Mary Eather, John Carvill and Paddy Dorrain. I can hardly find the words to express my admiration for each of you, sharing your blighted childhoods with me so that I could write this book. Things you told me stayed on in my memory long after I’d returned to England. I needed no notes to remember. I have wept for each of you, and for all those other children who lived through those evil times. I hope my tears, and those of the readers, will soothe some of the pain and injustice done to you all.
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First published 2001
Copyright © Lesley Pearse, 2001
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-191068-0
