Mother of Ten (17 page)

Cole
Christine A
(editor), Kashin Jan, (illustrator
),
2008,
Releasing the Past
:
Mothers’ stories of their stolen babies,
Bondi NSW,
Veljanov
Printing.

Penglase
J
,
2005,
Orphans of the Living
, Fremantle WA, Fremantle Arts Centre Press
in partnership with Curtin University of Technology.

Joanna
Penglase was placed ‘in care’ when only eight months old. She draws on her own
story as well as interviews with others and submissions to the 2004 Senate
Inquiry to try to unravel how and why half a million children grew up in ‘care’
in twentieth-century Australia.

Jones
Howard C
,
2010,
Orphanage Survivors: A true story of St John’s, Thurgoona,
Albury
NSW

The
2004 Senate Inquiry:
Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who
experienced institutional or out-of-home care
was released in August
2004.
http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees

Extracts
from the report include:

‘The
Committee concluded that upwards of, and possibly more than, 500 000
Australians experienced care in an orphanage, Home or other form of out-of-home
care during the last century. However, it is now considered that this figure
may be an underestimate. As many of these people have had a family it is highly
likely that every Australian either was, is related to, works with or knows
someone who experienced childhood in an institution or out-of-home care
environment.

Children
were placed in care for a myriad of reasons including being orphaned; being
born to a single mother; family dislocation from domestic violence, divorce or
separation; family poverty and parents' inability to cope with their children
often as a result of some form of crisis or hardship. Many children were made
wards of the state after being charged with being uncontrollable, neglected or
in moral danger, not because they had done anything wrong, but because
circumstances in which they found themselves resulted in them being status
offenders. Others were placed in care through private arrangements usually
involving payment to the Home. Irrespective of how children were placed in
care, it was not their fault.’

Recommendation
1 of the 39 recommendations:

‘That
the Commonwealth Government issue a formal statement acknowledging, on behalf
of the nation, the hurt and distress suffered by many children in institutional
care, particularly the children who were victims of abuse and assault; and
apologising for the harm caused to these children.’

Recommendation
2 of the 39 recommendations:

‘That
all State Governments and Churches and agencies, that have not already done so,
issue formal statements acknowledging their role in the administration of
institutional care arrangements; and apologising for the physical,
psychological and social 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.’

On
15 November 2009 the then Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, issued an
apology on behalf of the nation to the
Forgotten Australians
and former
child migrants. Mr Rudd acknowledged that ‘There are tens of thousands, perhaps
hundreds of thousands of these stories, each as important as the other, each
with its own hurts, its own humiliations its own traumas – and each united by
the experience of a childhood without love, of childhood alone.  

For
some, this has become a very public journey of healing.  For others, it
remains intensely private – not even to be discussed with closest family and
friends even today.’

(State
governments, churches and other agencies have also apologised to the
Forgotten
Australians
and
Lost Innocents
.)

Golding
Frank
,
2005, An Orphan’s escape
, Melbourne, Lothian Books. Frank Golding and his two
brothers, all under the age of seven, were admitted to Ballarat Orphanage
because of so-called ‘neglect’. They spent most of their childhoods there even
though their parents were alive and well and cared deeply about their children.

ABC
Open; Separated:
https://open.abc.net.au/
a website for
Australians who have been separated from their child/children or their parents
by forced adoption, to tell their stories
.

Moor
M,
2005,
Silent Violence: Australia’s White Stolen Children,
Nathan
QLD.  A thesis submitted in the fulfilment of the requirement for the
Doctorate of Philosophy in Arts, Media and Culture at Griffith University,
Nathan, Queensland by Merryl Moor, 2005. ‘This thesis contributes to feminist
knowledge by testing long held and arguably patriarchal and middle class
notions that white ‘unmarried mothers’ willingly gave away their babies for
adoption in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s in Australia.’

Harrison,
Eris Jane,
2011,
Forgotten Australians: Supporting survivors of childhood institutional care
in Australia,
Alliance for Forgotten Australians.

JB’s Blog:
http://jbthewriter.wordpress.com/

Please come and visit me
at my blog for a chat. JB