Many people have never heard of forgotten Australians. They are not to be confused with child migrants or the stolen generations. They are a brave group of their own and hold close their stories of neglect, abuse but most importantly, survival. Three unique forgotten Australians tell Stephanie Zevenbergen why they need to be remembered.IT'S almost 6am and 10-year-old David Mulholland lies awake in a freezing orphanage dorm overlooking Colac, petrified of the pending sun rise.
David was one of 500,000 children placed into state orphanages during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, because he was a victim of domestic violence in his home.
Other forgotten Australians were put in care because their parents were unfit or dead. They are often referred to as ‘care leavers’ or ‘state wards’.
David says he vividly remembers lonely nights of no sleep, so petrified of what the day would bring he would often wet his bed.
‘‘You’d wake up at 2am and discover that you were freezing cold because your pyjamas were all wet and your sheets were all wet,’’ he says.
‘‘You weren’t allowed to get out of bed, because you had to lie there as a punishment. You had a red rash all over your body. Freezing cold and your teeth were always chattering and you were always picked on and bullied, because you had wet the bed.
‘‘So you laid there till six o’clock, and you looked at the window behind you and you were terrified that the sun would shine through. Because when the sun came through that window you know you were going to cop it.’’
It’s situations like this that have stuck with David, now 57. Now a Woodend blueberry farm manager, he was ‘‘abandoned’’ by his mother in 1964 when he was 10. He was put into state care with his brother and two sisters.
In care, he experienced verbal, physical and sexual abuse by staff members, along with trauma, taunts and shame. To this day he says he doesn’t know what love is.
‘‘When you’re abandoned by your family you’re that desperate to get back to your mother and you don’t care about anything else,’’ he says.
‘‘But she didn’t even want us then. She met another man and had children to him and she only used us to pay the board and the rent.’’
David says his time as a state ward has stuck with him since.
‘‘We weren’t allowed to sing songs, we weren’t allowed to have presents, we weren’t allowed to have bikes — state ward kids have nothing. We would have rather stayed with the domestic violence at home.’’
David left care when he was 15 and went on to work in factories, roaming Australia. He ended up in Woodend in 2008 and began writing music.
‘‘You wander around, you have no home,’’ he says. ‘‘I did get married for three years and it didn’t work out.
‘‘After that I kept moving around. I’ve been all over Australia.
‘‘I love writing music and I love Woodend. It’s the only home I’ve ever had. It’s healing me quite well.’’
Many children walked away from orphanages with a plethora of mental illnesses.
Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and personality disorders are common among forgotten Australians because of constant abuse and trauma dealt out by staff and other children in the orphanages.
Support groups have been established nationwide that provide free counselling, financial assistance and help individuals access their records.
Many people didn’t know they were forgotten Australians until a national apology was given by then prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2009.
In the apology, he describes the period as an ‘‘ugly chapter in our nation’s history’’.
Sherrin Caird of Bacchus Marsh is all too familiar with that ugly time. She was put into state care in 1981 when she was 12 and still bears the scars from a stab wound inflicted by a group of female state wards in Ballarat.
‘‘From what I’d seen most of the physical abuse had stopped [in care] but it was taken over by drugging children,’’ she says.
‘‘So they put me straight in a mental institution with adult mental patients and drugged me, tranquilised me, knocked me out for several weeks on end. Then they put me into a few institutions after that.’’
Sherrin says she was given a bottle of sedative medication and was told to take one ‘‘whenever she felt upset’’.
‘‘I was always upset because I wanted to go home.’’
There’s never been a clear-cut reason why she was sent to care, other than having some learning difficulties.
‘‘They’ve got a list of offences that kids have done to be in those homes,’’ she says. ‘‘My page was blank.
‘‘They considered it behavioural problems, but my behaviour really deteriorated from the time they snatched me away, and I was snatched away quite brutally too.
‘‘When I got into those places I was horrified because I had a good family that loved me and I had love before I ended up there so I was one of the fortunate ones.
‘‘But when I got there I’d seen how many had been raised in that system with no family morals, no love, nothing but discipline, demands and control. Kids need love and nurturing.’’
Sherrin is an advocate for forgotten Australians, attending monthly protests on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne. Like other forgotten Australians, she is seeking compensation for what she suffered.
Phyllis (who asked that her surname not be used) prefers the title ‘care leaver’ than forgotten Australian. The Hume resident describes the state orphanage situation as a ‘‘recipe for disaster’’.
‘‘Staff didn’t have the checks and balances,’’ she says. ‘‘Anyone could get a job in these institutions. They didn’t know who they were or where they came from. They didn’t check backgrounds or have police checks.
‘‘That’s why they had a lot of people with quite sadistic natures, who were quite exploitative and abusive to the children in their care.’’
While Phyllis says she didn’t experience any abuse, she still remembers it as frightening.
Unlike David and Sherrin, , she had regular visits to see her mother, which she says got her through the hard times.
‘‘I never lost contact, I got to see her very often. We’d come down to Melbourne for holidays and on weekends and we did that quite a lot.’’
Phyllis went into care in 1960 with her brothers and sisters when she was 10 because of domestic abuse at home.
She says staff ‘‘picked their victims’’ when it came to abuse.
‘‘I wasn’t a wilting flower by any means. I would always speak up for myself.
‘‘There was a staff member, she had a really odd attitude towards me. She would be nice but then she’d give me a hard time as well. It was really contradictory.
‘‘I remember telling her ‘you go away and you leave me alone, back off, I haven’t done anything to you’. I wasn’t backward in coming forward.’’
Phyllis is now on the committee with Care Leavers Australia Network, which lobbies politicians, does advocacy work and is trying to get redress.
‘‘Victoria and NSW do not have redress and South Australia has a very limited compensation system in place for those sexually abused.
‘‘This is an ongoing struggle but we are determined to continue until we succeed.’’
SUPPORT AGENCIES
Care Leavers Australia Network. Free call: 1800 008 774. Visit: clan.org.au
Open Place. Free call: 1800 779 379. Visit: openplace.org.au
Forgotten Australian Action Group. Visit: support@forgottenaustralians.com. Visit:
forgottenaustralians.com
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