Thursday, 8 February 2024

Motions

Apology for past care leavers

Jacinta ALLAN (Bendigo East – Premier) (11:34): I move:

That this Parliament expresses our formal and sincere apology to Victorians who experienced historical abuse and neglect as children in institutional care in the following terms:

Today we acknowledge a shameful chapter in our history, and the experiences of a group of Victorians who have fought for a long time to be heard.

From 1928 to 1990, thousands of children were entrusted to the state, religious organisations and charitable agencies.

To those children, who were abused and neglected during their time in care, we humbly and unreservedly apologise.

That you were needlessly separated from your brothers and sisters – sometimes growing up within the same four walls – but never being allowed to know each other.

For the grief of being removed from your parents, often without explanation – and the years spent fighting to find your family, sometimes in vain.

To those who died without getting the respect or recognition they deserved.

To the children who lost their lives while in the guardianship of the state, whose voices were silenced forever.

And to the families who were broken, permanently.

We failed you. For this, we are deeply sorry.

There are countless ways to harm a child, and all of them leave a mark.

We apologise, that instead of reading, writing and arithmetic, many instead learnt of floggings, beltings and brutality.

That you were often cruelly, and purposefully, punished for the most minor of infractions – and far more often, for things entirely outside of your control.

That too many of the men and women, organisations and institutions, entrusted with your care, perpetrated the very opposite.

For the physical scars you bear to this day, we say sorry.

We also recognise that many of you bear the emotional scars.

The humiliation. The stigma. The neglect.

That you were made to feel so worthless when you were – and are – worth so much.

For the heartbreak and humiliation dealt to you, we say sorry.

For those of us who grew up safe, connected and nurtured – it’s impossible to imagine. But for those who lived it – the impact is not only historical but enduring.

To those with families of your own, we apologise that the burden of your experience often carries on in your relationships with your children and grandchildren.

And we apologise to those whose experience of so-called “care” made having your own family an impossibility.

We also acknowledge the challenges many of you have faced in building healthy, loving relationships.

And we acknowledge your courage – and the incredible support and understanding of your husbands, wives, partners and families – in proving that love is always possible.

Many of you were also denied that most basic right – knowing who you are.

Instead, you were forced to piece together your identity and history from your records – documents that were either incomplete, blacked out, or littered with lies made up about you and your family.

We are sorry this made the wounds even deeper.

We also apologise for the opportunities missed and the potential left unrealised.

For the way your health was neglected – often with a lifetime of consequences.

For the lies and low expectations that curled up and took root inside your hearts.

To those bright children full of life, who could have done anything, been anything, but instead had their childhood and education cut short.

For the unpaid child labour – work that should have belonged to adults. Boys forced to toil on farms, in vegetable gardens, and other manual labour, and girls in laundries, scrubbing floors and long hours looking after younger children.

To you, we say sorry.

Because it’s not just what happened in those institutions, but also outside of them.

When you were old enough to leave, many of you were simply discarded – often with no more than the clothes on your back.

You went from having every element of your life controlled, regimented, and policed to being completely alone.

Nowhere to fall back on. No-one to turn to.

You were left unprepared for a world that had, until that point, treated you with disdain and indifference.

For all this and more – we say sorry.

But sorry is just a word.

It requires action and even more, commitment.

Today as a Parliament, we take the first step towards righting those wrongs.

And commit ourselves to doing more and doing better to protect Victoria’s children – past, present and future.

The term ‘ward of the state’ first appeared in Victorian legislation in the 1887 Neglected Children’s Act, and for the next century those four words would be the basis of untold hurt for thousands of Victorian children and their families. Today I want to talk about some of that hurt, because it was on that basis that our state assumed responsibility for a child to the exclusion of parental rights. Placed in orphanages, missions, children’s homes and foster care, they became, in the words of one survivor, ‘the government’s children’, and it was on that basis that more than 90,000 Victorian children were placed in care between 1928 and 1990, many of them subsequently physically and emotionally abused and neglected. They were sent to places with quaint-sounding names that were anything but, homes that offered none of the love or security we associate with the word. Today we are here to bear witness to the lives that were changed forever by the actions of the state, of the churches and the charities that carried out these policies in our names and of the child welfare agencies, police and justice systems that enforced them.

It began with misguided moralising, much of it rooted in classism, because instead of supporting parents who were struggling to put food on the table, instead of helping fathers who had returned from serving their nation and were grappling with the aftermath, instead of assisting mothers, many of whom were isolated or alone, the government thought it knew better and could do better. Unmarried couples, single mums and dads, those who had the misfortune of just being poor or sick – the state set its sights on the most vulnerable in our community, making judgements with the stroke of a pen that would change the course of someone’s life forever. When you listen to their stories it is that casual indifference, that careless cruelty that is often the hardest to bear – the arrogance and incompetence of officials who thought they knew better.

There are many stories of the abuse children in care experienced during this time, but I want to tell you about what we did to Heather and what was said about Heather’s mum and her sister. In 1958 Heather ran away from St Catherine’s girls home in Geelong when she was nine, searching for her mother. Mum lived in West Geelong and Heather was determined to be reunited with her. The first night she slept under a bridge near the Barwon River, eventually navigating her way back to her mum’s house. The first thing her mum did was make her something to eat, then Heather had a shower to wash off the mark of two days on the road. Then her mum picked up the phone and called a taxi to take Heather back to St Catherine’s – because she did not have a choice. The state wielded all the power, and nothing you did or said could change a thing.

The notes in Heather’s file describe her going missing and the local police out looking for her but not the reason why she ran away. There was no mention of Heather’s search for her mother, no mention of her mum’s love, her mum’s determination to regain custody of her kids, but there is one place in Heather’s file where her mother’s name does appear – when a welfare officer referred to her as a ‘garrulous woman’. Now, the dictionary defines ‘garrulous’ as being over-talkative or trivial, but I know what they really meant. They meant she was a woman, likely working class. They meant that when she got upset she spoke a little bit too quickly, and that meant you did not have to listen to her – it meant she did not count. But as Heather said, she was not garrulous, she was fighting to get her children back. Her mother sent dozens and dozens of letters pleading her case, all of them ignored. Heather was never allowed to return home to live. Instead the physical and psychological abuse she experienced in care, she says, still haunts her. So do their words. ‘You’ve come from the gutter,’ they said. ‘You’ll never amount to anything,’ they said. At 17 Heather was moved to a hostel with other girls and then to private care until she turned 18.

Her youngest sister Evelyn did not make it home either. She died of untreated rheumatic fever when she was just eight years old. Heather remembers being called into Mother Superior’s parlour shortly after. There the Mother Superior explained, ‘Evelyn’s death was like God had a bunch of grapes, and he had taken the best one for himself.’ Heather remembers, ‘I just stared at her and I said, “Evelyn wasn’t a grape!”’

She remembers that for many years she truly believed that her sister had been murdered. You can only imagine the silent fear that little girl must have lived with, and Heather says it still haunts her to this day, and after Evelyn’s funeral she said not one single word was ever spoken of her again. It is really hard to hear these stories without getting angry – the arrogance, the indifference, the prejudice and the price these families paid for it. And then, having decided the system knew best, the system did not just neglect these children, it actively hurt them. As one Victorian, now in her 80s, said, ‘We weren’t people to them, just things they had to feed.’ As another put it, ‘You were told if you were a state ward, then you were a bad child. And if you hear something enough times, you often start to believe it.’

There is no such thing as a bad child. Instead, brutal punishments were handed out for imagined misbehaviour. Children who wet the bed – what we now understand to be a response to trauma – were singled out and made to wear their wet sheets or worse. The intention was nothing less than humiliation, a deliberate attempt to rob a child of their dignity and self-esteem. Then there were the so-called medical procedures focused neither on a child’s health nor on their wellbeing. Children were also physically abused, locked in dark and airless cupboards and denied food or given what was rotten. A list of everyday objects that were weaponised against children is a list so long and so awful I cannot imagine reading it out loud. But if you can imagine it, it probably happened.

In learning more about these institutions I also learned a little more about my own family. It was something I had never heard of, so shrouded was this stuff in secrecy. But through this process I found out that my own great-grandmother and her daughter, my great-aunt, had spent time in an orphanage. It was not for very long, and as far as I know they did not experience some of the things we have heard about today. But as a wise woman said to me, ‘One day in an orphanage is like a lifetime to a child.’

It must have felt like an eternity to Barry. Eight brothers and one sister were broken up and sent all over Victoria. The horrors they each experienced left permanent scars. Barry’s sister Maureen took her own life at 18. Two brothers died of an overdose, and in 2018 Barry’s twin Graham drew the blinds of his commission flat, got into bed and never got out again. He weighed a little over 40 kilograms when he was found. These are just the siblings that Barry knows about. ‘I blocked out a lot of my past and I find it hard to remember,’ he said, ‘but I will never forget the oppressive and aggressive force of physical abuse. The dormitories, the showers and the gymnasium were places I will never forget – where I was held down and abused … it never leaves you.’

We said we knew better, and we did not. We brought them into our care, and we failed them. We took so much from these children and so much from these so-called wards of the state – their birthdays and their sense of self. We even robbed them of their names. As Saundra – as she was called, ‘number ‍88’ ‍– put it, ‘We lost our identities.’ We failed to prepare them for their futures too. Many left these places not knowing the things most of us take for granted – not knowing how to use a telephone, how to read and write or how to buy a train ticket; not being able to show affection, be held or be touched. As one lady described it, ‘I grew up in the 60s – but I missed them completely.’

Of course they had big ambitions and big ideas, like any child. Lyn always dreamed of being a nurse. Then there was Terry, a little boy who wanted to be a plumber; Lenny, who wanted to be an electrical engineer; and Beth, who told us she wanted to grow up and look after the babies in her own orphanage. I want to tell you about Gerald too – Gerald, aged 85, who said he got everything he dreamed of as a boy. He grew up to have a family. He learned how to love and be loved right back. I share his story because I think it says something remarkable about resistance. Even within a system designed to dehumanise, up against the force of the state and the violence of those tasked with upholding its power, he resisted – they resisted. Indeed many of these brave men and women have been resisting their whole lives. As children in a system designed to break their will, they fought back in ways big and small. Like wildflowers growing through a crack in the cement, they rose up. They rebelled, they fooled adults and sometimes they escaped.

It is astounding to think of the courage of these children, the same age as my own and even younger – children who broke free of those cloistered walls because they knew that whatever was beyond them had to be better. They fought as adults too. It is the reason why we are here today. By telling your stories, often at the emotional cost that comes with reliving the past, you have ensured that this dark chapter in our history is fully acknowledged and addressed. You have met silence with truth, power with defiance and indifference with determination. Because of organisations like Care Leavers Australasia Network, Open Place, Alliance for Forgotten Australians, Child Migrants Trust, Connecting Home and more, you have provided a home – a home for those who grow up without one.

There are a lot of people who fought for today, and I know I cannot hope to name all of you. But I do want your contributions recorded in the history of this place – people like Leonie Sheedy, Sue Whittington-Stevens, Heather Bell, Robert House, Frank Golding and Joanna Penglase, whose ad in the paper was the seed from which so much has grown. People like Gordon Hill, Boris Kaspiev, Caroline Carroll, Ian Hamm, Andrew Bickerdike and Dr Margaret Humphreys – we are here because survivors demanded recognition.

I also need to acknowledge those Victorians whose experiences mean they cannot be with us here today. The emotion is still too raw and too heavy. Whether you are watching at home, interstate or overseas, I want you to know that today belongs to you too. It also belongs to those we have lost – people like Heather’s sister Evelyn and Graham, Barry’s twin. We remember the Victorians who died without recognition or justice. To each and every child who was abused, neglected or mistreated and on behalf of this Parliament and every Parliament before it, we say sorry.

Of course I understand that these words are not a magic salve. You have been hurt in ways that cannot be undone and witnessed things that cannot be unseen. But I do hope that this apology can be the start of something new – for you a start to healing, to recognition and to change, and for us a start to saying ‘never again’ and meaning it.

In listening to and reading about the stories of these children I found one word that came up again and again: ‘shame’. So many of these Victorians live with so much shame. If I can address myself very directly to everyone who feels that deeply, I want to say this: the shame does not belong to you. It is ours. It was always ours, and it always will be ours. Today is about reclaiming that shame, lifting its weight from your shoulders and holding it up to the light – and in its place a sense of pride, pride in the bright and beautiful children that you were and pride in the strong and courageous adults that you have become, in the fight that you have led, in the heart that you have shown, in your determination to make sure it never happens again.

I commend the motion to the house.

John PESUTTO (Hawthorn – Leader of the Opposition) (11:53): To all here assembled: I am very proud and very moved to join with the government and the Premier in supporting this historic motion, one that is long past time but one which is well deserved. Throughout human history there has been a universal and timeless dictum that has cut across civilisations and cultures. No matter what the language, no matter what the civilisation, no matter what the culture, the dictum has always been the same: unyielding and strong, those in positions of power and authority bear the heaviest of responsibilities.

We join this motion today because our care leavers who are with us today and those who never made it to today deserved that protection, and they did not get it. They deserved it. And it is no consolation to say to people, ‘It was a different time.’ No, those standards applied then as much as they do today. We failed those in institutionalised out-of-home care in this state, and this apology is well deserved. So many thousands of young Victorians were in out-of-home care, and the Premier rightly accounted for many of them. Whether it was the most barbaric form of physical abuse, whether it was frankly child exploitation, whether it was sexual abuse, for many it destroyed them. They may have pressed on, but they were never the same. The scars were deep and beyond any remedy. It is a mark of the strength and resilience of the people who are with us today, those watching online and those who cannot join us today. It is a miracle of the human spirit that they could survive that.

I have had the pleasure in recent weeks of talking to many survivors who went through the horrors of that treatment, and it is impossible not to be moved. As I have said, many were put in employment settings that today we would consider primitive, unacceptable – in domestic settings under the guise of, ‘This is charitable; this is benevolent.’ Well, it was not. It was wrong. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. As I said, many faced rampant forms of abuse. Whilst our words today cannot remedy that, it will be of enormous comfort to those who are here today and those who cannot join us that this historic statement today by this Parliament, coming together as one, will offer that kind of healing.

It was not just those who went through the horrors that have been explained in the lead-up to today and that the Premier accounted for; it was those around them too – siblings with whom they had lost touch, parents who were grieving to make contact yet again one more time with the children they had lost. And the grounds for removing children were primitive. In many cases if you look at the records, it just says ‘neglect’. Many will tell you when you speak to them that, frankly, they were removed because they were considered poor. That is not the mark of a civilised country, and we mark ourselves against that dictum I spoke about before, by this test: how well do we as an advanced and civilised people look after the most vulnerable? So it was that we did not meet that standard, and that is why today it is important to come together as we do.

I had the pleasure last week of meeting with Leonie Sheedy, and I would join the Premier in her comments about Leonie. She, frankly, is a force of nature, and I know she is joining us today. She is emblematic of that resilience that we marvel at when we see it and ask ourselves the question: how would we weather that kind of treatment? Leonie Sheedy, as one of the co-founders of CLAN, is a testament to that human spirit. There are so many sliding doors moments in our lives, and there was one in 1992 when Leonie just happened to see an ad, one of 175 that had been placed in papers in New South Wales. From there, CLAN eventually would be born, as she collaborated with people like Joanna Penglase and other members of CLAN whom the Premier has rightly acknowledged today, including current CLAN president Sue Whittington-Stevens. That one sliding doors moment is why we are sitting here today.

Leonie told me of so many of the people she has fought for over the years, harrowing stories. Even in most recent times, how those people survived is a miracle. But we have to do more than just apologise today. If we think that is enough, we would be mistaken. Our apology must be supplemented by a real and active commitment to make sure that those children who need care and do not have the loving arms of a family, that unconditional love, get it from us. So today is not just an apology. Today is and must be a challenge to all of us who sit in the chambers of this Parliament to do everything we can to ensure that nothing like the horrors we have been told about occur again. It is hard, but we must do that.

We know that many of these stories touch us by one or more degrees of separation. In my own case I have a dear friend and adviser who has told me about his mother Hilda, and he has given me permission to account for some of it today. Hilda was one of five. They were removed from their family because they were considered poor. Hilda, my adviser’s mother, never recovered. She felt shame and prejudice that was not hers to bear, and she bore it her whole life. It is a mark of her character and resilience that she was able to produce people like my adviser and his siblings.

One of Hilda’s siblings was Bob, and Uncle Bob was sexually abused. How he could have survived any of that is anyone’s guess. Here is the thing: Uncle Bob went on to get married and have a family and to serve in a very senior role in the Metropolitan Fire Brigade command. After some four decades of marriage his past caught up with him. His marriage broke down, he left his family and he died alone and destitute, all because he could not break out of the clutches of the horrors he had survived. It is so important for us to remember, as the Premier has said, that the scars are lasting, and people will need constant support as we go ahead.

I want to thank CLAN. I want to thank all care leavers right across our state, right across our country, those who support them, those who are with them – everyone involved in this effort.

Interjections from gallery.

John PESUTTO: I understand. To everyone involved in this effort, to bring closure and comfort for those who have been affected, we must support this apology with real action. For those like Hilda and Bob who have long left us, we will not forget their torment and their experience.

In supporting the Premier in this motion, I just wish to say this: nothing we say today may assuage completely the enduring anguish of not knowing the answers to some of life’s most profound questions. What are the origins of my existence? From whom do I descend? Where do I find unconditional love? Your life journey will go on from today, but I do hope that this occasion marks an uplifting milestone on your pathway to ongoing discovery and healing. I also hope that this apology is made auspicious not just because of the collective expression of the deepest sorrow today but by the comfort in knowing that this assembly constitutes us saying that we are with you and that we will walk with you.

For any community to truly claim the mantle of being a community, it must itself be a family, and so we meet here today not just as members of Parliament, not just as friends and acquaintances – I want all of you to know we meet here today as sisters and brothers. I hope that in the moments to follow this when we meet outside the chamber and in the days and years ahead that you will remember that and that you will greet me as John your brother. For that is the mark of a true community, that we are ultimately a family. I am proud, on behalf of the Liberal Party and the National Party, to join with the Premier in support of this historic motion.

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (12:04): I rise on behalf of my colleagues to support the government’s apology and to express our deepest sorrow for the traumas experienced by victims and survivors of abuse and neglect in institutional care. Today is historic, and while we know it comes too late for too many, it is so important that institutions right the wrongs of the past and are able to say sorry.

To be removed from one’s family and to be placed in care is a painful experience for any child. But then to experience abuse and neglect at the hands of those who are meant to care for you is truly unthinkable, and yet it was a reality for so many Victorians. Here today in this Parliament we are apologising for the failings of the care system that ultimately resulted in profound suffering for many. We extend our sorrow to the families and communities of survivors. You have had to witness the heartbreaking suffering of your loved ones over the years, and we recognise that this has taken its toll on you too. We also recognise that the traumatic impacts of abuse are often ongoing over the course of a lifetime and that they too often flow into intergenerational traumas which carry forward in ways we are still trying to understand.

For too long survivors of abuse and neglect have had to stay silent, whether that be because of the fear of not being believed, the fear of retribution or the stigma that society imposes. I cannot imagine the pain that was felt by the children who were not believed when they spoke up, when people in positions of power did nothing to save them and when family members sided with abusers. We are profoundly sorry to the children who experienced this betrayal of trust, and we are indebted to the survivors who bravely came forward and shared their stories to royal commissions, to police investigations, to support workers and to their loved ones.

We also want to recognise CLAN, the Care Leavers Australasia Network, and so many other organisations of courageous groups of people for their relentless advocacy and care. We are grateful for your courage, because without the truth there can be no healing, no redress, and our systems would be doomed to repeat history.

We apologise to those survivors who continue to be failed by our institutions. We are sorry that there are many of you who continue to struggle as you have not been able to seek the support you need. We are sorry that our social systems have not been strong enough to give you the support you need. We are particularly sorry to survivors who have been criminalised, as we know how historically our criminal justice system has not been considerate of trauma and what it does to our lives and our actions. This failing is even more wrong as it means so many people have been doubly punished.

Ultimately the words spoken here today cannot take back the failings of the state’s institutions. What we can do now is make a commitment towards appropriate redress, and that is what we and the Greens as well are committed to. We must all work across the Parliament to deliver a redress scheme which provides support, comfort and justice. To do this, the voices of survivors must be listened to, and their needs cannot continue to be ignored. It is crucial that this scheme fills the gaps in other redress mechanisms to ensure that no-one who needs support slips through the cracks.

To the survivors who are listening to this message, we are deeply sorry for what has happened. We are sorry for the ongoing anguish you and your loved ones have endured. We make a promise to you here today that we will not forget the wrongs of the past. Rather, we will use this grief that we carry in our hearts to propel us to action – action which sees justice done and makes sure an apology like this is never needed again.

Motion agreed to in silence, members showing unanimous agreement by standing in their places.

Sitting suspended 12:10 pm until 2:02 pm.