RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: OZschwitz museum recalls horrors of statist and religious orphanage 'care'  Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:41 am | |
| EIGHT words on an old, hand-painted sign in Bankstown's National Orphanage Museum poignantly captures eight decades of Australia's care for unwanted children: ''Visitors are requested not to touch the babies.''
Malcolm Turnbull turned away from the sign yesterday and walking past the old painted cot, tarnished sports cups and photographs of orphanages and homes, many now infamous for child abuse, he stopped at an open suitcase.
The faded sticker on the inside lid caught his eye and the Opposition Leader read aloud, ''Dear Holiday Parent, would you please be good enough to check clothes.''
The suitcase once belonged to a little boy called Peter Hicks. The tag advised he was expected to return to his orphanage on February 1, 1969. It also listed his worldly possessions, including six underpants, best trousers or shorts (terylene), toothbrush, comb, bathers and two pyjamas.
''If you disconnect somebody from their own family, their parents and grandparents, it dehumanises them because part of our essential humanity is that sense of connectedness that we're part of a chain,'' Mr Turnbull said. ''To cut someone off so that they don't actually know where they came from is a very, very cruel thing to do.''
He and a former foster child, the West Australian federal MP Steve Irons, went to the Care Leavers Australia Network museum to talk with representatives of some who grew up as state wards, in children's homes or in foster care.
On Monday the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will formally acknowledge and apologise to more than 500,000 children who grew up as state wards and in children's homes and foster care. Some were also part of a scheme that advocated collecting poor children in England and relocating them around the British Empire.
Reports by a Senate committee on ''Lost Innocents and Forgotten Australians'' found generations of children and child migrants had suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse while in the care of government institutions, foster care and church organisations.
Thousands of people who grew up in institutions or in the care of people other than their biological parents are expected to be in Canberra for the apology. However, only about 200 will be permitted to watch Mr Rudd and Mr Turnbull deliver their speeches.
Perhaps reminiscent of the old days at the orphanages, the rest of the ''Forgotten Australians'' will be expected to remain outside and watch the ceremony on TV from the parliamentary lawn.
The CLAN museum's exhibits trace Australia's history of institutional care and include testimony from several victims.
Mr Irons recalled one woman who was paid $80,000 for the trauma she experienced while in care. ''She was raped daily,'' he said. ''She calculated she received $16 for each rape.''
A West Australian, Bill Bennett, made straps for Christian Brothers to use to hit children at the state's Clontarf orphanage.
He recorded dreading to hear the Brothers beckon ''come to my door tonight'' where on a bed beneath a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin in the corner ''they dulled their prey'' with a chocolate or a red gleaming pocket knife.
An elderly Harold Haig recalled how he was taken from a British orphanage and shipped to Australia while his mother was told by authorities he had died. He never saw her again.
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