Stories of the Forgotten Children, Stuff, November 17, 2009

Stories of the Forgotten Children

Stuff
November 17, 2009

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/3068716/Stories-of-the-forgotten-children

As young children, they had their faces rubbed until the blood flowed for wetting the bed.

On other occasions, they had their feet placed in boiling water as punishment.

Sometimes when they were locked under the stairs, they had food thrown to them like they were animals.

Then there was the unspeakable sexual abuse and teen pregnancies, leading to another generation of suffering.

For them, a national apology was a chance for them to be believed, a chance to finally feel like they were Australians.

AT LAST: Victim Edward Cogan poses for a portrait after the national apology to the forgotten Australians and former child migrants who suffered abuse and neglect.

On Monday, the Australian federal parliament apologised to the Forgotten Australians who suffered as children inside the nation's orphanages and institutions.

Survivors poured into the Great Hall in Parliament House to listen for the one word they had waited a lifetime to hear - sorry.

It was standing room only as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recalled the "ugly chapter" in Australia's history.

And tears flowed in the audience as he acknowledged the physical and emotional abuse suffered in state and church-based children's homes.

"Sorry for the tragedy, the absolute tragedy of childhoods lost," Mr Rudd told the 1000-strong gathering, mostly survivors including former Australian Democrat senator Andrew Murray who championed the issue in parliament.

"We look back in shame at how those with power were allowed to abuse those who had none."

Mr Rudd apologised to the 10,000 child migrants shipped over from Britain after World War 2, on the false belief that they were orphans.

"Robbed of your families, robbed of your homeland, regarded not as innocent children but regarded instead as a source of child labour.

"We acknowledge today that the laws of our nation failed you."

The apology will help the nation remember its past, move forward, and ensure all children are protected from abuse, he said.

One Forgotten Australian, Gabrielle Short, recalls her years of abuse at Ballarat's Nazarath House.

Children were throttled if they were sick but for wetting the bed, the abuse were even worse.

"If you wet the bed at the house, they'd rub your face into the sheets until it bled," Ms Short, now 53, said.

"They had bed inspections every morning. They'd say, 'Whoever wet the bed come down the front here.'

"Then you'd go down to the front, they'd have bowls of hot water and we had to stand in this hot water."

In one dehumanising punishment, girls would be locked under the stairs and have food thrown to them.

At Christmas time, presents had to be given back after four hours and placed in a box.

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Gifts from "holiday parents" were confiscated immediately.

"I try to explain it to my children now: if you were to read the story Oliver Twist, you take away the music and the happy bits, and that's what it was like," Ms Short said.

Sisters Helen Kohn and Christine Harms, now aged 57 and 56, were placed at Nazareth House in Brisbane after their parents' marriage ended. They were known simply as 23 and 24.

In the 1950s, single mothers had their children taken from them.

Instead of love, one woman's daughters were sexually abused and raped during their time at Nazareth House in Brisbane.

For Ms Kohn, it started before her 10th birthday.

"There's no abuse we didn't experience," Ms Kohn, who was placed in the orphanage at the age of two, said.

As an adult she suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, the kind of illness soldiers experience in war.

Her sister said that when she ran away, the police dragged her back simply because they didn't believe the stories.

At 15, Ms Harms gave birth to a baby boy called Kenneth.

He died in state care when he was 11, the second generation to be harmed by wrongful state policies.

In later life, she has accepted that her mum didn't know of the abuse the Catholic Church sanctioned.

For Ms Harms, an apology from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a sign of being believed.

"God has vindicated us," she said.

"Mr Rudd gave us hope and a bit of dignity back.

"For the first time in my life, I feel like an Australian."