operated as a psychiatric facility where 'treatment' was inspired by a 'medical model'. This conceptualised the child's 'anti-social' behaviour solely in medical (psychiatric) terms with little or no regard to social or other factors. What was deemed to be required was medical intervention in the form of psychotherapy and 'chemotherapy', generally involving the use of anti-convulsants, sedatives and tranquillisers. Forde notes that the DCS at the time asserted that inmates of Karrala were 'treated along modern psychiatric lines with up to date tranquilliser drugs'.[236] With orderlies having no medical training and with modern treatment using up to date drugs in the 1960s and 70s it is highly likely that there were elements of experimentation in their usage.

4.86 Largactil was widely reported as a drug commonly used to pacify 'out-of-control' children. Doses of Lithium and Melleril were also referred to as being regularly used to sedate young children.[237]

Children placed in mental homes and other inappropriate accommodation

Children should not ever be placed in a ward with adults in a psychiatric hospital and should always be supervised. At Rydalmere Psychiatric Hospital in 1971 I was placed in a ward with adult men and was sexually assaulted in a toilet block by another inmate. I was only 12 years of age. (Sub 318)

4.87 A number of submissions from Queensland referred to being placed in mental hospitals for reasons such as running away from other homes. As discussed above the Wilson Youth Hospital served a variety of purposes. In the late 1970s children were still being placed in adult mental health institutions, including Lowson House and Wolston Park:

I was placed in an adult mental health institution as a child. I will start with Warilda, because that is where the mental health side of it started...they sent me to D floor at Lowson House, which was an adult institution. It was a big dormitory with about 30 women in it. The day I got there I had to be processed. There was a lady who kept screaming for help. I went to try and help her, and she was in this little cell. Because I made a bit of a scene about that and would not take my medication, they dragged me off to the cell too. They took all my clothes off and just left me on the floor, I was 13, and that was just the beginning.[238]

I was sent to Goodna Mental Hospital at Ipswich [now Wolston Park] ...there was nothing mentally wrong with most State Wards that were sent here, they were sent here because they were hard to handle and they could keep them drugged up and under control here...There is also a letter [in my file] written by a doctor to the Welfare Department saying that I should not be there as this place was non-therapeutic for me and that I should be out in a hostel doing a business course. Well of course 6 months later I was still there...We were drugged up most of the time, I was sexually abused and told that this would happen at any time that I tried to escape...I was locked up for some months in the CRIMINALLY INSANE WARD and was nearly murdered by one of the inmates. It was in this ward that I got a beating with a belt and the buckle cut my face and has left a scar...In this ward I was forced to give a wardsman oral sex and got a beating when I first refused. It was in this ward that I was sodomised and raped. It was in this ward that I have been left with scars such as the scar on my face, cigarette burns on my arms and scars on my hand where it was cut with glass...It is beyond me that when people hear that children were put in with the CRIMINALLY INSANE that they are not as mad as hell. There are not a lot of us left as a lot have committed suicide and some just did not make it out of there. (Conf Sub 3)

4.88 One lady reported being placed in Marillac House (a home for people with intellectual disability or social and emotional problems) at the age of 9 even though file records show that only 3 years earlier a psychologist had assessed her as 'clearly of normal intelligence'.

the girls there were aged between 5-10 years and most of them were severely retarded, could not speak properly and made no sense and some of them had no control of their bodies...Had no friends. "My best friend was the dog - he would play with me - the other kids I played with couldn’t remember the game the next day."

"I hated being seen with the kids...I had to dress exactly like them all in the same dress and sandals - it made you look like them and I hated it - we had to walk on the street and it was so embarrassing". (Sub 264)

4.89 A number of submissions reported people being placed in mental homes for what was apparently a form of punishment for misbehaviour such as running away, refusing to work or perform chores or arguing with Sisters or staff. The use of drugs to pacify children for what may now be considered high spirited or adolescent behaviour was also common and is referred to in the previous section. The use of such institutions for adolescent children is unjustifiable and the impact that it had upon them incalculable.

At the age of 12, I was taken to the Lachlan Park Asylum...

I used to look after the little kids in this place. I’ll never forget the ones with encephalitis - there were about 6 or 7 of them - with their swollen heads just lying in their cots waiting to die. There were also 5 girls in there who were just vegetables, 3 were sisters...Once I remember the nurses putting hot water bottles on them without covers on them and they got bad burns. There were also 25 little Downs Syndrome children who would be taken out of their beds each morning and strapped onto potty chairs where they stayed all day until they were bathed in the afternoon and put back to bed. They weren’t allowed to walk or run around...

As the children’s ward was not locked, I decided to escape one day, but I didn’t know how to get out. I remember it being freezing cold and the nurses found me before I could get out. They took me back to the children’s ward and gave me a tablet, which I spat out. Later they came back and told me to get dressed, and they then took me to another ward where I could hear lots of screaming. This was where they kept the 'real crazies'. They put me in a cell with a small peephole in the door. I was so scared I couldn’t sleep. (Sub 182)

another girl...spent 3 years in Graylands. I didn’t know this until I bumped into her just before she died last year. She looked so frail (was anorexic) and sad and although she could barely talk, we did spend some time talking about the past. It was obvious that she had never psychologically left the orphanage and she had a real fear of being sent back to Graylands. She also told me that she had lost her daughter to a drug overdose. (Sub 172)

I ran away from the Home at Cheltenham on three separate occasions. My motivation each time was to try to escape from the abuse, the terrifying experiences, the persecution and regular beatings...After my third escape I was placed by the brothers into a receiving house at the Mont Park Asylum. This was a terrifying experience...As I was fairly small and only a young teenager, I was sometimes physically attacked by some of the older patients with mental illnesses...During the night I was locked up in a small cell that had bars on a window and a solid door with a small, barred, glass window in it...I spent about two years at Mont Park...until this doctor made an assessment of me and then told me that I should not be in such a place. I was 14 years of age. (Conf Sub 98)

4.90 A number of the harshest institutions that had reputations well known among the children included reformatories (indeed to be sent to such a place was widely used as a threat to control children) and remand or detention centres. However, many children were sent to these places even though they did not have 'a record'.

We boys at Westbrook had nobody to turn to. Some of them (like myself) were considered 'delinquents', but many were just orphans who were too old for the orphanage yet had nowhere else to go. They were treated just as badly. (Westbrook - Sub 141)

I was unaware that Vaughan House was a remand centre for delinquent girls, nor was I told this. I was eleven years of age at this time and I had not committed any offence. I agreed since it was my Social Worker’s suggestion. I was the youngest inmate, several years younger than all the other inmates were. I felt intimidated by them and was often scared. (Vaughan House, Adelaide - Sub 273)

I was 13 when I went to stay at Minali for what was to have been one night and turned into 8 and half months of hell...When I got there, I called my caseworker that said to calm down; I would only be there for the night and to calm down. This caseworker left a week later [without] visiting me and my case file was not handed on to anyone else. (Sub 69)

4.91 The NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People has submitted:

Until the late 1980’s or early 1990’s it was possible in Australian jurisdictions for children who had not offended against the law to be placed in detention centres or prisons.

The detention or imprisonment of non-offending youth was often utilised by Australian 'child welfare' departments as an option if a child was 'uncontrollable' or 'difficult' and as a consequential punishment for behaviour such as absconding. The provision to place children and young people in detention was also used as a response to the 'immoral' behaviour of young women.

The sentencing patterns of the juvenile or criminal courts or the use of administratively sanctioned detention as a form of care for many children, reflected a time where authorities frequently argued the rehabilitative capacity of their detention and punishment systems. Research is generally pessimistic about the rehabilitative power of detention, institutionalisation or imprisonment.[239]

4.92 State wards could find themselves in places with a diverse mix of residents.

The inmate population was made up of women of all ages. There were girls who had become too old to stay in institutions for young children. These girls tended to have an intellectual disability or physical disability. Some women were single mothers and others were old women with dementia. Also many young girls had been placed by the courts for protection or for criminal offences. I was so traumatized and shocked that I didn't menstruate for about 12 months. I cried and hardly spoke a word for the first few months. (St Aiden's, Bendigo - Sub166)

Fostering arrangements, including holiday placements

4.93 Institutions would place children in foster homes for short periods, weekends or during holiday periods ('Holiday Hosts' as the nuns would call them). This was often undertaken in an uncoordinated manner with expediency rather than child welfare being a primary consideration. No attempt was made to match couples with children nor understand the needs of either party. Many reported being placed with much older couples or people with limited child rearing skills and questioned the motivation of some people who accepted children - 'I am sure they only took us to get the money'. Stories were told of being used as a form of cheap 'slave labour' while others were sexually abused by the foster parents, their children or relatives.

When people came to look for foster kids we were lined up like cows so they could pick who they liked. (Sub 194)

'Foster care' was actually being 'farmed' out as temporary worker...I was sent to those who needed a slave & a slave I was (Sub 293)

It seems that the government paid people to care for abandoned children - in the hard years of the Depression the extra income would have been welcome in many families. I later found out that the head of the house and his sons were the town drunks and I guess I was used for drinking silver and cheap labour. (Sub 320)

We were placed every holiday with complete strangers and it was always somewhere different. I never understood why I was never asked back to any of these foster homes...It wasn't until I read my wardship file that I learned I was wanted back but as Catholic welfare did not co-ordinate with the state welfare this never happened.

...these [foster] people had no intention of having a child for the holidays to give them some home comforts, and a taste of family life, some wanted housemaids, someone to do the housework and watch the younger children...This was what the system was set up for, not with our best interests put first but to fill the needs of families and the Church was so grateful to these people. (Sub 351)

The truth is that if anyone had seen how we had to live, being child slaves to these very poor excuses of foster parents, we would have been taken from them, they would lose the payment for us and they would have no one to push around and make do all their housework. (Sub 206)

Social welfare standards around 1960 for the foster-placement of children were as lax as the advertising of tobacco products. My first placement occurred as the result of two pensioners placing an add in the local newspaper. Aged in their 60’s, my foster father was mostly confined to bed, his injuries the result of military participation in both world wars...My foster mother didn’t drink or smoke, and most outings consisted of excursions to horse racing tracks and places filled with people playing cards and drinking. (Sub 401)

My Foster parents were and are wonderful people, but in their middle ages, childless and with no parental training, they were totally unprepared to take on the parenting, of the troubled nine or ten year old I was. (Sub 321)

4.94 Issues relating to foster care generally and contemporary problems, remedies and future directions for foster care will be considered in the Committee's second report.

Deaths in institutions

On a few occasions the police would come to the orphanage if one of the girls died. I remember once when a baby had died and the police came - we were told what to say by the nuns, which meant lying. (St Joseph's Subiaco - Sub172)

My older brother has a story about a child in his time two or three years before my stay at Westmead where a child was killed and hushed up by the staff and no more was heard, it still puzzles him today. (Sub 303)

I am writing this brief note on behalf of my younger brother Owen. Owen died whilst in the care of some Church of England nuns. Owen apparently had a tumour on brain and he was smacked across the head by the nuns. This apparently caused the tumour to burst and Owen died as a result. Owen was 3 yrs of age at that time. (Sub 411)

4.95 As was the case with the Child Migrants inquiry, the Committee heard stories of children who died while in care, in mysterious circumstances or 'disappeared', especially if they had been sick or injured. Some of these stories were accompanied by comments of possible foul play or cover up. Children were usually never given information in Homes, and it is possible that in many cases of allegedly missing children the child could have been transferred to hospital or another home and no one would be told.

4.96 The Forde Commission in its Closed Report on Neerkol endeavoured to establish if there was any basis in fact for the stories of a number of former residents over suspicious deaths and burials in unmarked graves. Not all were satisfactorily resolved with a couple of accounts unable to be confirmed either through first-hand evidence or contemporary documents.[240]

4.97 The Committee noted in Lost Innocents that the records relating to the deaths of some child migrants had been destroyed and that coronial inquests had not appeared to be conducted on some violent deaths. The Committee considered that the lack of coronial inquests and the history of cover-ups of other assaults lead to the conclusion that there should as a minimum be some suspicion concerning the events surrounding some deaths. Unfortunately the passage of years meant that pursuit of cases would now produce inconclusive results.[241]

4.98 With the level of physical assault that has been reported in evidence, it is highly probable that within a group of 500 000 over many years some deaths would occur as either a direct or indirect result of these assaults. While the Committee only received minimal anecdotal and circumstantial evidence, there remains a suspicion of a pattern of limited investigation by police or authorities, no inquests, and police or authorities accepting unquestioningly the word of the carers in relation to deaths occurring at their institution.

I witnessed a boy who was attacked by a brother and after being punched and beaten he was thrown down the stairs. This boy was taken to the infirmary and I found out that he died a short time later. Later on the day of this incident I was near the infirmary and I overheard some brothers talking. One of the brothers claimed that the boy had fallen down the stairs. (Conf Sub 98)

[One boy stabbed another boy] with a pocket knife he had. The whole thing was - how do you say - hushed up by the nuns. We weren't allowed to discuss it. We weren't allowed to speak to the police...So it was more or less swept under the carpet. We did have a mass at this little boy’s funeral. The mass was in the chapel at the orphanage. But, as far as I know, there was never any blame laid on [the other boy] at all. So what happened about that is anybody’s guess. (Conf Sub 107)

I befriended an Aboriginal boy, and I can remember being belted black and blue because I was a 'nigger lover'. At that time in Baltara, that boy - I can say now - was probably murdered. I was being held in bed, by people who were supposed to be keeping me safe, while this boy was being bashed.[242]

4.99 The Committee is also aware that on 28 June 2004 the South Australian Police Commissioner initiated a review following the raising in the South Australian Parliament of allegations by a former State ward that a child had been killed while he was an inmate at an orphanage in Adelaide in the 1960s.[243]

4.100 In earlier years of the century children died from disease which could sweep through an institution. Through lack of hygiene and nutrition children in these times were more susceptible to contract disease, which could in their weakened condition prove fatal.

Transition from in care to independence

4.101 If life in the institution was not traumatic enough, leaving it was equally so. With little or no aftercare services many care leavers reported that their departure from care consisted of a letter from the department wishing them well and being given a suitcase with what meagre possessions and clothing they may have acquired, some money if they were lucky and being shown the door. They were left to fend for themselves.

These 6 [Hopewood] girls spent 4 years or more working as UNPAID LABOURERS in the NUNS COMMERCIAL LAUNDRY [Good Shepherd, Ashfield]. When they neared their 18^th birthday, they were called out of the workrooms, told to change their clothes, they were given a small suitcase which contained all their possessions, they were given 1.00 and shown the door. These girls were just dumped on the street just a few days before their 18^th birthday, they were not given a chance to tell the other girls they were leaving. (Sub 93)

4.102 There was no gradual introduction to the outside world, and no preparation to cope with it, so that children had no preparation for adulthood and little idea how to live a 'normal' life. The 'outside world' often proved overwhelming as they had not been trained in any of the most basic life skills.

I left Burnside quite unprepared for life in the real world. I was afraid of everything - people, unfamiliar places, public transport, conversation, shopping, loud voices, being alone with one person, authority figures and so on. (Sub 276)

When I finally left that home I was so unprepared for the outside world that I fell into a world of alcohol and drugs which allowed me hide myself and my problems from those around me. I had no training in handling any of the things that I was confronted with and so made many mistakes. (Sub 20)

Even at eighteen, after leaving the state's care, I had no idea how to catch a bus, or how to pay my fare, or any idea of the outside world after being institutionalised. It was very hard to fit into a society of which I had absolutely no knowledge or experience. (Sub 8)

I found the world was a lot different to what I knew in the 'Homes'. It was hard to adjust and I found it hard to communicate with people. Institutional life had protected me and now I was on my own. (Sub 153)

When I left Dalmar I could not deal with free time, I did not know what to do with free time as I had developed no interests or hobbies. Even when I had my own children I found it very difficult to play with them. (Sub 136)

There should have been support, counselling and follow up once I turned 18, especially since I had a history of suicide attempts. There was nothing at all available; I was dumped like a hot potato. (Sub 318)

4.103 This was yet another form of abandonment. Often the only home they knew was the institution. Having had any sense of self worth crushed during childhood, they were now thrown out alone into the outside world and expected to function as an individual.

How could the welfare allow young girls and boys to go out into the world so institutionalised. We were like little children not knowing how to cope with all the changes. No wonder so many ended back in institutions and gaol there was no preparation for us. I feel the welfare thought that was all we deserved, and would end up there anyway, as we were no good. (Sub 407)