A Stolen Life

by Antonio Buti

  Dr Moffatt wants desperately to help the young boy and decides it would be best for him to spend some time at Hillcrest Hospital in Adelaide, a psychiatric facility. Bruce enters Hillcrest on 28 March 1969. Dr Moffatt makes regular visits and observes that he is still unhappy and bored, and his speech is slurred. However, he seems to have settled and his behaviour is better. She thinks it is time the Department made plans for his future placements.

  Bruce wants to belong to a family. Dr Moffatt makes enquiries and suggests that he could live with Mary Dellaterie, who is Thora’s first cousin. Mary has experience as a foster parent and has a thirteen-year-old adopted son. A welfare officer visits Mary at her home in Bridgewater, a town in the Adelaide Hills, and is impressed. Mary seems well able to provide a homely environment for Bruce. Dr Baillie, who now has responsibility for Bruce, believes that he should never have been placed at Hillcrest. Momentum to move him gathers pace and on 12 June 1969, after a ten-week hospitalisation, Hillcrest releases Bruce into the care of Mary Dellaterie.

  Although Mary catches Bruce pilfering cigarettes and money from her, he seems to be settling in to life at her home and his new school. This new-found stability is to be short-lived, however. On 16 July, Mary contacts the Department of Social Welfare to tell them that Bruce has stolen sweets from a local shop. She is also disturbed that Bruce has told her he sees his future as a criminal. This report prompts Probationary Officer Lambert to visit and talk to Bruce. Mary feels she can’t trust Bruce, who appears to have no sense of guilt about his behaviour. Lambert warns him that he must respect the law and stresses that Bruce will not be allowed to stay with Mary if he causes her trouble. Bruce seems withdrawn; he is not happy that Lambert has threatened to take him away from Mary.

  Dr Moffatt continues her contact with Bruce, who attends the Child Guidance Clinic in Adelaide a number of times with Mary. The doctor is impressed with Mary and believes she is providing Bruce with a good environment. Even though he has been stealing, overall Bruce has settled in well and Mary enjoys having him. She notices that Bruce is becoming increasingly loving towards Mary, who returns his affection. At last, it seems, here is the something that Bruce has long craved—love and affection.

  But, as always, the good times don’t last long. By early August, he once again is behaving badly. He seems to have regressed to the little boy who lived with the Davies. He is ripping his clothes, wetting himself, coughing across the table, spitting his food and being violent, even towards a dog. He is having trouble sleeping and has recurring nightmares. Now, even calm and caring Mary is finding it difficult to cope. In one of his regular phone calls to Mary, Lambert learns about Bruce’s unacceptable behaviour. He asks Mary if she wants to terminate the placement. She says no. She has thought about it but she loves Bruce and wants to help him.

  Before ending the conversation, Mary tells Lambert that she is not happy with a visit she received from a Mrs Blair, a mental health visitor sent at the request of Dr Moffatt. She will cooperate with Mrs Blair if it will help Bruce, but she was not happy with her extremely personal questions, and Mary tells Lambert she refused to answer most of them. Lambert assures Mary that the Department is not questioning her performance as a foster parent, it is simply standard practice. Mary, who is trying so hard to give Bruce the love and guidance he needs, is not convinced. It seems just another example of a government department claiming to know what is best for ‘you people’.

  The final straw for Mary comes on 15 September, when Bruce attends the Royal Show with Mary’s adopted son, who Bruce gets on well with. Bruce goes off with a group of boys and leaves Mary’s son, who does not know where he is. She alerts the police who find Bruce and bring him home. This time Mary can take no more: she wants Bruce removed from her care.

  Within a week, the Department of Social Welfare has placed Bruce temporarily at Windana while it arranges his transfer to Brookway Park, a boys reformatory home. If it does not move with compassion, the Department does move with zeal, and by 7 October it has Bruce ensconced in yet another new institution for problem boys. If Bruce feels remorse for the behaviour that has seen him lose Mary’s love and protection, he does not show it openly. This is in keeping with his absence of a sense of guilt that has worried his various carers. Nevertheless, he does wish to stay in touch with Mary. While prepared to arrange weekend outings with her, the Department is adamant that he will not return to live with her.

  Meanwhile, the Davies family has not given up hope of having Bruce stay with them. Frank again contacts the office of Don Dunstan, now Leader of the Opposition. Frank discusses Bruce’s case with Dunstan’s secretary, who makes enquiries with the Department of Social Welfare. As happened before, the Department advises that they are happy with the current arrangements. They have told Dunstan’s office that Bruce is well settled with relatives.

  By March 1970, Bruce seems to be finding his feet at Brookway Park and is considered one of the old boys. He has been able to maintain his reading and spelling at the level expected of his age; however, in the past couple of years his non-verbal intelligence seems to have deteriorated. Dr Moffatt notes that this is consistent with someone suffering brain damage. It does not augur well for his future employment prospects. Now aged thirteen, Bruce has multiple disabilities stemming from the chronic insecurity caused by multiple broken dependency relationships. In April he undergoes another EEG, with results that are classified as abnormal.

  Dr Moffatt, the staff at Brookway Park and the Department of Social Welfare agree that it would be good for Bruce to continue to have contact, and a relationship, with Mary, but that any full-time return must be approached on a gradual basis. They cannot agree, however, as to whether he should continue his schooling. They make no final decisions, which is the safest option for them in terms of taking responsibility for what happens to Bruce.

  Bruce’s anxiety rises as he wonders where they will send him next. His behaviour is potentially self-harming as he tries to remove himself from situations he cannot cope with. On one weekend that he is meant to spend at Mary’s house, he absconds and meets up with some friends to get drunk. The superintendent at Brookway writes to the Secretary of the Department of Social Welfare about this and other incidents of bad behaviour. He recommends that they remove Bruce’s ‘honour boy’ status.

  In that same month, Robert Day, the husband of Bruce’s sister, Hilda, contacts the Department hoping to have Bruce stay with them during the Christmas holidays at their home in country Wirrega. The Department says no. A later request from Frank to have Bruce placed back with his original foster family for a probationary period of six to twelve months receives the same short shrift: No!

  On 31 January 1971, Bruce is transferred to Lochiel Park in Campbelltown, an institution for boys with mild intellectual disabilities. Lochiel Park is in the same area as the Davies family home and around eight kilometres from central Adelaide, where Bruce is enrolled at the local technical high school. He settles in at the training centre rather well and his behaviour is good. He spends some weekends with Hilda and Robert. One day, while at the local swimming pool with other boys from Lochiel Park, Bruce meets Jayne Davies by chance. He is pleased to see her, asks after the family and tells her that he misses them all. Jayne, too, is delighted to catch up with Bruce and excitedly tells her family when she gets home. They share her excitement, though tinged with sadness that Bruce is no longer with them.

  This is a brief moment of sunshine in what is to be another gloomy and cheerless year for Bruce. By midyear he is again behaving badly; he is aggressive and he absconds regularly. The administrators consign him to a ‘sheltered workshop’ called Bedford Industries, which he dislikes intensely. Psychologists at the Child Guidance Clinic had thought it would be just the environment for someone like Bruce; as usual, nobody bothered to ask him what he thought. He much prefers working in the kitchen at Lochiel Park. After the latest of Bruce’s breakouts, his supervisor discusses various options with him. He is almost fifteen and the training
centre no longer seems the best place for him. Perhaps belatedly realising that they made the wrong decision, the Department decides to adopt the option they had so roundly rejected six months earlier. Bruce will transfer to Wirrega, where he will live with Hilda and Robert on a permanent basis. The sluggish bureaucratic machinery lurches into action and by 5 November 1971, Bruce is in Wirrega. And so another year in the life of this troubled teenager rolls to an end.

  By early 1972 Bruce has found part-time employment with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, repairing and painting houses, which he enjoys. When this ends in May, Bruce finds work as a labourer at a mill at Tarpeena, which lies between Penola and Mount Gambier. This job lasts only a very short time because, on 27 May, Bruce is apprehended and charged with assaulting a young woman, being a minor consuming liquor, breaking and entering, and larceny. He appears at the Penola Court and, because of his age, is remanded to Windana, before being transferred to McNally Training Centre to await an appearance in the Adelaide Juvenile Court.

  A psychological report is prepared for his court appearance. It notes that his brain damage has contributed to his disturbed behaviour. It describes his personality as fragmented and poorly developed. It notes, unsurprisingly, that this probably reflects the many unsatisfactory family and foster relationships he has experienced. The report concludes that Bruce has low self-esteem and is immature and insecure.

  He appears in the Adelaide Juvenile Court on 7 July 1972, where he is fined and placed in the care of Thora back in Meningie. This seems to be another example of bureaucratic apathy. Having failed in its obligations to Bruce since he was a baby, the State is now about to repeat one of its failures as a way of dealing with the tragedy it has made. It is going to return him to one of the failed relationships that has contributed to his poorly developed personality. How well can that work?

  Initially, it works well enough. But it cannot last. Bruce finds occasional work but Thora and he are not getting on. He leaves home to live for a while with a Mrs Jevovick in Brompton. He then wanders around South Australia and interstate, and before long he is again on the wrong side of the law. On 8 November he appears in the Euston Children’s Court in Sydney charged with stealing a motor vehicle. He is released on probation on the condition that he is of good behaviour and obtains, and remains in, regular employment. Just not in Sydney, please. The Court orders that he return immediately to South Australia and that he live with his mother. He returns to Thora and then goes on a bus tour for unemployed youths organised by the newly renamed Department for Community Welfare. The eight-day tour ends on 5 December 1972, the day that Gough Whitlam leads the Australian Labor Party to victory in the federal election. Rallying to Whitlam’s call of ‘It’s time’, Australian voters put an end to twenty-three years of continuous Liberal–Country national government. This optimism does not extend to Bruce, however. The bus tour is good but back in Meningie he can’t find a job. His relationship with Thora worsens. They argue. He makes off, heading north to Queensland. After a brief period as a factory hand at Malley’s, he finds work as a labourer for Queensland Rail.

  In January 1974 the Department for Community Welfare decides ‘it’s time’ to give up. Bruce will turn eighteen this year, when he will be released from the control of the Minister for Community Welfare. They prepare a minute for the Minister from the Director-General of the Department. They couch it in splendid legalese, recommending that Bruce be discharged from the care and control of the Minister under section 49(1) of the Community Welfare Act. Tick a box, slam shut a file, case closed.

  Chapter 7

  GIVE ME THE CHILD AND I WILL GIVE YOU THE MAN

  Bruce is back in Meningie, not that he has any deep-seated yearning to be there. Nor has he any longing to be with his mum. His mum? He smiles mockingly at his clumsy attempt, with this affectionate contraction of ‘mother’, to conjure up an image of a past that was never anything other than a sad illusion. He knows that, at best, Thora and he will tolerate each other. Most likely, though, they will argue. He shrugs dismissively. ‘Besides,’ he muses, ‘who is my mum? Thora? Martha? Did I ever have a mum, or only ever a mother?’

  The next seventeen years, like the last seventeen, do not have the semblance of a life narrative with a steadily advancing plot that gives the story meaning. It will be no more than a series of events. On 30 June 1975, Bruce commences work as a labourer with the District Council of Meningie. It is part time, which gives him too many opportunities to renew acquaintances with the police and criminal justice system. Before September has passed, he is convicted of being drunk, and not for the first time. As recently as May he had been charged with being drunk and behaving in a disorderly or offensive manner.

  Bruce is not in a good space. He quits his part-time job in February and is soon in trouble again. This will be the first of many run-ins with the police in 1976. His convictions will include assault, damaging property, disorderly behaviour and, on one occasion, resisting police arrest. That earns Bruce twenty-eight days imprisonment, suspended upon his entering into a recognisance to be of good behaviour.

  Bruce is drinking a lot, sometimes up to three or four flagons of port a day, which badly affects his health. In March 1976 he spends time at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in the western suburbs of Adelaide. Doctors diagnose psychogenic abdominal pain. A few months later, Bruce attends Murray Bridge Soldiers Memorial Hospital for a lacerated arm, the result of a fall. He was drunk when he had the accident, as he is when he attends the hospital. And when he is drunk he can be belligerent and aggressive.

  He wants badly to belong to something, to someone. But that something, that someone, does not seem to be here, back on the Coorong. His relationship with Thora is tense. He sees Hilda only occasionally, and George and Tom hardly at all. Each has their own life to lead. Each has their intimate relationships. None has space for intimacy with Bruce. In late July 1976, Bruce leaves the Coorong for Port Augusta. He has secured a position with Australian National Railways working on the Commonwealth railways. His work takes him to a number of places in South Australia and even up to Alice Springs where, in March the following year, he has a work accident, falling from a section car. He hurts his back and is off on workers compensation until the end of May. He finishes up with the job on 20 July. By then Thora has died, passing away from ill health less than two weeks earlier, on 8 July 1977. Bruce had already been planning to return to the Coorong when he is told of Thora’s death, but by then he has already missed the funeral. No one takes responsibility for not telling him in time. He feels empty. He is sad but not devastated. The link was broken when he was an infant and was never restored.

  Returning to the Coorong does not change Bruce’s behaviour or his emotional state. He still drinks heavily and smokes too much. He still feels lost, not belonging. He is depressed. A court mandates him to have a brain examination, which is done by a Professor Burns, who finds no specific signs of brain damage. By February 1978, as his depression deepens, Bruce is undergoing treatment at the Murray Bridge Clinic. It is not helping. The medical staff think he needs more intensive treatment, more for his alcoholism than depression. They refer him to Hillcrest Hospital, which brings up sad memories of the time he spent there as a child.

  Over the next couple of years Bruce enters hospital a number of times, at Murray Bridge Soldiers Memorial Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, for treatment of alcoholism, haemoptysis, chronic bronchitis, asthma, emphysema and a number of other health problems. He also has surgery to mend multiple fractures to his left leg, the result of an accident in April 1979 when he is hit by a truck while working on a friend’s car. Those injuries totally incapacitate Bruce for many months and he lives on sickness benefits from July 1979 to June 1980. He is not a well man. In spite of his hospitalisation, his troubles with the law continue. He again receives convictions for a range of offences, including assault, resisting arrest and giving a false name and address to the police. He receives many suspended sentences.

  Life
has not dealt Bruce a good hand. But in the depths of his tribulations in 1980, some good fortune comes his way when he meets Veronica Pepper. She is also Aboriginal, from east Victoria, around the Bairnsdale region. Not long after meeting, they marry. The marriage will produce four children but there will be troubled times, including periods of separation. Bruce will be violent to her. He has no experience of intimacy and, for almost all his young life—shunted from one institution to another—he has felt unwanted and unloved. Getting married does not mean that his problems with alcohol or the law will change, nor will his health improve. The psychogenic pain is too entrenched.

  On 21 August 1981, Bruce rolls his car over near Nairne, seven kilometres from Mount Barker in the southeast of South Australia. He suffers concussion, bruising and sensory loss in his right arm. Sometimes he complains of headaches. In May 1983 his doctor refers him to Royal Adelaide Hospital because of pain in his left leg. Medical staff diagnose psychological pain syndrome. Things go from bad to worse. In July that year he is in court again, this time on a drink driving charge. The next month, while living at Renmark, he faces a charge of larceny at a hotel, and only a month later a charge of malicious and wilful damage of property. Bruce is an angry man in a constant state of turmoil. His frequent drinking only makes things worse.