A Stolen Life

by Antonio Buti

  Richardson smiles—a small, almost imperceptible twitch of her lips that was never going to journey to her eyes. She knows the matter is important and that they must resolve the conflict of court sittings now, but she thinks about the irony of so prosaic a start to a trial that has dominated her life for so long and that has consumed Bruce for all his life. It is the reality of the oral discourse of any trial: lengthy periods of legal contention enlivened from time to time with moments of high drama. These are the moments that arouse public interest. Little ticks of time in testimony that reveal human fragilities, hate, prejudice, fear, pathos, tragedy, love, hope and triumph. These are the moments that excite media interest. She conjures up her own alternative opening to the quotidian exchange she has just heard: ‘Your Honour, we are here today to seek justice for the heinous crime of snatching a baby boy from his family. We are here today to right a wrong that has fermented and festered for forty-eight years …’ Redirecting her attention to the bench, the judge is nodding ‘yes’ to Burnside’s question. He doesn’t give it voice; Gray is anxious for counsel to move on.

  Burnside does. ‘It is difficult to know where to begin in this. It is on one view we would say a simple case.’ He is smoothly self-assured. He wants to invite the court to join him in the narrative he is constructing of a baby boy who the system has betrayed, condemning him to a life of isolation from his biological family, from his culture. Burnside knows that even in his judicial role, Justice Gray, no less than the ordinary person in the street, likes a well-told story. The need for story to persuade us of the veracity of the facts grows in us from the first time a parent beguiles us with ‘Once upon a time …’ to ‘… they lived happily ever after’.

  If he were talking to a jury, Burnside would tell them a story, because that is the best way to persuade jurors to accept the truth in what he has to say. But the rules of evidence in the adversarial trial want to encourage using the story only to get to the rational core of the argument, and to leave the storytelling behind as soon as possible. This is his challenge. Take hold of Bruce’s story and present it in such a way—within the constraints of the rules of evidence—that it conforms to the rational core with which a judge, sitting alone, must deal. And so, the ‘once upon a time’ moment, at which Thora Lampard and Joe Trevorrow welcome into their world a beautiful baby boy who they name Bruce, gives way to the rational demands of the rules of evidence. ‘The plaintiff was born in November 1956. He became ill at Christmas 1957 when he was thirteen months old, and some neighbours of his family, who had a car capable of driving some distance, took him up to the children’s hospital in Adelaide, where he was admitted.’

  Burnside, the experienced courtroom advocate, has shown the judge that he intends to stick to the key issues. His challenge is to blend them into a coherent narrative of the case and to introduce a foretaste of the prejudice, fear, love, hope and tragedy that witness testimony will bring out later. He does this with skill that comes only from experience. ‘When the plaintiff’s mother wrote to the [Aborigines Protection] Board asking how Bruce was and when he was coming home, they wrote back with a lie saying that the doctors said he needed to stay in a bit longer. A plain lie,’ Burnside says evenly. No histrionics. No need for contrived outrage. There is no jury to rouse into compassionate resentment. Let the words stand on their own merits. Say it: ‘A plain lie.’ Pause. Let the pause do its work. Just a moment, that’s all. Let the judge contemplate in the stillness of the pause how this lie has ravaged Bruce’s life. As a baby, too young to understand but not too young to feel the absence of his family’s love. As a little boy, unsure of his place, languishing in a lonely space between two cultures. As an adult, sick, frail, unable even to sit for more than a few minutes through the most important event in his damaged life without sneaking outside for a calming smoke. The words and the pause rouse even the couple of journalists, sent here by editors who feel duty bound to at least find out what this new case in the Supreme Court is all about, from their bored torpor.

  It also rouses Bruce, who flicks a glance to where his sister and his brothers should be, next to him. But they are not there. His older brother Tom had a massive heart attack two days ago, and Hilda and George are by his side. Bruce once again is alone. He turns his gaze back to Burnside, who is now telling the judge, ‘Thereafter they prevented his mother from making contact with him or from finding out where he was or by what process he had been removed.’ Bruce is impassive, revealing nothing of what he feels.

  For the rest of the morning and up until the court breaks for lunch at one o’clock, Burnside will build his narrative of the case. He sets out for the judge the nature of Bruce’s symptoms on Christmas Day 1957, which had so concerned Joe that he had walked to Meningie carrying Bruce in his arms, searching for someone to drive his little boy to hospital. He describes to the court how Frank and Martha Davies had ‘taken’ Bruce from Adelaide Children’s Hospital on 6 January 1958, with the approval of hospital staff and the Aborigines Protection Board. He makes a strong point of the fact that Martha Davies was not licensed to be a foster parent and that she only gained the licence later, backdated to the day she and Frank had taken Bruce home with them. This is the opportunity to make a point about the contradictory behaviour of the Aborigines Protection Board. He reminds the court that legal advice from the Crown Solicitor meant the Aborigines Protection Board ‘knew that they didn’t have legal authority to take him in the first place’ and ‘they knew that they could not resist a request by a parent to return a child’.

  ‘But,’ he tells the bench, with heavy irony, ‘the APB fulfils its obligation to protect the rights of Aborigines by condoning a lie, and by retrospectively granting a foster parent licence to Martha Davies. That is, after she has already taken Bruce from the hospital. By the time he first saw his mother again, his father, Joseph Trevorrow, had died, in January 1966.’

  He reminds the judge that, by this time, Bruce is nine years old and has an identity that is not his own, that does not even acknowledge the Aboriginal culture to which he rightly belongs. It is no wonder, he says, that when Bruce’s foster sister lets slip that he is in fact Aboriginal, this little boy becomes confused. ‘By the time he was ten he was exhibiting the signs of a child who was clearly disturbed and distressed and this can only be attributed to one of two things in our submission. The overwhelmingly likely explanation is the fact that his removal was done without consideration for the effect it may have on his development as an infant, and second, perhaps, because his fostering was done without any concern for the extra attention that a child removed from the family would need in those circumstances.’

  Is Bruce concentrating on what is happening in the courtroom? It is hard to tell. But Richardson has no doubt that the defence counsel are concentrating. They know they must rebut the allegation that Bruce’s removal from his parents was illegal. If they cannot, the psychological effects that Burnside is talking about will weigh heavily on the court’s assessment of what compensation to award. They listen intently, trying to appear unruffled, as Burnside continues, ‘The process of attaching to his mother, which according to the experts happens critically between nine months and eighteen months of age, was interrupted.’

  He pauses, just a heartbeat, to give emphasis to this disruption to Bruce’s development years. Then he hammers home the consequences. He does not raise his voice; he does not succumb to the lure of the melodramatic. He addresses the judge in the measured tones that he knows His Honour expects. ‘The psychiatric evidence will show he has grown up with extreme difficulty attaching to anyone, forming emotional bonds with anyone, and the consequences of that have already become apparent by the time he was nine.’

  Burnside pauses again, purporting to look at his notes as if to reassure himself that he has covered all the necessary points to this stage of his narrative development. This pause is mere theatre. He already knows that he has covered them. Satisfied, he looks back to the bench. He knows how the defence will try to diminish t
he power of this emotional pleading. So he must pre-empt their attack. He acknowledges that the State will introduce ‘an interesting subtheme from the expert reports’ to suggest that Bruce’s family was dysfunctional. ‘We have something to say about that line of approach.’ That, he tells His Honour, will come out in later testimony. For now, in this opening submission, Burnside will not show his hand. He has done enough to alert the judge that whatever the defence says in its opening about the family being no good, the plaintiff’s team has strong evidence to rebut such implications. He is merely asking His Honour not to form any preconceptions on this matter.

  Burnside has set up his defence against a frontal attack. Now he must cover possible attack from the flanks. ‘But even if one assumes that that is correct as a fact, it highlighted the need for extra care in his fostering arrangements,’ he says. ‘And yet it seems no care whatever was taken in fostering him out and he was not in any way supervised in the foster family until about 1964.’

  Flanks now also secure, Burnside is satisfied that he has told Bruce’s personal story well enough. He has not told it without interruption, though. As is normal in any adversarial trial, throughout its telling Justice Gray has interrupted from time to time to clear up legal points and to identify documents that counsel has handed up as exhibits.

  With the brief overview of the case done, Burnside looks at the clock. He wants to cover the legislative framework within which the removal and placement of Bruce away from his family occurred before the court breaks for lunch. There is a lot of ground to cover. He moves on quickly. There are three relevant state Acts: the Children’s Protection Act 1936, the Maintenance Act 1926 and the Aborigines Act 1934–1939. Burnside knows that His Honour will want his information in succinct and cogent presentation. He knows the questions to which he will want answers, so, with the aid of a flow chart, he gives them.

  A child could only be removed with the consent of the parents or by agreement whereby the Children’s Welfare and Public Relief Board consented to the committal proposed by the Aborigines Protection Board. This did not happen. The bureaucracy failed to satisfy itself that removing Bruce from his family and placing him with the Davies was lawful. ‘What’s striking about this case, however, is that there is nothing to suggest that anyone did anything to satisfy themselves of any of the elements which the Act requires.’ Burnside adds, ‘In substance, the provisions of the Act which are designed for the purpose of protecting children seem to have been entirely ignored.’

  He also draws Justice Gray’s attention to the attempts by the Aborigines Protection Board to persuade parents to give up their children voluntarily when the Children’s Welfare and Public Relief Board refused to support the committal of Aboriginal children. In particular, he cites Sister McKenzie, a welfare officer with the Aborigines Protection Board, trying to persuade Thora to give up her children.

  Two letters especially support Burnside’s criticism of the actions of the Aborigines Protection Board. First is Sergeant Liebing’s letter to the Board dated 14 August 1957. ‘The letter certainly doesn’t give any account of Mr Trevorrow to suggest there was anything wrong with the family circumstances that might justify any sort of intervention.’ The second is the ‘fairly startling letter’ from the Board to Liebing on 15 January 1958 asking him if he knows the whereabouts of the mother. Burnside feigns astonishment that even after allowing Bruce to be taken by a foster family, the Board appeared to have little or no knowledge ‘about the circumstances’ of Bruce. A bit more theatre. He is not astonished at all. Everything about this episode reeks of the State’s disdain for the feelings of Bruce’s family.

  Burnside presses the point that there was no evidence, no justification for removing Bruce from his home. He cites the contents of a report by Mr Weightman, a welfare officer with the Aborigines Protection Board, dated 17 March 1958. It raises no concerns about conditions at the family home that could warrant removing Bruce. The fact is, ‘None of the reports so far that have come to the Board from people on the spot have cast any serious doubt on the conditions in which the family were living.’ There is nothing to suggest, he continues, ‘that a child there came anywhere remotely close to the definition of the neglected child, and yet it seems that this report did not lead to a reversal of what happened on 6 January.’

  His Honour intercedes to clear up a point about whether Mrs Angas had seen the report. Satisfied, he motions to Burnside to continue. In full swing now, Burnside paints a picture of Bruce’s troubled development, the absence of adequate supervision by the Aborigines Protection Board, and his conflict with the law. He is succinct. He wants to move on quickly to the egregious behaviour of the Board when it deceived Martha by returning Bruce to Thora, using the ruse that he was to visit her only for the school holidays. Bruce was also deceived as he ‘went to Victor Harbor for what he thought were the school holidays and then discovered that he had been returned and was staying there. There had been absolutely nothing done to prepare him for the transition which that move represented. In every possible way, it was a profound shift in his circumstances and yet nothing was done to prepare him for the transition. Little surprise then that he suffered psychologically.’ He emphasises the point. ‘Your Honour, the way the Board removed him from his family as an infant was bound to be damaging. The way they returned him to the family as an adolescent boy could only compound the damage. They did it apparently with no care and no supervision, preparation or anything at all.’

  The damage to Bruce resulting from his separation from his biological family is a crucial aspect of the case. Burnside is harsh in his condemnation. ‘I don’t want to be melodramatic about it, but really it is like watching a car accident in slow motion.’ His plan is clear. He knows that the State will claim as part of its defence that this court should judge the actions of authorities only against the prevailing standards of the time. He will attempt to blunt the force of that defence by keeping up his attack on the moral failures of authorities. It is one thing to blame failures of bureaucratic processes on the prevailing standards of the time. It is quite another to argue that failure to safeguard the emotional welfare of a baby should only be judged against those same standards. The court should only measure that miscarriage against prevailing community ideals. Those ideals were no less valued in 1958 than they are now. In failing to protect Bruce from psychological damage, the relevant departments were guilty of ineptitude at best, moral turpitude at worst. The court should excuse neither when considering the lifelong damage that their behaviour inflicted on another human being.

  After a pause to allow both judge and the defence to digest the full import of what he has said, Burnside continues with an outline of the nature of testimony he will present and the type of expert witnesses he will call to validate the case he has built. He makes special mention of the evidence he will bring that, as early as the 1940s, the work of British psychologist John Bowlby clearly showed the damaging effects of separating an infant from its mother. Dr Le Page from the Child Guidance Clinic and Dr Jureidini, a specialist in child emotional disorders, will describe the extent of Bruce’s psychiatric problems. They will attest to those problems being direct consequences of the authorities having separated Bruce from his parents when he was a baby.

  Glancing at the clock, Burnside decides that Justice Gray will very soon adjourn the court for lunch. With impeccable timing, he wraps up his morning presentation, ‘Your Honour, you can’t separate parents from their children just to see what happens, and so the number of clinical circumstances for testing the effects don’t arise very often. But it did occur to me that this is an interesting early reflection of our instinctive understanding that separating a child, when young, is likely to produce significant changes in the adult and that is the dictum of St Ignatius Loyola in the early sixteenth century, who famously said, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”’ He pauses for a beat, and finishes, ‘It fits with common experience that if you take a child away from its pare
nts in infancy, you will dominate the way in which their life develops.’

  Justice Gray adjourns the hearing for lunch. They have only an hour, but Richardson knows a little place close by where they can grab a quick bite to eat. As they step out into the warm Adelaide sun, Burnside takes a deep breath. It has been a demanding morning.

  ‘What do you think?’ He directs his question to both O’Connor and Richardson.

  ‘It went very well,’ Richardson replies. ‘Justice Gray asked a lot of questions, but they were productive questions, to satisfy himself that he has all the facts. Not confrontational, nor combative.’

  ‘His Honour seemed concerned about whether Angas’s signature or Weightman’s was on the report,’ O’Connor says.

  ‘Again, I think he just wanted to be sure that Angas had actually seen the report,’ Burnside says. ‘Otherwise, the State might want to argue that issue. I’ll look at the transcript tonight. But I think he is satisfied that she knew what was going on.’

  As they walk down Angas Street, an extension of Gouger Street, Burnside jokes, ‘They didn’t name this street after her, did they? She’s not a revered Adelaide celebrity, is she?’

  O’Connor and Richardson assure him they did not and that she is not. The street is, in fact, named after George Fife Angas, the first chairman of The South Australia Company. All Richardson knows is that Angas Street is well known for its restaurants.

  They reach the cafe. The staff know Richardson as a frequent customer from past court appearances. They know she will be pressed for time so they make sure not to keep her waiting.

  ‘So there is no issue from this morning that you think we should revisit this afternoon?’ Burnside asks after they have ordered. O’Connor and Richardson shake their heads. ‘Good, we’ll wrap up fairly quickly and then put the other lot in to see what they’ve got.’

  Soon enough, it is time to head back to Court 11.