Our State of Mind

by Quentin Beresford

  Christian zealotry drove the staff at Roelands to wipe out as much as they could of the children’s Aboriginal heritage. This process began the moment a child arrived. Children came to Roelands from many different parts of the State and, therefore, from different language and tribal backgrounds. On arrival, many had their names changed to disconnect them from their parents. Children were forbidden to speak in their native languages, and were severely punished if found doing so. Parents were discouraged from visiting and some children harboured suspicions that mail to their parents was censored.

  The missionaries’ evangelical drive was so strong it impaired their ability to show affection to the children. Ex-inmates remember a place with ‘no love or care’. Staff interactions with children frequently spilled over into frustrated anger. Some remember being repeatedly told: ‘you’re never going to make it. You’re a liar, a thief, you’re going to Hell.’ At other times interactions resulted in outright cruelty. Girls were thrashed for loosing hair clips or ribbons. One girl was beaten when, after her stubbed toe was placed in a bowl of clean water, she described the now coloured water as ‘bloody’.

  Bed-wetting incurred severe reprisals. ‘A kid who wet the bed had to have his face rubbed in it first before the sheets were taken off and washed.’ Sometimes these children would be forced to wear a sign around their necks on which was written: ‘I am a bed wetter’. Cruelty was also endured daily in the poor standard of clothing the children were issued. Commonly, they had no shoes to wear around the mission. In winter the ground could be freezing and their feet became painfully numb. During these months, Phillip Prosser remembers children walking with a stooped hunch trying to protect themselves from the biting cold, pulling the few woollen clothes with which they were provided tight over their hands.

  Some of the staff engaged in sexual abuse of the children. On one occasion, a prowler was found roaming around the grounds and caught trying to break into the senior girls’ room. It was a staff member, who was recognised by his dog lying at the base of a tree he had climbed to try to avoid detection. He had a reputation of being particularly cruel. He used to carry around an old tractor pulley—about two feet long and four inches wide—with which he used ‘to flog the boys.’ Once it had become common knowledge that he had been trying to sexually abuse the girls he was sent packing from the Home. However, one of the problems that places like Roelands experienced was obtaining suitable staff. The low pay and isolated conditions made it inevitable some unsuitable people would be attracted to the place. Most were untrained and had little but professed Christian faith to recommend them.

  There was little attention to the children’s emotional needs or the development of essential living skills. Girls, for example, received no education about the onset of menstruation. When it did occur, many were overcome with fear and uncertainty about what was happening to them. Some thought they were dying from internal bleeding and openly wept. Understanding about money and wages was similarly lacking. Children were forced to devise their own simple entertainments; little or nothing was provided by the mission staff. Their moments of lively interaction between themselves provide, for most, the only source of happy memories of Roelands.

  The reality of Roelands as it was experienced by many of its inmates completely contradicts its public image. ‘The outstanding thing about this mission farm’, glowed the West Australian in a 1950 article, ‘is the atmosphere of happy trust.’139 Almost nothing could be farther from the truth. There was little resembling ‘normal’ childhood activities at Roelands, even by the standards of the day. Comments made by the West Australian show how easy it was for contemporaries to look at the surface features of a place—‘the tidiness of the well-stocked cupboards’—and assume this reflected the inner, emotional life experienced by the children.

  Missions were only one part of the experience of assimilation for many Aboriginal children. Being fostered into white families was equally common. The white family was seen as a valuable institution in the service of assimilation because of the opportunities it presented for the acquisition of white values and behaviours. As most of the records on fostered Aboriginal children are inaccessible to the public, much of what follows was gathered through interviews.

  One of the striking aspects of the system of fostering children was the diversity of family types prepared to take in children. Generalisations about motives are therefore very difficult to make, however, we have been able to detect at least four categories of families, each with distinctive attitudes to fostering. Firstly, were the wealthy elite who regarded fostering as a form of social status. In their upper-class and religious world-view, fostering Aboriginal children was a public sign of ‘goodness’ both as Christian compassion and as commitment to the perceived benefits of active involvement in assimilation. Welfare authorities sought out such families knowing the strength of conditioning Aboriginal children would be exposed to. A second category were families motivated by humanitarianism. These expressed some affinity with Aboriginal people and positively liked Aboriginal children. Such families straddled the socioeconomic divide; some were rural battlers while others were well-off professionals. Thirdly, were parents seeking to care for children, usually because they were unable to have any (or any more) children of their own. Such parents genuinely wanted more children and most did not see colour as an issue. Lastly, were struggling families whose motivation was economic gain. They were attracted to fostering because of the weekly cheque they received from the government to look after these children.

  Of all the categories, it seems that many, if not most, children went to the fourth family type where they were at high risk of abuse and exploitation. In the worst cases, they were regarded merely as a commodity to be treated at the whim of the foster-parents, who were mostly outside any official scrutiny. Whatever the motivation, fostering involved a painful cross-cultural experience which has left many damaged and confused.

  Rosalie Fraser is among those fostered into a poor white family. Here she suffered in every way as grievously as those children abused in missions. Now in her late thirties she can reflect on her experience with the strength which comes from having confronted and mastered a period of emotional ill-health, brought on by the lingering and intrusive memories of abuse, the depth of which is almost unimaginable.140 Rosalie’s case raises many disturbing issues about the system which administered assimilation. It underlines the extent to which Aboriginal families continued to be the subject of judgements based on race. It highlights the arrogance of a State which exercised those judgements and then failed to act in its duty of care. Rosalie’s mother had all her ten children taken from her over a period of time.

  Rosalie’s removal from her family was swift and clinical. In 1961, when she was two and a half year’s old, a welfare officer visited her parents’ home in rural Beverley. The officer judged her parents unfit to care for children largely on the basis of the condition of their house, which was home to three other children. Her father, a ganger with the railways, had only recently started work. He had previously experienced difficulty finding regular employment. The family had no money saved and their State Housing home had no furniture in it. The welfare officer thought the house was unclean and the children neglected. The following day the Health Department sent an inspector who also said that it was not up to standard. All four children were removed. There was a subsequent court hearing; the parents were present but were unrepresented. The outcome was predictable. Despite acknowledging the bond between parents and children, the overriding assessment of the parents was negative: ‘they lacked responsibility.’ Many years later Rosalie’s mother explained there was nothing she or her husband could do: ‘the welfare and the police had all the power.’ It was a familiar story.

  There was a sad irony for Rosalie and her sister in the events which followed. Requests by other members of her parents’ immediate family to foster the children were turned down by the Child Welfare Department becaus
e the homes to which they might go—Aboriginal homes—were judged to lack suitable space. Yet the home selected by the Child Welfare Department was anything but suitable. They were sent to a ‘lower class white family’ in Glendalough—on the ‘other side of the lake’—where State Housing owned a number of houses. The three-bedroomed house was already home to six children, and the family was under financial strain.

  Rosalie has long pondered why her foster-mother became involved in their lives. Under the Child Welfare Act she was required to be licensed to take children under six years of age. However, Rosalie does not believe her foster-parents underwent any prior screening to determine their suitability because records show it was only a matter of a few days after they were removed from their parents that her foster-mother received a telegram from Child Welfare asking her to take the children.

  By the early 1960s, the Department was unable to manage the system of fostering it was overseeing. The Annual Report for 1962 makes this clear: ‘In the last year there has again been an increase in the number of children being cared for by foster-parents. Several appeals have been made through the newspapers for homes for children … the response was not overwhelming.’ In other words, it was under pressure to find families, almost any family. It is possible to see how, in these circumstances, screening could rate a low priority. In Rosalie’s case the choice of family does seem extraordinary, even at face value: a struggling family in modest circumstances already straining for space is allowed to accept two more children. Rosalie thinks it is possible her foster-mother simply did not know how to turn down the Department once she was approached. However, she cannot overlook one awful possibility, that the family was attracted by the considerable financial benefits they received from the Department to foster herself and her sister. ‘When they got the money through the post every Saturday they went and did the food shopping.’

  Clearly, the financial state of the family should have precluded them from fostering. The Spartan circumstances of the Glendalough household impacted directly on Rosalie and her sister in ways which made them marginalised members of the family. For years the sisters were forced to sleep in the same bed. They were treated differently from the other children in ways which were simply demeaning. The parents fully equipped their own children for school, but Rosalie and her sister wore thongs in winter and, on wet mornings, arrived wearing only an old plastic table cloth to protect their clothing. They owned no toys.

  However, the material deprivation to which they were subjected pales against their experience of neglect and abuse. Before the age of five Rosalie was admitted to hospital suffering from rickets for which she received medication. If this was indicative of lack of basic care, the torrent of emotional abuse which daily poured from her foster-mother confirms the complete unsuitability of this foster family.

  Every day of my life that I stayed in that foster placement I was referred to as a fucker, a boong, a bastard or a slow-learning cunt. My name was never used. I didn’t really have a name.

  The foster-mother harangued Rosalie for her Aboriginality. She was told: ‘You’re nothing but a black boong, just like your mother’. This abuse was not just occasional but repeated throughout each day. ‘If we were outside we were told “get in here you black boongs.”’ On a broader level, her foster-parents openly talked about Aborigines in derogatory terms, calling them ‘dirty, no-hopers and drunks’.

  The physical abuse was just as persistent and threatening. ‘At one time my foster-father insisted that we be sent to the Mount Lawley Receiving Home [for Aboriginal children] because of the abuse we were getting and because he thought she would kill us.’

  The welfare system failed the girls when it allowed them to return to the family after a short stay at the Receiving Home. For years on end the house was regularly in uproar because of the abuse the sisters received from the foster-mother. Rosalie’s foster siblings were often distressed over their treatment and protested to the mother that they ‘should be gotten rid of’. One, however, did try to intervene to offer protection.

  The most extraordinary aspect of Rosalie’s experience of foster placement in this dysfunctional family is the role of the Department of Child Welfare. Their failure to exercise duty of care continued throughout her placement. The family was visited, briefly, about once a year.

  We were always warned prior to them [the Child Welfare Department] coming and we were drilled not to say anything. When they came everything was different. The house was cleaned up, it was made to look like my sister and I had separate beds to sleep in and we had toys put on our beds. We were told by our foster-mother that if we were asked if we liked living there we were to say yes.

  On one visit a welfare officer criticised Rosalie’s foster-mother for failing to ensure the girls’ hair was brushed after which she contemptuously ranted: ‘The fucking welfare have a cheek to criticise—who else is going to look after boongs?’ However, the Child Welfare’s apparent concern for the well-being of the sisters on this occasion did not extend to careful checks which might have revealed the mistreatment taking place. On the occasional visits from the Department, the children were spoken to separately from the foster-mother, but only very briefly, and in the most superficial manner. Equally disturbing were the racial comments some of these officers recorded in their departmental files. In 1966 an entry read: ‘these were two ugly girls who had prominent Aboriginal features including broad noses and protruding lips.’ In 1970 another commented that Rosalie ‘would no doubt marry an Aboriginal person because she will find it too hard to live up to a white standard.’

  From time to time welfare officers suspected that the sisters were not being properly cared for. On their files was noted clear indications all was not well in their home. They were described on one occasion as ‘two very skinny and undernourished children, small for their ages.’ There are also notes from teachers indicating the sisters were coming to school ‘unkempt’ and without proper equipment. Department files also reveal that a series of complaints were received from neighbours about the treatment of the children. Nothing was done to follow up any of these concerns.

  Rosalie is understandably angry at the treatment she received at the hands of the Child Welfare Department. She wonders about the justice of a system which made harsh judgements about her parents and yet failed to show equal rigour with her foster home. She asks why the money which government paid to clothe and feed her at her foster family could not have been given to her natural family to assist them. As events turned out her own family fractured. Her father, who became so ashamed after losing all his children, disappeared after he fell behind with the compulsory child maintenance payments he had to make for the upkeep of the children taken from him. Her mother succumbed to alcoholism.

  Rosalie herself became a mother at a young age and began to come under the notice of the Child Welfare authorities. For a time she suffered repeated flashbacks about the abuse she had suffered in the foster home and this finally led to a nervous breakdown. She recovered by writing out her torment in her own full account of life as an Aboriginal child in a white family.

  Rosalie’s greatest sense of tragedy is the loss of her Aboriginal heritage.

  The two stories at the centre of this chapter—Phillip Prosser in the 1950s and Rosalie Fraser in the 1960s—raise disturbing issues about the involvement of government agencies in the assimilation process. There is, according to some legal authorities,141 a strong case to be made that, in removing children from their families, government entered a fiduciary relationship; that is, it agreed to act for or on behalf of, or in the best interests of, these children. In the case of Western Australia, this relationship is potentially all the stronger given the legislation which made the Commissioner for Native Affairs the legal guardian of all Aboriginal children until they turned twenty-one years of age. This legal responsibility has already been tested in some recent court hearings. Sweeney sums up the findings:

 
In the recent case of Williams v The Minister, Aboriginal Land Rights Act, the New South Wales Court of Appeal held, by a majority, that it was arguable that the Aboriginal Welfare Board (a statutory body) was under a fiduciary obligation to Aboriginal children placed in its care. It also held the Board was arguably obliged to have ‘truly provided, in a manner apt for a fiduciary, for [the plaintiff’s] ‘custody, maintenance and education’.

  Similarly, Justice Toohey in Mabo (No. 2) stated:

  executive actions by the government gave rise to a policy of protection by which government, together with the particular vulnerability of Aboriginal people to the exercise of power by the Crown to adversely affect their interests, gave rise to a fiduciary relationship.142

  The issue becomes the extent to which government breached its obligations under law to provide for the best interests of these children. There are strong grounds for believing this was the case with both Phillip Prosser and Rosalie Fraser. Phillip Prosser was sent to an institution which not only failed to guarantee his physical safety but which contained (even by the standards of the day) an institutionalised culture of violence exceeding the known experiences of children in State Government schools. Officials knew about the violence at Roelands. In Rosalie’s case, the foster home to which she was sent failed to guarantee her best interests in a physical and emotional sense. The persistence of this gross abuse while under the care of the Child Welfare Department, is the strongest illustration possible that government did not provide for the best interests of many of these children. Rosalie’s was one of a series of test cases brought against the Western Australian Government in the early 1990s for its failure to act in its duty of care to children removed from their families. In 1995 the Minister for Community Services, Mr Nicholls, rejected the claims, ‘fearing a flood of claims from thousands of Aborigines displaced by the Government’s ‘welfare’ department.’ Rosalie told the press at the time: ‘All the abuse we suffered as children, the department failed in its duty of care … to not even allow our parents the right to know where we were, to not let them know we were abused, when we were hospitalised, it’s wrong.’143