The Pencil Case

by Lorraine Cobcroft

  A tape recording in my head replayed the words I heard my mother utter from her deathbed --- words of love and pride. I cried that day, concealed in the darkened hallway of my mother’s home. When my wife came and wrapped her arms around me, I buried my head on her shoulder and mumbled, “Did you hear her, Fran. She said she loved me and was proud of me. I’ve waited nearly 50 years to hear her speak those words.”

  Ten thousand happy memories had dulled my pain. Love had healed wounds and faded scars, but nothing can ever adequately compensate.

  Jenny phoned me shortly after the speeches ended. “How many stolen Aborigines did you know, Paul?”

  “None,” I replied coldly. “I shared institutional dining halls and bathrooms with more than a 120 homeless children at different times. Four had Aboriginal blood. I estimate at least a quarter of the kids I knew were stolen. Many, most likely --- like you and I --- taken from parents who wanted them and would, if not crippled by deprivation and social injustice, have cared for them competently and loved them well. Every one of those was white.”

  “A woman talked of swinging on a gate, hugging a dirty rag doll, crying for her mother,” Jen said. “That was me, Paul. It was my story. A black woman told the tale and claimed it as her own, but that little girl was me,” she sobbed. “Do you remember, Paul? You do, don’t you? It was me!”

  I remained silent, listening to her soft sobbing, wishing I could hold her and comfort her.

  “Aborigines were stolen, I’m sure,” I said, “but they’ve not only had their plight acknowledged, they’ve been richly compensated. Their entire race --- not just those who suffered. Free adult education, free legal help, preference for subsidised housing, special business and employment grants, higher rates of study subsidies for children, the list goes on and on. What do we get, Jen? Not even recognition.”

  “Apparently, it’s all about the reason for taking kids, Paul. Aborigines win sympathy because they were taken for no better reason than that they were black.”

  “I’ve read plenty of claims that they were taken more for their own protection, because their tribes rejected mixed–blood children, or because they were neglected or abused. But what difference does it make, Jen? Kids like us were stolen for no better reason than because families were poor --- because our parents didn’t understand their legal entitlement to a pension and no– one cared enough to help them. Was that any less of a crime? And while Aborigines born into privileged families lined up for generous handouts, we stumbled through life scarred and bruised, with neither a helping hand nor even truthful acknowledgement of our plight. We don’t exist.”

  “Do you think they will ever acknowledge that it happened to white children too?”

  “I doubt it, Jenny. It’s not politically expedient, is it?”

  “I guess not. I feel sorry for the Aborigines. I do. But --- ” Her voice trailed off.

  “It’s not their fault, Jen. It’s the white and privileged mixed–blood activists, the politicians and the system.”

  “Positive discrimination. That’s what they call it, Paul, but it’s racism, and it’s wrong.”

  “I told myself I’d forgotten the trauma. I told myself the suffering had ended and I was healed. But inside, something has never seemed quite right. I envy my brothers their security, their self–confidence --- their relaxed, friendly acceptance of life and people. I wonder what I might have been, had I been allowed to be me.”

  “I had won, Paul. I had put it all behind me. But today --- ” She sniffed. There was an uneasy silence, and then I heard her sobbing.

  “We survived, Jen. That’s what matters. We survived and we made good lives for ourselves. We have partners who love us and good kids who respect us. We’ve done OK, in spite of everything. We can hold our heads up and be proud of what we have achieved. That little girl with the rag doll grew up to be smart, strong and beautiful, a good wife and a great mother. And she still has a lot to look forward to. We have a few years left on this earth yet, and we’ll make them good ones.

  “I’ve got to go now, Jen. But I’ll call you later, yeah? Chin up, old girl. No more tears.”

  #

  A brown–paper envelope arrived by special delivery a few months before my 60th birthday. Fran brought it to me and I held it, unopened, for what seemed like an eternity, though it must only have been minutes. Here was the story of my life. Here were the official records of a ‘crime’, a court case, and the 17 years of incarceration that followed. Here were the dirty secrets of lies and social injustice that condemned little children, ripped out mothers’ hearts and tore homes apart.

  I had applied for my file under revised Freedom of Information laws. I was uncertain, now, precisely why, but after reading advice on the Care Leavers Australia Network website, I had signed the form and paid the fee. Now I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to know. My hands trembled as I held it and I felt the coldness as the blood drained from my face. Fran stood there expectantly, silent. At last, I tore the flap away and pulled a thin file from the envelope. A dozen pages, maybe. Less than 1,000 words to tell the story of my life. I began to read.

  An hour later, I set the file aside. I sat staring silently into space for a long time, struggling to comprehend. Fran picked it up then and read it. I saw the look when she came to that middle page. It had shocked me too.

  I wished I had tracked Geoffrey Simms down and murdered him. Ede convinced me that the crime was not his. Perhaps he was a misguided fool when he found me on the riverbank, but the lie four years later was a crime for which he could never be forgiven.

  Geoffrey Simms visited my parents just before my 12th birthday. My mother signed the record of interview. They wanted me sent home. Three days later, Geoffrey Simms signed a statutory declaration confirming that he had been unable to find my parents and, in these unfortunate circumstances, I must be retained in care until age 15. Footnote10

  The judge had ordered that I was to be committed to St Patrick’s until the age of 12. No order beyond that date. On my 12th birthday, I should have been sent home.

  I was stolen twice.

  When I read the false claim that I had expressed a strong desire to join the army, the bile rose in my throat and choked me. My eyes watered; my neck and face burnt. I shook with rage. Again, there was a false declaration that my parents could not be located. “In these unfortunate circumstances,” the social worker had written, “the Commissioner for Child Welfare must sign the consent form in their place.”

  My father had declined consent, but they had overridden his wishes and lied again. I could have been a bootmaker. I could have gone home.

  The days that followed were a blur. I went mechanically through the motions of living, without feeling and without purpose. I drank too much. I lay awake at night reliving days when the torment seemed unending. I wanted to find Simms and kill him, but I supposed by now he was almost certainly dead.

  Finally, I made my resolve.

  “I survived the injustice, Fran,” I said. “I made a life for myself. I put it behind me. I won’t let the reopening of old wounds destroy me. I’m stronger than that. But I want justice.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to sue the State of New South Wales. False imprisonment. Plenty of people have succeeded with compensation claims for –”

  “People falsely accused of a crime, Paul. It’s a different situation entirely.”

  “How? I was charged with a crime. The crime of being a neglected child.”

  “And how will you prove that you weren’t?”

  “Eight healthy brothers and sisters raised by loving parents in a happy home. Surely their testimony is enough? And what about the lie when I was 12. If nothing else, I was wrongly incarcerated from age 12 onwards. That’s documented. How are they going to argue with that?”

  ~~~~

  47: THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE

  FEBRUARY, 2009

  The offices of Thompson, Stanley and Smythe were on the 11th floor of a recently constructe
d Sydney harbour side tower. Fran and I entered via a marble–tiled lobby, climbing in little glass cells that hovered over the silvery blue harbour. We stepped out on to carpet that swallowed our shoes to approach an extravagantly carved reception counter topped with polished black granite and decorated with elegant stone and brass statuettes. After a brief wait, seated on a soft suede bench in a room filled with original oils by contemporary Australian artists, we were ushered down a long hallway.

  In the meeting room, thick velvet drapes were pulled back from huge picture windows overlooking the water and plush leather chairs surrounded a slick, grey-glass and chrome table. I felt conspicuously misplaced surrounded by such opulence, yet attired casually in jeans and open–neck shirt, with Fran beside me in a loose cotton sun frock, sandals and no stockings. We could dress to impress and look quite at home in surroundings like this when it pleased us, but creating an impression of having done well for ourselves was not consistent with today’s objectives. Today was about winning sympathy for the battler who survived years of deprivation and abuse.

  George Smythe was a dapper little man with a quaint moustache and prominent bald patch in the middle of his scalp. His nose was too big for his face. Thick eyebrows hung low over tiny slits of suspicious eyes always demanding further explanation. His favourite word was ‘evidence’, and he prefaced every sentence addressed to Fran with ‘my dear lady’, which irritated me intensely.

  “My dear lady, we shall need strong evidence to support a claim that your husband could not reasonably progress a complaint within the time limits provided by statute,” he said.

  “And it isn’t enough that he had no access to information until very recently?”

  “My dear lady, well of course that is relevant, but your husband may --- ” “With respect, Mr Smythe,” I interrupted, “the dear lady’s husband is in the room and you may speak to him directly.”

  Fran kicked me under the table and made a face. We wanted this fellow to represent us pro bono or on a success fee basis. We should be trying to win his favours, not offend him.

  “Quite right, Mr Wilson. I do apologise. It’s just that all my communication to date has been with your dear lady wife. And not all victims are articulate, let alone sufficiently confident to discuss the legal implications of their situation.”

  “I’m not a victim, Mr Smythe,” I said, slapping the top of the glass table for emphasis. “I was wronged as a child and I believe under International Human Rights Law, which Australia has consented to recognise, I am entitled to reparation.”

  “Quite right. Quite right, and I shall endeavour to see that it is paid. However, you must understand that the law presents considerable difficulties in cases like this, and the first is timing. We estimate that an application for dispensation to pursue your claim outside the usual time limits will cost $15,000. If you lose, you could face an order to pay the costs the State incurs to defend the application. They will engage the best lawyers available. Money is no object for the N.S.W. Government in matters such as this.”

  A pasty–faced young woman in a tailored dark-grey pant suit entered just then and took orders for coffee and tea. Before taking her leave, she poured water from a pitcher on a glass–topped sideboard and set a filled glass in front of each of us.

  “That’s sad,” Fran said, “That they will expend taxpayer dollars so freely to obstruct a fair hearing and deny someone justice.”

  “My dear lady, you must realise that the issue here is precedent --- the avoidance of setting one, that is. There may be many care leavers who are eligible to file claims. This firm is currently considering representing more than 40. If the floodgates are opened via a successful case, the State may find itself responding to hundreds of claims. It could become very expensive.”

  “I am not a ‘care leaver’, Mr Smythe,” I declared emphatically, “and I object to that terminology. I was a stolen white child.”

  “But you were a child in care, Mr Wilson.”

  “Hardly! At least not for the first four years of incarceration! I was deprived and abused. There was no ‘care’ involved!”

  “That may well be, Mr Wilson, but you will need strong evidence to support any claim of damages.”

  “I was snatched from a loving home because my father was never granted his entitlements after serving his country in a theatre of war --- losing his youth and his health imprisoned for three long years in a war prison. A callous welfare worker lied to prevent me being returned home four years later, in compliance with the original removal order which applied only until my 12th birthday. I was denied access to my family. I was denied my identity.”

  “That’s quite shocking, I agree. Quite shocking, but I say again, my dear man, you will need evidence to support your claim.”

  “I have evidence to support my claim that a welfare official lied, costing me my freedom for a further three years and the opportunity to follow a career path of my choosing. Surely you have seen the documents evidencing that lie, Mr Smythe?”

  “And what evidence can you present of consequential damages? That is the key question. For example, have you had lasting health issues requiring ongoing medical care?”

  I stared at him for a moment, struggling to comprehend. Prisoners didn’t need to evidence permanent health damage in order to be compensated for wrongful imprisonment. It was automatic. The damage was quite apparent.

  “Can your doctor attest to a history of mental illness?”

  I might have leapt across the table then and punched him, but for the soft knock on the door and the girl entering with a tray. She set a fine china cup down before each of us and a platter of biscuits in the centre of the table. She refilled Fran’s half–empty water glass and fetched neatly-folded paper serviettes from the sideboard to place beside our cups.

  “I thought I made it clear, Mr Smythe,” I said, struggling to maintain an even tone. “I am not a victim. I was brought up to be resilient, a survivor. My father taught me never to let anyone or anything get the better of me.”

  Smythe studied me thoughtfully for a minute, his bushy eyebrows descending even lower over his eyes so they seemed to almost disappear, and his forehead creasing with deep worry lines. He opened a file and closed it again without reading anything from it.

  “Unfortunately, courts have little sympathy for survivors, Mr Wilson. We want to show that you endured a lifetime of suffering. Medical records attesting to mental illness, evidence of chronic alcoholism, broken marriages, disturbed children, violent outbursts --- criminal behaviour even --- these are the sorts of complaints that win public sympathy. But back to the first obstacle. Timing.”

  “Yes, timing,” I said, stirring my coffee vigorously and raising my pitch. “It seems to me, Mr Smythe, that by obfuscating evidence for decades, the State escapes answering for its crimes. All one has to do, apparently, is ensure a victim of crime has no access to the proof of wrongdoing until the statute of limitations expires, and no matter how evil the deed, there can be no penalty and no redress.”

  “You have to forgive my husband --- ” Fran began. I glared at her. I didn’t need her to make excuses for me, and I had no intention of apologising for my anger at such obvious injustice.

  “My dear lady,” Smythe cut in, “I am quite accustomed to victims being resentful and angry, and, quite frankly, dear, I agree with your husband. The statute of limitations is, in this case, patently unfair. Not to extend the time limit is a denial of natural justice and I shall be arguing accordingly, but you need to understand the risks of embarking on this course. The fact that you and I --- and no doubt many citizens of this State --- may regard laws as unfair is irrelevant. It is still the law. We have to overcome the time obstacle and then we have to find a way to prove quantifiable damage --- damage to which the courts can attach a dollar value, damage the average citizen understands and sympathises with.”

  I ate a biscuit, sipped my coffee and gazed out over the harbor at the rowboats, motorboats and big, luxury cruisers
rocking gently with the waves lapping at their sides, and the sailboats with their sails billowing in the breeze. The Commissioner for Child Welfare would have sat in an office like this one, perhaps not quite so luxurious, but cosy in winter. He would have sat there signing children’s lives away and looking forward to taking his own children on weekend boat rides across the harbor while I washed pissy sheets in freezing water and suffered agonising chilblains, hunger pains, bruises and lesions from vicious beatings. And I had to not only evidence lasting damage, but I had to fight for the right to be heard at all, because the good Commissioner concealed evidence until long after the statute expired.

  Smythe was still prattling on about the kind of disabilities that might prove I had suffered harm --- chronic unemployment, even having been charged with robbery or an act of violence, but being a loony was obviously the most compelling proof.

  “Mr Smythe,” I said sourly, rising suddenly to leave before he finished his sentence, “Thank you for your time. I appreciate your offer of help, but it seems we are wasting our time. If reparation for wrongdoing is payable only to those who can evidence that they let the wrong destroy them, then I don’t qualify. It did me a great deal of harm. It deprived me of my identity and the right to choose my own destiny --- took away the right to be me. That caused me a lifetime of pain and suffering, but I would never let the bastards defeat me.”