Child Migration Schemes: A dark and hidden episode of Australia’s history revealed

Senator Andrew Murray
Democratic Senator, Parliment of Australia

The Inquiry Report was tabled on 30 August 2001. Titled Lost Innocents: Righting the Record, it now stands as an historical and social record not only of a shameful episode of Australian history but of its enduring consequences. It chronicles evil, catalogues pain and suffering, and charts ruined lives. It also touches on the mystery and beauty of the human spirit.

Through the distressing experience of taking evidence from victims of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, any potential party political differences between Committee members were quickly broken down.

The Howard Coalition Government delivered its largely positive response to Lost Innocents, in May of this year. The package of measures include:

• A rather paltry A$125,000 per year for three years to the Child Migrants Trust to fund family tracing and counselling services for former child migrants.
• A $100,000 contribution to State initiated memorials to commemorate former child migrants; and,
• A$ 1 million per year for three years in travel funding to assist former child migrants of British and Maltese origin to return to the United Kingdom (UK) or Malta to reunite with family members.

While these accord with the Committee’s primary emphasis on the importance of tracing and reconnection, the A$3.7 million package for the child migrants was proportionately, much less than the Stolen Generation Inquiry that generated A$69 million support.

It was singularly disappointing that the Government did not accept a key need from the Inquiry, that of offering automatic Australian citizenship to former child migrants. Having paid their taxes and dues, and some having fought for Australia, it is disgraceful they are not recognised as Australians.

The worst response was the Government’s rejection of the recommendation that Christian Brother Keaney’s MBE be cancelled. Awarded in 1953 in recognition of his ‘care’ and work with youths, including migrant boys, this public perception is a myth. He shamelessly used child migrants as slave labour, he tolerated if not participated in systemic sexual assaults, was brutal and abusive in committing numerous assaults and oversaw a system of general neglect and abuse. To continue to allow such a monstrous person to sully the list of deserved recipients is a grave mistake.

One strong conclusion drawn from the Child Migrant Inquiry is that the assault, abusive treatment and neglect of children, and the disconnections that result, has a lifetime effect not only on the victims but also on society. Indeed, wider evidence suggests the scale of the problem is alarming and has major social and economic costs.

For instance, in Australia the number of children institutionalised is staggering. Although accurate statistics are not available, conservative ballpark figures indicate that up to 10,000 child migrants, 40,000 aboriginal children and as many as 200,000 non-indigenous Australian children have been institutionalised last century, totalling 250 000.

250,000 children would have at least ten, perhaps twenty, people close to them in their lifetime – relatives, friends, work colleagues and so on. So out of a population of under twenty million, at least two and half million Australian have had their lives touched by institutionalised children.

Then estimate the numbers of, for instance, those affected by sexual assault. Its prevalence may mean vast numbers have been affected. Indeed, the possible numbers are frightening.

Here in the States, former monk, Richard Sipe, who has formidable qualifications, reveals in his Sipe Report[vi], and without fear of contradiction, that five - seven per cent of United States Catholic priests have molested children. (It is good that 94% have not). But if six per cent of 50,000 US Catholic priests were to have sexually assaulted an average of 100 children over a 50-year career span, you would be talking about 300,000 victims.

Using Sipe’s model in Australia, six per cent of the 4,500 Catholic priesthood would mean 270 priests would have molested Australian children. Multiply that by a possible 100 victims over a paedophile priest’s lifespan, and we would have 26,700 Australian victims from that source alone.

The Child Migrant Inquiry alone showed that child sexual abuse perpetrated by the religious and others has affected the lives of many, many Australians. The long-term, knock-on generational effects of such abuse is extremely worrying.

While not all those criminally or sexually assaulted, abused and neglected as children suffer as adults, research suggests that a significant number do descend into any of welfare dependency, failed or dysfunctional relationships, unemployment, homelessness, substance abuse, crime and suicide. The economic cost to society of this social dysfunctionalism is enormous.

For instance, 80 to 85% of women in Australian prisons have been victims of incest or other forms of abuse.[vii] Another Australian study of 27 correctional centres in New South Wales, found that 65% of male and female prisoners were victims of child sexual and physical assault. [viii]

If institutionalised children are pushed into substance abuse, think of the knock-on consequences. A 1995 report commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services in Australia[ix], found that alcohol is associated with:

• 44% of fire injuries;
• 34% of falls and drownings;
• 30% of car accidents;
• 50% of assaults;
• 16% of child abuse;
• 12% of suicides; and,
• 10% of machine accidents.

Another study carried out by the South Australia Department of Human Services conservatively estimated the cost of child abuse and neglect in 1995-96 to be A$354 million in that small state with a population of just over 1.5 million. That figure is more than the A$318 million this state earned in the same period from wine exports, or the A$239 million from the export of wool and sheepskins. [x]

Not surprisingly, such research results are replicated in other countries. For example, in the UK, the annual cost of child protection was estimated in the mid-1990s to be 735 million pounds sterling. Additionally, it was estimated that if child abuse and neglect resulted in 10% of expenditure on mental health and correctional services, this would add another 348 million pounds, taking the annual cost to over one billion pounds sterling. [xi]

I strongly believe that the issue of the abuse and neglect of children poses an enormous policy challenge for the 21st century.

Effective structures must be put in place to not only uncover and bring to justice those who commit appalling crimes on the most defenceless members of our society, but also to offer ongoing counselling and other forms of assistance to victims so they can become fully functioning members of society.

It is clear that by spending much more money on lessening the effects of child abuse and neglect, the long-term social and economic cost to society can also be lessened. The alternative is a generational continuance of anti-social and criminal behaviour.

Politicians who refuse to accept this reality are guilty of a gross injustice. To continue with statutes of limitation that prevent victims having their day in court, to not permit mandatory reporting, and to starve good agencies of money and resources is no longer acceptable. Building prisons will prove more costly than addressing the causes of much anti-social behaviour.

Governments and other institutions must now accept the moral and financial responsibility that comes with the knowledge we now possess about vulnerable children and the impact of adversity on their development, and their ability to function as adults.

The message I want to bring home in this public policy field is this one – we are not just dealing with problems of the past. We are dealing with problems of the present and of the future. And those problems are very costly to the individuals affected, to society and to the economy.

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Endnotes

[vi]See R. Sipe, Sex,Priests and Power: An Anatomy of a Crisis, Casell, New York, 1995.
[vii]See P. Austeal, ‘Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel, Alternative Law Journal, 19 (2), 1994.
[viii]See T. Butler et al. ‘Childhood sexual abuse among Australian prisoners’, Venereology, 14 (3), 2001.
[ix]See Dallas English et al., Quantification of Drug Caused Morbidity and Mortality in Australia, Prepared for the Department of Human Services, AGPS, Canberra, 1995.
[x]See C. Charles, Editorial, Home Front, Department of Human Services, Adelaide, 1998.
[xi]See National Commission of Inquiry into the Prevention of Child Abuse, Childhood Matters, Volume 1, HM Stationery Office, London, 1996.