References (2) -- Clergy Child Molesters

   VOICES director Bruce Blythe, speaking on behalf of the 200 claimants, said a decision by the men was likely by the end of the week, but he did not want to comment on the negotiations taking place in any way because they were at a delicate stage.
   Archbishop Hickey, responding directly to last Monday's Four Corners programme which claimed the Church was evading its responsibility in the matter of sexual abuse of children, said the public's perception of the leaders of the Church was that they had not always acted as wisely as they should have.
   "And therefore we must accept criticism when it is valid and learn from it," he said.
   He said the Church office at Victoria Square in the city had received a large number of phone calls from viewers after the programme's airing on Tuesday night.
   Archbishop Hickey said people were disturbed at the programme's report that in one State (not WA) priests had been sent from parish to parish when accused; that the Church did not appear to be facing up to the facts; that it should not appear to be playing legal games to avoid financial responsibility; and that priests should live in such a way that people could turn to them in times of trouble.
   "I must say that I accept all these comments as true. I don't believe they all apply to the Archdiocese of Perth but to the extent that any of them does I regret that very much, Archbishop Hickey said.
   "I think that criticisms, while hurtful, often teach us wisdom. We must, as a group throughout Australia be better in future."
   Clarifying comments on the programme about his relationship to the case currently being heard in the NSW Supreme Court, he said that as Archbishop he was responsible for the actions of all the diocese's priests but because of the autonomy of religious congregations it was the superior of the congregation who was responsible for the actions of its members.
   This distinction was sometimes misunderstood both within and out [side] the Church, but people had to understand this reality, he added.
   The Four Corners programme, entitled Twice Betrayed, was highly critical of the handling by senior Church figures, especially bishops, of allegations concerning sexual abuse of children by priests and Religious going back over six decades.
   The programme detailed known cases and new allegations of abuse including at least one where a priest who was eventually imprisoned for sexual abuse of boys had been transferred through a number of parishes over several decades despite Church authorities knowing of his crimes.
   The programme dealt mainly with the dioceses of Ballarat and Melbourne in Victoria. It was not broadcast in that State for legal reasons.
   Canada's experience - Page 11 [Pictures: Br Tony Shanahan; Archbishop Barry Hickey]
   -- The Record, Perth Catholic newspaper, "Archbishop at risk of more legal action," by Peter Rosengren, p 1, [May 30, 1996]
• 1996, June: The shameful tale of our child migrants

Australian Reader's Digest, editors.au@ readersdigest. com , pp 52-58, issue of October 1996

I T WAS A COLD winter morning when two women got out of a taxi in a quiet street in Hastings, southern England. Social worker Margaret Humphreys noticed that her companion was trembling.
   Pamela Smedley had flown from Adelaide in the height of the Australian summer. But it was not the unaccustomed raw weather that was making her shiver. All her life she had believed she was an orphan. Now, in her fifties, Pamela was about to meet her mother. All she had to do that day in 1989 was to walk up to the neat bungalow in front of her and ring the doorbell.
   "Margaret," she said urgently, "you'll have to hold me up. I can't get to the door." Margaret took Pamela's arm. Her painstaking detective work had brought mother and daughter together, but her pleasure at the coming reunion was mixed with sorrow and anger. At the age of 11, Pamela had been sent to Australia under a British-government backed migration scheme. Her mother, forced by family pressure to place her with the Catholic Church for adoption, knew nothing of the girl's fate.
   The front door opened, and Margaret saw the joy on the elegant elderly woman's face as she held out her arms to greet her daughter. They have lost more than 40 years when they might have known each other, Margaret thought. What a waste!
   Pamela's fate was shared by thousands of youngsters in the care of charities and local authorities in Britain. But until Margaret took up their cause, no-one had ever fully exposed the injustice inflicted on the children who had grown up without a family or even a past. Nor had there been such a concerted effort to repair the damage. "It's like being inside a block of ice. I don't belong to anyone," was typical of how migrants described their experience to Margaret. It was hearing this and her determination to reunite them with their families that drove this warm, quietly spoken woman to set up the Child Migrants Trust in 1987. A service that began with a trickle of requests now has an estimated 20,000 inquiries on its books.
   It all started in 1986 when Margaret Humphreys, then a county council social worker for Nottingham, specialising in adoption issues, received a letter from a woman called Madeleine*. She wrote that she came originally from Nottingham but had been put on a boat to Australia at the age of four, and asked for help in tracing her mother.
   Margaret already ran a support group for adults who'd been adopted as children. She and her husband Mervyn, a fellow social worker, devoted all their remaining energy to bringing up their own two lively children, 12-year-old Rachel and Ben, six. Yet she couldn't stop thinking about the letter - mostly with incredulity. Surely nobody would send a four-year-old girl round the world all by herself?
   Deep loneliness. Intrigued, Margaret threw herself into the search for clues to Madeleine's past, combing through the electoral rolls, street directories, registers of births, marriages, deaths and baptisms. She not only found that Madeleine had indeed been shipped overseas, but traced her mother. They were reunited in January 1987.
   A member of Margaret's adoption group called Marie had mentioned that her younger brother, too, had been sent to Australia as a child. Margaret encouraged Marie to re-establish her relationship with her brother, Harold Haig. For the first time she began to understand the child migrants' ordeal.
____________________
* Names have been changed to protect privacy.
   In 1949, a welfare officer told 11-year-old Harold, whose unmarried mother had been forced to place him in local authority care in Sussex, that he was going to a wonderful country of perpetual sunshine, where he would ride a horse to school. With that brief explanation and without the knowledge of his mother, he was put on a ship to Australia. "I was told that my parents were dead, that I had no family. All I had to show that I existed was my entry card."
   Harold grew up in a children's home near Melbourne where life was strictly regimented and love and affection were unknown. Even as a handsome, silver-haired artist in his fifties, he still bore the scars. He found it impossible to escape a chilling sense of isolation. Where most people had memories of family and friendship, Harold had nothing.
   "I started to drink a lot," he said. "I had no idea how to be a father to my children and my marriage broke up. It's as though this feeling of love belongs to other people, but not me. I'm not entitled to love."
   Fearing there must be more like Madeleine and Harold, Margaret placed advertisements in newspapers across Australia. When replies started to come in, she found the work taking up more and more of her time. Her colleagues were sympathetic. David Spicer, a lawyer with the council, gave up private time to help with the legal aspects. Mervyn helped her with research, but the work quickly outgrew their spare-time capacity.
   Realising that Margaret was "a doer, not a talker" who had already committed her own time and money to the trust, Joan Taylor, chair of the social services committee, arranged for her to work full time for the Migrants.
   But Margaret still did not appreciate the sheer scale of her task until March 1988, when she and David Spicer came to Australia. Stories about her work had begun to appear in newspapers here. Arriving in Perth, the pair were swamped with pleas from middle-aged men and women wanting to find their parents.
   At the end of a marathon journey across Australia, Margaret and David flew out of Sydney with six bags full of information and requests. It was then that the realisation of what she taken on hit her. This was far more than a social-work problem; it implicated several highly respected charities, even the British government. She turned to David. "I'm in big trouble, aren't I?"
   His answer was an unequivocal "Yes." A terrible fear gripped her. What if no-one believes what we've found out?
   Most of the children had originally been placed in the care of charities such as Dr Barnardo's and the Fairbridge Society, or with the Church of England and the Catholic Church. But encouraged by the government, these organisations considered it cheaper and healthier to send those without family ties overseas - first to fill the empty spaces of Canada and then, after the Second World War, to swell the population primarily of Australia, but also of New Zealand - where at least 300 children were sent by the Royal Overseas League between 1949 and 1952, and the majority placed with foster parents - and southern Africa.
   Nearly all the children, it turned out, had parents who were still alive. The trust has found only one real orphan among the thousands of cases it has investigated. There were other falsehoods and mistakes, too. Checking their birth certificates, Margaret discovered some had been given the wrong birthday, the wrong birthplace, even the wrong name.
   Punishment. Nor did the injustice cease after the young migrants came down the gangplank in Australia. Local families who offered to adopt these so-called "war orphans" were usually refused - there were legal obstacles, inquirers were told. Instead, most were packed off to children's homes, often in the outback, or to farm schools. For city children transported far from their native country, the blazing sun and harsh conditions compounded their misery.
   Most homes were like the one in Melbourne that Harold Haig described as "strict but fair," but there were notable exceptions. Middle-aged women broke down in tears when they told Margaret how, as frightened little girls, they were beaten for crying, for wetting their bed, for talking of Britain as home. To punish one five-year-old for running away, nuns shaved her head.
   At some places, such as the outback home known as Bindoon Boys' Town run by the Christian Brothers, a Catholic educational organisation, some boys were victims of prolonged physical or sexual abuse. Graham, sent there in the 1940s, remembered helping to build the imposing school with other barefoot children and his fear of the beatings the brothers administered with their thick leather belts. But there was worse still.
   "They were paedophiles and sadists," he said. "Little boys were woken at night and taken from their beds. We'd hear a brother's footsteps on the wooden floor and we'd pray he wouldn't stop beside our bed."
   The abuse was not confined to a single organisation, and as the extent of the child migrants' suffering became clear, Margaret threw what effort she could spare from reuniting families into publicising the scandal.
   Then in May 1989, a television documentary based on Margaret's work, Lost Children of the Empire, revealed the child-migrant tragedy to people in Britain for the first time. It was shown here later the same year. It generated hundreds of donations. But the charities that had run the migration schemes could not see the need for an independent agency and did not contribute. "We cannot be held responsible for things that were done 40 years ago," became the standard response.
   With the publicity came new demands for help and by September 1989 the trust, with its few volunteer helpers, was in desperate straits. Then one night a couple knocked on Margaret's door. The man explained that he'd missed the television programme but would like to see it on video. Margaret gave him her last copy, beseeching him not to lose it. A few weeks later he brought it back.
   "Mrs Humphreys," he said. "I'll come straight to the point. My mind is made up. Next week you will be receiving a cheque for 100,000 pounds." ($233,000).
   The anonymous gift enabled the trust to open an office and employ a full-time administrator in Nottingham, and to buy microfilm copies of all the General Register Office records. This saved time and money searching for birth, marriage and death certificates in London. It also allowed Margaret to travel more frequently to respond to the pleas for help from Australia.
   It was here that she encountered her own nightmare. The documentary's allegations of neglect and abuse had also stirred up opposition and on a visit to Perth, the phone rang and a well-spoken voice threatened to kill her. Later, with chilling hostility, the same anonymous caller threatened her children too. But Margaret refused to be frightened off.
   Then one night, on another visit to Perth, she was woken by a man banging on the front door of her rented house. "We've found you," he yelled. "We told you we would. You're dead this time!" Terrified, she fled into the garden and stayed there until dawn. She hasn't forgotten that fearful night. "But I could never let change what I was doing," she said. "There has to be a price to pay for making these things known." Everyone around her was impressed with her courage.
   Faced with accumulating allegations of abuse, the Christian Brothers changed their denials to an admission of guilt and a public apology in July 1993. In August this year, some 200 victims accepted a compensation package of up to $25,000 each from the brothers. At least 15 victims still hope to seek damages through the Australian courts and dozens more are considering the offer.
   In July 1993 when The Leaving of Liverpool, a two-part television drama about the child migrants, was shown in Britain a year after it had been seen in Australia, it brought the trust more than 15,000 calls. Dr Barnardo's, the Fairbridge Society and other charities involved in the scandal were now offering to open most of their records to migrants who wanted to trace their families. But many migrants still prefer to turn to the trust, which operates independently of the charities involved.
   The fear that time is running out as the migrants' parents reach their seventies and eighties adds a fearful urgency to the work of Margaret Humphreys and her volunteers.
   After three years painstakingly searching the records of innumerable families of the same name, the trust tracked down the mother of Tony Jones, sent to Australia as an eight-year-old boy in 1950. Overjoyed, he began to save for his air fare to Britain and immediately wrote to his mother: "Don't worry about all the questions of the past. The only things you have to tell me, the things I have waited 40 years to hear, are that you love me and you will write to me ..."
[Picture] Margaret Humphreys with three former child migrants
   She did write to tell him how much she loved him, but before he could fly to see her, he got a call in the middle of the night. His mother had died suddenly. Beside her body lay the letter she had been reading. It was signed, "Your loving son, Tony."
   The harsh treatment meted out to the child migrants still makes Margaret's eyes fill with sorrow. "Can you imagine growing up without a family, without even a country you feel is yours," she asks, "and then discovering that all the time your mother has been alive in the country where you were born?"
   The British government has had to be pushed into acknowledging any responsibility. It now gives the trust an annual grant that does not even cover the cost of office rent and one social worker. In Australia, the federal government contributes $60,000 a year towards the trust's office and social worker in Melbourne and another worker in Perth.
   In December 1993, at Government House, Canberra, the Governor-General, Bill Hayden, conferred the Honorary Medal of the Order of Australia on Margaret Humphreys - a rare award for non-Australians - in recognition of her outstanding work.
   At the ceremony were Pamela Smedley and her mother, Harold Haig and a dozen other child migrants. Afterwards one of the group, Geoffrey Gray, spoke for all of them "Countless people have asked, 'Why didn't you speak out before?' I'll tell you why. Nobody wanted to believe us. The only person we could turn to was Margaret Humphreys."
   And in her own quiet voice Pamela acknowledged what it meant to be reunited with her mother. "I'm a different person now. I am whole."
FOR FURTHER information write to the Child Migrants Trust at 228 Canning St, Carlton North, Melbourne 3054, phone (03) 9347 7403 or (09) 386 3605.
   Margaret Humphreys' autobiography, Empty Cradles, is published by Transworld Publishers at $14.95.
 HAS THIS ARTICLE sparked any memories for you of this decades-old scandal? We welcome your letters for possible inclusion in a future issue. Write to Readers Reply at the address on page 1. PHOTOS: COURTESY OF BATTYE LIBRARY; COURTESY OF CHILD MIGRANTS TRUST 58

References (2) — Clergy Child Molesters

THE SHAMEFUL TALE OF OUR CHILD MIGRANTS

1996, Oct 20: [Catholic Education Office deputy was child abuser.]

Church allowed abuse by priest for years