A leading Australian forensic psychologist who treated many of the men associated with VOICES spoke of typical symptoms such as flashbacks, chronic sleep disorders, an inability to form and maintain relationships, increased anxiety, low self-esteem and intense feelings of shame, guilt and suicidal tendencies. ‘By and large many of them are ruined human beings,’ he said.
Many of the men have led lonely and deprived lives. Many succumbed to alcohol, some have known the hell of skid row, many have been in gaol, while one of the most common burdens they carry is a lack of education.
When VOICES took its case to the NSW Supreme Court, an eminent QC acting for the Christian Brothers suggested that the motive for the men’s legal action was money. Under this savage grilling one middle-aged man, on the verge of tears, exclaimed to a hushed court, ‘No, I wasn’t after the money at all. I am not after any money. I want to learn how to read and bloody write.’
Girls in the care of the Sisters fared no better than their brothers. Discussing conditions in orphanages run by the Sisters, a 1998 House of Commons report speaks of severe floggings with thick leather straps and of the fifteen-year-old girl stripped naked and savagely flogged in front of fifty other girls, suffering unbearable pain and humiliation. One survivor told the Australian Forde Inquiry:
Living at that hellish place has left me with enduring nightmares, emotional pain and torture, resentment, insecurity and self-loathing. I have never shaken the feeling of worthlessness. They [staff] told me I was no good – that’s what I believe. I cannot express how these feelings have affected my life. I cannot shake feelings of self-hatred and guilt. My education and marriage have suffered, I could not be the mother I wanted to be to my children. On occasions, I know I have let them down by lacking the strength to stand up for the right thing. I get so depressed sometimes, because I know there wasn’t any way to change how things turned out for me, and for those who depended on me. [The orphanage] took away my childhood. It left me no hope.
The House of Commons Committee investigating the Child Migration Scheme heard of one victim’s first experience in Australia: ‘Where it hit me particularly was when they dragged the brothers and sisters from one another, I can still hear the screams.’ In its report, the same House of Commons Committee commented on how survivors often referred to the Christian Brothers as Christian Buggers and the Sisters of Mercy as the Sisters without Mercy.
The scandal of the Child Migration Scheme and the evil which pursued the unfortunate children into the orphanages is a sad story which can never have a happy ending and Trust Me reflects that sadness. But Lesley Pearse has a special gift which enables her to capture the personal turmoil in moving, gritty, authentic terms. Dulcie, May and Ross are real people permanently scarred by their childhood experiences. Trust Me may be fiction, but every word is engraved with the truth.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
Trust Me
Part One: 1947–1955
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Thirteen
Part Two: 1956–1963
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Epilogue
Afterword by Bruce Blyth