It was wonderful to be home. I wandered through the house, constantly ambushing Mervyn, Ben and Rachel with unexpected hugs. I needed the reassurance and comfort of holding them close.
By now Rachel was old enough to understand. While she wanted us to spend more time together, she appreciated that time was running out for many child migrants and that our family sacrifice was minor compared with their problems.
But not long after I returned, Rachel said something that stopped me in my tracks. She had noticed that my hair was falling out again – it was all over the towels and the bathroom floor. Putting her arms around me, Rachel whispered, ‘Oh, Mum, it’s time somebody said to them that you belong to us.’
I was deeply upset. It was not the child migrants’ fault. The Trust’s lack of funds had ensured that we had to work twelve hours a day, most days of the week.
I had missed Rachel’s birthday almost every year except one – her eighteenth – in the previous five years. I had missed anniversaries, school concerts, fêtes, football games … the list was shamefully long.
And no matter how hard I tried to acknowledge that failure when I returned home, it was never the same. You can’t make up for missing a birthday – that special day is gone for ever.
On the other hand, I was working with people who sometimes had never known, with any certainty, on what day they should be celebrating their birthday, or even their correct age. I’ve often sent people their first birthday card. It is my way of letting them know how important they are to me.
My children have grown up in the real world. Thankfully, they understand the sacrifices our family has made. And they know that I would never let the child migrants down. I couldn’t live with myself.
Soon after I returned to the UK, I was surprised to hear that Dr Barry Coldrey had finally revealed limited details of his ‘investigation’ on behalf of the Christian Brothers. He admitted to the West Australian newspaper that he had uncovered evidence that some brothers may have sexually abused children at Bindoon Boys’ Town. Whether his wider findings were made public, he said, would depend upon his ‘employer’.
‘I am prepared to say that the lines of evidence against certain staff members are strong, but I’m not, at the moment, prepared to go further than that.’
He went on to comment on one brother whose name had cropped up often in the Bindoon old boys’ stories, saying, ‘There are strong allegations against this chap [Brother] Angus but all I would say at this stage is that if he was living, well, he would have a lot to answer for.’
As far as I knew, this was the first time the Christian Brothers had admitted that there might, after all, be some truth in the allegations of sexual abuse. Dr Coldrey went on to name another brother and a priest, Father William Giminez, against whom there had been ‘constant but never precise’ allegations.
Playing the fair-minded academic, Coldrey conceded some points and appeared both reasonable and balanced. However, having accepted that the allegations might be true, he then attacked other claims made by old boys.
But research can work both ways.
Perth social psychologist, Juanita Miller, was writing a doctoral thesis on the treatment of child migrants in Western Australia. Ms Miller interviewed 180 former child migrants from Bindoon, Clontarf, Tardun and Castledare and eventually claimed that in a given year at Clontarf Boys’ Home, as many as 50 of the 250 boys were being sexually abused. She collected the names of sixteen Christian Brothers alleged to have been involved.
Meanwhile, the Christian Brothers and many other charities maintained that the child migration schemes were inspired, subsidized and monitored by governments. They had merely picked up the pieces.
I knew this wasn’t entirely true, but, inevitably, governments must have been involved. You cannot move thousands of children from one side of the world to the other without it being sanctioned by the government of the day.