Childhood
A former ward of the state of Western Australia, Abbott is a member of the Forgotten Australians and still suffers a range of anxiety and health-related problems, noted in semi-biographical work by Derek Pedley, Australian Outlaw. The hearing impaired boy was subjected to corporal punishment in solitary detention in November 1974, at age 12, in the specially-modified child torture cell at the now notorious, Hillston Boys Home. Abbott's last water colour, "Little Boy Blue," was painted after the national apology.
The biography also mentions his affliction with chronic supperative otitis media, a painful, recurrent middle-ear disease prevalent in Western Australia's North-West, causing lifelong hearing loss and auditory processing delay, and an elevated risk of juvenile interaction with the criminal justice system. At earlier than one year of age Abbott had bilateral perforated ear drums and chronic recurrent bilateral effusion. Over the years that followed, he had repeated failed ear-drum grafts, with the last tympanoplasty taking place at age 13. As was the government practice at that time with little known about the condition and little concern for the well being and future of state wards, no additional education, medical, and communication support, no court and interrogation support, nor any appropriate rehabilitation services, were made available to the youth.
Read more about this topic: Brenden Abbott
Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade!
Ah fields beloved in vain!
Where once my careless childhood stray’d,”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
“It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman’s adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“The limitless future of childhood shrinks to realistic proportions, to one of limited chances and goals; but, by the same token, the mastery of time and space and the conquest of helplessness afford a hitherto unknown promise of self- realization. This is the human condition of adolescence.”
—Peter Blos (20th century)