Forde Inquiry - Findings

Findings

In handing the 380–page report to the Minister in May 1999, the Commissioners noted that:

• Many of the children in Australian orphanages were not orphans, but were in fact "child migrants" who were expatriated from postwar Britain to serve the double purpose of easing food shortages in Britain and building up a population base of young white citizens in Australia. Some of these were children whose parents simply did not want them; others were children who had been separated from their parents during World War II due to evacuation or bombings. Although the "child migrant" scheme was originally implemented to ease postwar conditions, the British government continued expatriating children to Australia until 1966.
• Many boys were placed in criminal institutions (reformatories, detention centres and work farms) not because they had committed any crime, but merely because they had turned 14 and were therefore too old to remain in orphanages.
• Girls who became sexually active in their teen years were routinely placed in reformatories on the grounds that they were in "moral danger"; allegedly they were no longer in danger when they were locked into reformatories.
• Children and adolescents were routinely used for slave labour, and were subjected to physical and sexual abuse by the warders and matrons of the institutions in which they were housed. Many of these institutions were administered by one or another Christian church — Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist or Protestant — so the authority figures administering the abuse were frequently priests and occasionally nuns.
• Most of the children were given no schooling, no instruction in useful trades, and no opportunities for recreation. Although some of the orphanages possessed playgrounds and toys, these were maintained only as display for visitors and inspectors.
• Suicide was rampant among the youthful inmates, to the extent that several of these institutions were designed and built in a manner that eliminated "hanging points"; i.e., points which could support a noose containing the weight of a child bent on suicide.
• Children were routinely given severe punishment for extremely minor infractions. One example cited in the report was the sanctioned policy of inflicting physical torture upon left-handed children, in order "to get the Devil out of them", the Devil being presumed to be left-handed.