TIMECODE

DIALOGUE

10:00:00

GFX:

101 EAST

10:00:08

STEVE CHAO:  Ten years ago Australia’s Prime Minister apologised to a stolen generation of indigenous people for policies that systematically removed them from their families. But today more indigenous children are being removed than ever before, leading some to ask is this a new stolen generation.  I’m Steve Chao.  On this episode of 101 East we investigate the crisis facing Australia’s indigenous families, and the systems meant to protect them.

10:00:45

GFX:

AUSTRALIA’S NEW STOLEN GENERATION?

A FILM BY MARY ANN JOLLEY

10:00:52

HELEN EASON:   Everybody ready?

HAZEL COLLINS:  Yeah.

[FAMILY SING “HAPPY BIRTHDAY”]

10:01:07

MARY ANN JOLLEY:    They may look like any happy Australian family celebrating a mother’s birthday.  But heartache isn’t far beneath the surface.  Helen Eason and her children have spent years torn apart.

10:01:23

HELEN EASON:   Thank you coming.

DAUGHTER:  . . . Either way I hope you have a good day.  Like-

HELEN EASON:   . . . And it’s good to just have yous here..

RAYNE:  . . . I’ve travelled two thousand a day for this.

SON:  Is this eleven?

HELEN EASON:   And for you to come to Mum, and to be here.  I love yous so much.

10:01:38

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  Like thousands of other indigenous families, four of Helen’s children were removed by Child Welfare.  After a long legal battle, the family was re-united just over a year ago.

10:01:52

HELEN EASON:   They take your young from you.  And you have so many taken.  You are not whole.  Even when they come home as much they’re all there, all them pieces can never ever be put back together.

10:02:13

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   For eighteen year old Rayne the memories of being removed when he was ten are still raw.

10:02:19

RAYNE:  One Police Officer grabbed me, and my Mum was trying to fight ‘em and stuff.

GFX:

One police officer grabbed me and my mum

was trying to fight them and stuff.

10:02:25

MARY ANN JOLLEY:    And how did you feel then?

RAYNE:   Ah a bit upset.  Upset, worried, scared.

GFX:

A bit upset, worried, scared.

10:02:31

MARY ANN JOLLEY:    Did you have any sense of why they were taking you?

RAYNE:  No, not at all.  You might say you’d been kidnapped, and taken somewhere you don’t want to be me.

GFX:

No, not at all.

You may as well be kidnapped and taken

somewhere you don’t to be.

10:02:41

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   At first Rayne and his younger brother and sister were placed with the same foster carer.  But his sister ran away, and Rayne was moved away from his brother.

10:02:53

RAYNE:   That’s when my family, not like being a family, really like um since then like we’ve all separated.

GFX:

That’s when my family . . .

were not like being a family really.

Ever since then, we’re all separated.

10:03:05

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  Sexually abused as a child and a victim of domestic violence as an adult, Helen suffers from bi-polar disorder, and was addicted to drugs.  But Rayne says he always felt loved.

10:03:19

RAYNE:    She was the Mum, still there.  I think she didn’t leave us or nothing.  She was home.

GFX:

She was my mum,

she was still there.

She didn’t leave us or nothing.

She was home.

10:03:26

MARY ANN JOLLEY:    And you went to school?

RAYNE:   Yeah.  I did go.  I would say I didn’t go sort of every day but I missed out a lot.

GFX:

Yeah I did, I would say I didn’t go everyday.

I missed out on a lot.

10:03:32

MARY ANN JOLLEY:    Was there any time when you felt unsafe?

RAYNE:   Nuh.

MARY ANN JOLLEY:    Or uncared for?

RAYNE:   Nuh.

10:03:39

HAZEL COLLINS TALKING TO GRANDSON:  Is that the one you were holding in your photo?

10:03:42

HAZEL COLLINS:  They were never in danger.  I was always there.  They were my babies too.  And they will be ‘til to the day I die.

10:03:53

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Helen’s mother told Child Welfare she was prepared to care for her grandchildren.

10:03:59

HAZEL COLLINS:  I could have all- I’ve got thirty-six grandchildren.  I could have all of them except my daughter’s children in my home.  When you’d ask ‘em why am I unsuitable they said oh we don’t have to answer that.  And it was it was very very hard.

10:04:18

HELEN EASON:   This was at one of the visits, and we’d just try and make everything as normal as possible and still like that family unit.

10:04:27

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  Helen says she saw her children rarely when they were in care.

10:04:31

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  So how many visits did you have with them?

HELEN EASON:   I was seeing Noah as I said the four times a year two two hours four times a year.  Trinity and Rayne I was a lot more luckier with um.  I think it was fortnightly and then it went to monthly.  So that would have been like a month before he was taken.

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  And how were you at that stage?

HELEN EASON:   I was fine.  I was still struggling with um the marijuana but as I said I’m hone- was honest to to everyone.

10:05:08

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  Four years after her other children were removed, her fifteenth month old baby was taken.

10:05:15

HELEN EASON:  Things got crazy.  I don’t know, all I can remember is running to different people and just begging them, like please don’t take my baby, like why are yous doing this, there’s no need to take him away.

10:05:33

MARY ANN JOLLEY:    Helen went into a downward spiral.  She and the father of her two youngest children ending up in prison for drug crimes.

10:05:42

RAYNE:  It’s wrong what they do.  I understand like yeah some in some situations kids should be taken but before you do take ‘em try and help the people beforehand, before just ripping them out of the family.

GFX:

It’s wrong what they do.  I understand

in some situations, kids should be taken.

But before you do take them,

Try and help the people beforehand . ..

before just ripping them

out of the family.

10:05:55

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  Australia has a dark history of forcibly removing indigenous children from their homes, placing them in institutions or with white families.  They’re known as the Stolen Generation.  In 2008 the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made an historic apology.

10:06:16

KEVIN RUDD SPEECH:  We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments, and Governments, that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

10:06:31

MARY ANN JOLLEY:    The Prime Minister’s speech was meant to heal the wounds of the past.

10:06:36

KEVIN RUDD SPEECH:  To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

10:06:45

[PROTEST MARCH 13 FEBRUARY 2018]

FEMALE PROTESTOR:  What’s that sorry mean?

PROTESTORS:  You don’t do it again!

FEMALE PROTESTOR:  What’s that sorry mean?

10:06:49

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  A decade on Helen Eason and her mother take to the streets of Sydney leading a charge to stop indigenous children being removed from their families.

10:07:00

MALE PROTESTOR:   Stop stealing kids! 

PROTESTORS:  Stop stealing kids!

10:07:03

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  They started a now nationwide organisation called Grandmothers Against Removals.

10:07:10

HELEN EASON SPEAKING AT PROTEST:   We’re fighting for our babies that you still got out there.  No more. We’re not going nowhere.  And we are going to bring your system down.  They are our babies.

10:07:22

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   On the tenth anniversary of the apology optimism has turned to despair.  In the past decade the number of indigenous children being removed from their families has almost doubled.  And the numbers are now higher than ever in the country’s history.  Today Aboriginal children are almost ten times more likely to be placed in out of home care than non-indigenous children.

10:07:48

HAZEL COLLINS:  To me stolen generation never ever stopped.  It’s all been about genocide.  It’s it’s never been about the protection of the children.

10:08:06

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Almost three thousand kilometres away in the Central Australian town of Alice Springs the child welfare crisis is dividing the large local indigenous community.

10:08:18

JACINTA PRICE:  There’s no point saying we’re creating another stolen generation and stopping kids from being removed from really horrible circumstances.  And we’ve got the highest numbers of family violence.  We’ve got the highest rates of um you know child neglect and abuse.  And and this is why our children are being removed, that’s a simple fact, and if we cannot recognise and acknowledge that we’re not going to actually get around to fixing the problem because it starts with actually recognising that.

10:08:44

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Jacinta Price is an Alice Springs Councillor, and has ambitions to enter the national political arena.  But her blunt message has drawn scorn and anger.  Today she’s heading to Court with her mother and father to get a protection order after a death threat.

10:09:00

JACINTA PRICE:   I’ve been called a sell-out because my detractors basically think that I should remain quiet and I should um just regurgitate the same old rhetoric and ah view myself as a victim to white colonisation.  Whereas I’d simply rather just be a human being and a woman who is more concerned about the the welfare of ah Aboriginal women and children.  And I guess I’m attacked because um I speak a lot of the truth, and these truths are really hurtful truths.

10:09:48

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Jacinta’s family isn’t immune to the problems faced by many Aboriginal families.

10:09:58

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   At this indigenous camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs she and her mother introduce us to their kin.  Aunty Julie looks after three children from their extended family.  And another six are under the care of close family friend Marion.  We can’t identify the children for legal reasons.

10:10:20

AUNTY JULIE:  They were given to me because of their Mum, and you know their parents drinking a lot and you know neglecting these kids.

10:10:29

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Marion isn’t a blood relative nor indigenous, but lifelong bonds have made her just like family.

10:10:36

MARION:  They’re all family and they’re all related to each other.  I’ve had him since he was baby.  And eh they just sort of kept coming.  One after the other.  And I couldn’t shut the door.

JACINTA PRICE:  Yeah.  In their Mum’s case like we lost their Mum to alcohol.  We lost their um Mum’s sister to alcohol.  She was only in her twenties.  Her other sister, who I had to ID her body in a ba- in a in a car crash.  And you know they lost their grandfather to alcohol as well.  And yeah it’s just, it’s, yeah.

MARION:  . . .It’s a cycle, it just keeps going.

10:11:13

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Three of the boys living with Marion suffer from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome.  Their mother’s heaving drinking during pregnancy has left them with hearing and spinal disorders as well as cognitive and behavioural problems. 

10:11:29

MARION:  They see the specialist every three months with their alcohol syndrome.  They’re on medication.

10:11:34

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   But recently the family was forced into mediation over one of the boys.  After living with Marion’s family in town for the past two years some of his other relatives wanted him placed with them on a remote Aboriginal community.

10:11:50

MARION:  I spoke to the other Nanna about it, and they said no, they want him to stay with you, because when his Mum was passing on her death bed she asked me to take him, to bring him up with his sister.

JACINTA PRICE:   Yeah.  And and so that he had all the opportunities for him to have a a good life and she didn’t want him back out on community where there wasn’t any services to deal with his health problems.

AUNTY JULIE:  I think we need more more you know women like Marion.

10:12:23

JACINTA PRICE:   And I think we need to get passed the point of um you know separating us all from race and recognising that we’re in fact human beings and these children are human beings.  They’re Australian citizens and they deserve the same rights as any other child in this country, but we’re putting their culture before their rights as human beings.  And I think that’s where the system is failing them.  And of course the stigma that has been brought about because of the original stolen generation.

10:12:51

WALTER SHAW:   I think it’s a subtle extension of the stolen generation.

10:12:56

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Jacinta Price’s view is rejected by the local Tangentjere Council CEO Walter Shaw.

10:13:03

WALTER SHAW:   If you remove Aboriginal children from the Aboriginal community you might as well shut down Aboriginal ah communities.  One could say that these children being placed into ah the care and protection of welfare and the foster care arrangements with non-Aboriginal children is that they’re being doctrinated ah with values other than being Aboriginal people.

10:13:24

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Of the Aboriginal children in foster care forty percent are placed with non-indigenous families.  Walter Shaw says his Council wants to change this and keep children in their communities.

10:13:38

WALTER SHAW:   Kinship care for our organisation is an imperative.  I think ah we need to move to a system where we support Aboriginal families that are functional and strong Aboriginal families to become those foster carers.  We-we’ve set up a family safety group that ah are now talking sensitively around ah all forms of violence, ah community, domestic, you know talking about the the alcohol issue, the drug issue.

10:14:07

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   But for sixteen year old Sarah it’s a case of too little too late.  She was born into a family plagued by drug and alcohol fuelled domestic violence.

10:14:20

SARAH:  There would be cups getting thrown.  Blood everywhere, um.  Mum getting bashed obviously.  Um yeah.  Just, just real violent stuff.

10:14:35

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Sarah’s mother Denise became involved with Sarah’s father when she was thirteen and he was eighteen.  She says the Department of Children and Families, or DCF, placed her with her boyfriend’s family despite their relationship.

10:14:50

DENISE:  He’d beat me, like real bad, like a few t- on a few occasions.  And DCF was well aware of that.  They had to take me to hospital a few times.  I just felt like I was palmed off and left and forgotten about.  Yeah.  And I didn’t have the chance to leave that the courage to even or the support to leave that relationship right until I was twenty-three twenty-four.  Yeah.

10:15:16

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   But when she escaped to Alice Springs with her three kids to live with her Dad she says she couldn’t cope.

10:15:22

DENISE:  And you could imagine you know living with your Dad and he’s beating his woman and there’s dro- grog ev- everything in the house.  I went to DCF office and I asked them for help, and thinking that there would have been some kind of supports there but there wasn’t.  The stress levels ending up getting higher there.  Like I couldn’t really keep the kids under control.  And so they were running amuck and getting out of control.  I then started to smack and hit my kids.

10:15:49

SARAH:  She used to like come back drunk and we would be asleep in the room and she would come in and chuck cupboards at us.  And I come back one day after school and um me and Mum was arguing.  Yeah she ended up flogging me, giving me two black eyes, and sent me to school the next day with two black eyes.

10:16:18

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   For then seven year old Sarah that led to almost a decade in residential care.

10:16:25

SARAH:  It was alright, at first, when I was younger.  And then later on down the track it just it was getting hard and I started understanding things a little bit more.

10:16:43

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   And you can show me around town.

SARAH:  Yeah.

10:16:45

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   The suburbs of Alice Springs are littered with Sarah’s former care homes.

10:16:51

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   And how many, I mean altogether, how many places do you reckon you were in?

SARAH:  Twenty plus.

GFX:

20 plus.

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   In just ten years?

SARAH:  Mm hmm.

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   That’s a lot of places.

SARAH:  I could show you about six houses in this one little area.  You know that story I was telling you about that boy and they used to lock us inside.

GFX:

I could show you about six houses

In this one little area.

You know that story was telling you about

where they used to lock us inside.

10:17:10

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   As we pass another residential facility the memories get worse.  She says an assault by a care worker when she was eleven has left her traumatised.

10:17:22

SARAH:  And then he just kept on looking at me funny ways but I didn’t think anything of it you know ‘cause I was young still you know and I didn’t think anything of it.  And then um yeah he opened his legs and his fly was down and I jumped up and I went to my room then.  And then um I was just dozing off to sleep you know and as I was going to sleep he walked in the room, closed the door, and that’s, yeah.

10:17:50

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   A year later at another care facility she says she was repeatedly abused by a boy a couple of years older than her.

10:17:58

SARAH:  The time when I tried to um smash his head in with um a lamp, ‘cause it was wrong and you know your carers wasn’t going do anything about it so I was just self-defending myself and carers never believed me and so I went off at the carers.  And then I called Mum to come.  ‘Cause they wouldn’t believe me.

10:18:26

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   The Department of Children and Family says it can’t comment on individual cases, but records show that almost ten percent of children in out of home care in the Northern Territory are abused, neglected, or exploited.  For Sarah it was a turning point.  Her life spun out of control.  She began running away from care homes, living on the streets or at her mother’s, and committing crimes.

10:18:56

SARAH:  I felt safer out at the detention centre what I did in care.  Yeah.  And then I just turned real heartless for a bit, for a while, and just did whatever I could to to make a good reason to get locked up you know.  I just used to go break in and steal people’s cars and I just used to go bash people on the streets and everything.  But now when I look back I was I just feel so bad for doing it all.

10:19:26

TANIA COLLINS:  She’s told me some horrific stories about being you know abused by other residents, by workers, um and just about um complete lack of care for her as a human being.

10:19:39

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Tania Collins was Sarah’s lawyer at the height of her offending when she was about twelve.

10:19:45

TANIA COLLINS:  Kids who are under the care of the Minister then become kids in the criminal justice system very very quickly and very very closely there’s an interaction.  Because often Territory families lose track of the kids and which means they’re basically left to their own devices for long periods of time.  And that’s how I got to know Sarah again a number of years later.

10:20:04

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   And it was then the two developed an unexpected friendship.  As her ex-lawyer she would come and see me and say hello and um you know we had a good relationship.  She obviously wasn’t being supported by Territory families.  She had um a very difficult home life.  You know things that we all take for granted she wasn’t having, um.  And so I started to sort of pay for her food every day and buy her clothes and you know try and support her.

10:20:33

SARAH:  Yeah I just started really liking her and she just started liking me, and we just bonded together and then um yeah she wanted to foster me and do all this stuff for me.

10:20:46

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Sarah moved in with Tania, but it wasn’t to be.

10:20:51

TANIA COLLINS:  It was very challenging because um you hope that you can be the person who can save someone or deliver them a a better life um and but the reality is that’s not it’s not as clear cut as that.

10:21:08

SARAH:  When I was on the streets you know only rules I followed was my rules.  I didn’t have to listen to anyone else ‘cause I was on the streets you know no-one cared about me.  And then she stepped in and then wanted to care for me and everything.  And it was just hard to click straight on to the routines again.  Yeah I just um f-f- I just found it difficult.  I couldn’t cope.

10:21:35

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Sarah went back to live at her mother’s place with her boyfriend and extended family.

10:21:41

TANIA COLLINS:  Dysfunctional, traumatic, unsustainable, um.  Difficult, um.  Yeah it’s not great, um.  No it’s not good.

10:21:59

MARY ANN JOLLEY:  Sarah’s mother continues to struggle with drug and alcohol addiction.  Today she’s at Court for a number of assault charges and for being intoxicated while on bail.

10:22:11

DENISE:  I’m not a person that drinks every day or every week and all that sort of stuff.

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   But there have been occasions in the past where it has led to violence?

DENISE:  Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah with me and my ex yeah.  But not with my kids.  I ha- I don’t beat my kids when I’m intoxicated and stuff like that.

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   They say you do.

DENISE:  Yeah but I don’t.  There’s a big difference.  Yeah.

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Okay.

DENISE:  Yeah every time that I’ve hit my kids I’ve been sober, I haven’t been intoxicated or anything like that.

10:22:46

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Sarah turns up at the Court, but she’s not happy about it.

10:22:50

SARAH:  She wants me to stand up in Court and tell the Judge that she shouldn’t go to gaol.  I reckon she should go to gaol.  My point of view after everything she’s done to us you know.  She can’t keep getting away with it.  She keeps saying she’s going to change but yet last night she was drinking and doing the same old [beep].

10:23:12

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Her mother gets a reprieve, but is told she needs to do a rehabilitation programme.

10:23:18

SARAH:  I know she won’t.  And that’s why I just looked at the Judge and was like what the hell are you really going to do this.  Yeah I don’t know.

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   . . . And how does-  how does that make you feel to think that she’s not going to go and do rehab?

SARAH:  I don’t care, it’s her life, if she want to get help she can get help, she doesn’t she doesn’t.  I’m not the one suffering.  Her- she is, so.

10:23:41

TANIA COLLINS:  She has now got that maturity to actually say okay this is not about me anymore it’s about my Mum, my Mum has got her own problems, she’s got her own issues, um, and I can make myself have a better life and I don’t want to repeat those mistakes, um.  And that’s a really um compelling and a a wonderful thing to see in Sarah in that from someone who used to be known in this town as probably you know the number one um disliked youth offender to have turned her life so around now.

10:24:13

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Sarah’s not been in trouble for more than three years.  She’s now her own guardian, and remarkably has started a Police Cadetship.  They may not live under the same roof, but she and Tania continue to have a strong bond.

10:24:29

SARAH:  She is like my mother.  In my eyes my mother is Tania, not Denise.  Because Tania’s done a lot more for me and helped me a lot more than what Mum has.  Yeah she’s a good role model.

10:24:47

DENISE:  Tania has been Sarah’s angel.  I don’t know where Sarah would be now without her.  I am so grateful for really if I could give her heart I would give it to her.  She came along and did something I couldn’t do.  Yeah.

10:25:06

SARAH:  My past is never going to leave me you know it’s always going to be there with me.  I just got to learn to cope with it.  I just got to learn to say oh well that happened to me deal with it move on.  That’s what I yeah that’s why I try and do.  It does get hard but I try.

10:25:30

MARY ANN JOLLEY:   Sarah may have survived a broken family and a dangerously flawed children protection system, but the sorry fact remains that a decade on from the Government’s apology to the stolen generation indigenous children are increasingly at risk.

10:25:53

GFX:

ALJAZEERA