Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
WEDNESDAY 4 JUNE 1998MRS
M HUMPHREYS, OAM, MR
I THWAITES, MR
DSPICER, THE HON MRS
J TAYLOR, MR
M DALTON, MR J
HENNESSEY, MR
N JOHNSTON and MRS P
IRELAND.
140. Could you speak up a little bit? (Mr Johnston) It is
hard for me to talk loudly. If I do talk loudly, I become too
emotional. This is my way of keeping a check on myself. Might
I go back to a comment you made at the beginning when you raised
the issue that there were some successful people who went through
this scheme. 141. Perhaps I should qualify that. What I meant was
that you have somebody here who was a Deputy Mayor. Success was
not in terms of perhaps overcoming what people have gone through,
it was in terms of doing well in terms of professional life, in
politics, in a range of areas, where I know people have in that
sense done very well. I will qualify that point because I understand
the way that I meant it may be misinterpreted. (Mr Johnston)
I took exactly what you said as being the circumstance. I
wanted to say to the Committee that I deem myself to be one of
those successful people but I would forego the total success I
have had for another 10 minutes with my mother. I did not find
my mother until 1984, some 40 years after I was deported from
this very land, Scotland in fact. We had a lovely time for the
short time we were able to be together. I have a family of my
own at home, three children who, like Matt's, coerced me into
being just a little bit more positive, "Dad, try your luck.
You have not been helped any other way, try it yourself. See what
you can come up with". I did; mainly for them funnily enough.
I never believed for one minute that the church had bum-drummed
me, for want of a better word, on my circumstance. I came across
in 1983. I was so overawed with the blatant easiness I had of
finding my records. I went to the births, deaths and marriages
in Edinburgh and within three minutes of being in there, I was
actually looking at my birth certificate. I find it inexplicable
why these documents did not accompany us on our migration or deportation. 142.
Could you tell us a little about the circumstances in which you
went to Australia? What you know about, where you were, how it
happened? (Mr Johnston) Yes, I was going to lead into this.
May I make one further comment which I felt needed to be said
by me and probably needs to be said by many other migrants. This
is a citizenship certificate which makes me an Australian citizen.
It also to a degree now makes me a foreigner sitting here in front
of you in my own home land. I had no choice in the matter of whether
I got this. It was either me continue with my career, thereby
being forced to take this out, or curtail my career and be discharged.
I had 23 years in the military. To be able to sign on I had to
become an Australian citizen or that was the end of my career,
which of course meant the end of my DFIDB, as it is known, which
is our retirement pay. I would have lost all that. All of this
could have been avoided. I was handed in at Nazareth House by
a canon of the Catholic Church. My mother managed to give me a
small brief in 1983-84 about what happened to me and her circumstance.
It was not very pleasant. It was very difficult for her to tell
me. It was fairly difficult for me to listen to what she had to
say as well and taking in the awesomeness of the moment. My mother's
husband is not my father. She was placed under a great deal of
duress by the local Catholic institutions that my mother's husband
was away at war and he was going to come back any day and he was
going to go off his head, etcetera. So mum surrendered me to this
canon of the church who then placed me in Nazareth House in Aberdeen.
I had some very late recollections of being in Nazareth House
in Aberdeen, particularly one of the lay teachers, a female carer,
who took a particular liking to small boys, of which I was one.
The memory I have is of her always laughing. I remember the last
Christmas I was there, on the end of my bed they had actually
taken the time to put this very large—very large to me—wooden
train and the little coal area at the back of the train was full
of chocolate frogs. The trains' wheels did not go round; it was
all one piece of wood. That occupied me for weeks and weeks and
weeks. I still have very fond memories of that. I have very fond
memories of my last days in that institution, when I was taken
into an old men's home which adjoined the institution. It seemed
to be the norm in those days. I was dressed all in white. I was
seven years' old. We had to go to each bed and shake hands with
the aged people who were in there. As we went past each of them
gave two shillings, four shillings, 10 shillings, whatever, fruit,
chocolate; I was quite amazed. I had never seen the likes of that
before. It finished. When I came out, the Reverend Mother, who
had organised this, counted up a guinea and told me I was a very
rich boy. I thought that was lovely. I also probably had enough
chocolate and lollies for the next month. I clearly remember one
day some three days before this event, before I was taken into
the old people's home, a group of three people: one was a priest,
another was in a suit and I was not sure who the other one was.
We were all assembled in the hall. I can remember the question
being asked: who wants to go to Australia? We got such a glowing
picture of what Australia meant, most of what has been declared
to the meeting this morning. I had no response to that because
I did not even know where Australia was. I think it was probably
the first time I had ever heard the word. I was told shortly after
these three men left that I was one who was going. I thought,
"Well, where is it?". I was told it was just down the
road and around the corner. I thought, "Wow, that's great.
How come such a place exists and here I am in this real old place?
I can always come back here if I don't like it". It was the
convenience of it. The day came that I had to leave with the group
of boys. I do not remember that day. I do not remember anything.
I have no recollection of the next four days of my travels. I
was told mid-transition, mid-Atlantic, mid-wherever it was we
went, before we got to Colombo anyway, that I cried for four days
because this "just down the road and around the corner"
seemed to be way beyond even my comprehension then; four days
later we were still travelling. I remember parts of the journey
from Colombo on as being quite good. We had a lot of fun on board
ship, although with the restrictions that a group of children
would have. We arrived at Freemantle. It was the first time I
had seen the Christian Brothers. There in the public eye they
seemed to me to be just more people. We were lined up in different
groups. JohnHennessey raised the crying and there was some of
that with us too because with our group brothers and sisters were
separated, brothers and brothers were separated. If one were older
he might have had to go to Bindoon while the other one went to
Castledare or Clontarf. Once through that we were then taken on
our journeys to different institutions. For my lot, I went to
Castledare initially. It was not in fact until we entered Castledare
and we got off the bus that took us there that we began to see
the roughness. To me it was a very rough handling. I was not familiar
with it. There was the yelling, grouching, waving of hands, "Do
as you're told. Get in line", etcetera. We were still in
our finery. I might regard it as finery because I can still remember
what I wore. I wore a small tweed suit with shorts, but it was
a matching ensemble, shoes, socks and I had my own little case
which had the white clothing I mentioned earlier in there along
with the chocolates and the guinea was still there. That very
afternoon we were marched into the laundry of Castledare and we
were derobed of everything we had on, completely stripped, singlets,
underwear, socks, and given this baggy clothing. A pair of shorts
and a shirt. Like John, we never saw those items again. One has
to suspect the possibility that they may have been used for the
next group to come over. One cannot confirm that. We did not see
an item of what any of us had from that day on which is very unusual.
I say that with hindsight. 143. Clearly we need to be looking at
the contemporary issues we are able to address. Before we move
on to those points, can you clarify what you know about your mother's
knowledge of what happened to you and what she assumed had happened
to you? Clearly this is a very important area which we have touched
on previously. (Mr Johnston) One of the first things I wanted
to know for my family's sake was why this was allowed to happen.
Why did this happen to me? Why, mum, did you let this happen?
I mentioned to you earlier her beliefs and she felt under a lot
of pressure, mainly from the church, but also the fear of her
husband returning from war. She had no idea that I had been sent
to Australia. In fact it was because of my Vietnam service and
I had the orphanage down on my military records as my next of
kin. 144. The orphanage where you came from in Scotland. (Mr
Johnston) Yes; in Scotland. While I was recuperating in bed
in hospital in Malaysia in 1965, I received a cablegram from my
mother. I was too ill to read it. The postal clerk actually sat
by my bed and read the cablegram to me. I was so shocked I had
to tell the postal orderly that he had got the wrong person. He
panicked and bolted out. I did not find out until I met my mother
that she did in fact send that cablegram. 145. Presumably she was
contacted by the orphanage with this information. (Mr Johnston)
I suspect through the Scottish police probably and someone
within the orphanage and I believe it was that lady I alluded
to earlier, Miss Helen Rabit was her name. 146. Had she assumed
you had been adopted? (Mr Johnston) No, there was no mention
of me being adopted. There was a simple mention of her lack of
knowledge of what happened to me. She did not know I had been
sent to Australia. 147. She had made no consent whatsoever for
this arrangement. (Mr Johnston) No. Mr Gunnell: It was in
1955 that you received this cable, was it?
Chairman148.
It was in the 1960s. Vietnam. You said it was in 1965 when you
received this information. (Mr Johnston) Yes, 1965. 149.
Following on from that presumably, when you were discharged from
hospital or left the forces, you made contact with her. (Mr
Johnston) No, I received a letter from my sister, which was
an even bigger shock. She was in Canada. 150. You did not know
you had a sister. (Mr Johnston) No. She advised me that
she had no knowledge of my existence either at that time. This
was a half sister. I was also informed that I have a younger half
brother whom I have never met yet either. I have had no correspondence
with my younger brother. I have had some bitter correspondence
between myself and my half sister in Canada, but that is another
issue quite aside from what we are discussing today. 151. May I
ask you, as I have asked other witnesses, for your thoughts, in
view of your own circumstances, on what ought to happen now in
terms of policy developments. What might happen that would assist
you and your colleagues and people who have gone through the situation
you have gone through? (Mr Johnston) I appreciate the opportunity
to address that aspect of it but would say that between what has
been said now and the remedy there is a million lifetimes that
we cannot get out because no-one really wants to hear what happened
to us during the times within Australia. Some terrible things
happened; absolutely horrendous things. I believe there is a need
for the child migrant population of Australia, indeed the world,
to have acknowledgement from the British Government that this
did happen, a recognition that mistakes had been made. I think
this will go a long way towards the healing process of these itinerant
people. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of child
migrants in Australia who are, if not destitute, so introverted,
they are so scared, so fearful, they have no self esteem, they
have no self respect. This was all removed from them during their
upbringing in Australia. It was physically and brutally removed.
I am a natural left-hander in everything I do. I kick football
with my left leg, I play cricket left-handed, I bat left-handed.
It was all right for me to do all that because it was an advantage
to the orphanage when we played the other schools. But if I picked
up a pen left-handed I was very, very quickly brought to task
and told that I must learn to write right-handed. I write very
efficiently right-handed. I eat with my utensils in what is considered
to be the normal way. It would seem there is some belief that
it is only the devil's children who use the left hand. I am going
back to the generation then. Of course we perceive it quite differently
today. It was not uncommon to have a cane come from nowhere right
across the hand as you were writing if you held a pen or pencil
in the left hand. However, you can kick left-footed, no problem
with that. If you were a fast bowler, throw them down quicker.
That was quite acceptable. The recognition by the British Government,
the recognition by the Australian Government that there is a major
problem right on their doorstep. Actually it is in-house in Australia.
These people who are missing these documents which are so vital
to their livelihood, so vital to their life, have to get them.
We have to have all our documents found and centralised. May I
quote one example? Sixteen years of institutional life and I went
to collect my documents from the Catholic welfare in central Perth.
After waiting some 15 minutes, I received three documents: two
of them were letters I wrote to the Catholic welfare organisation
begging them to take me off the farm they had put me on. The other
one was a piece of paper about so square which had some baptismal
details on it. Sixteen years of institutional life, that was NormanJohnston
in a nutshell. That was it. Everything else that I have now, including
my own birth certificate—I am pleased to say—I got,
but I got with such ease one has to question why it was not available.
I know why. As children in institutions, if we had these, we had
the right to say we were somebody and we wanted to go back to
where we belonged. We were told, "No, England does not want
you. You have been sent here. You're not wanted back there. Your
parents have abandoned you". Thus, by denying us these that
completed the picture, the scenario was there and they had open
slather, for want of a better word, to do with us what they would
and the outside world just did not want to know about it. Thus
our very great appreciation to be able to speak to this Committee
in the hope that the recommendations suggested by Mr JohnHennessey
be adopted or recommended to the British Government for a judicial
inquiry. What you see here is a scratch in the surface of what
is out there. It is a scratch. I could take all your time today
and I would get through maybe the first six months of my life
in an institution and none of it would be good. 152. We are most
grateful for your very helpful evidence. (Mr Johnston) I
have one more comment, if I may. The funding for the Child Migrants'
Trust is just so vital. It is the only honest, open, confidential,
independent link the child migrant has between Australia and home.
Home to us is still here. We want it to remain here. We want to
be able to come back. We want to be able to visit mum, visit the
brothers—not the Christian Brothers—our own family,
brothers and sisters. We want to have the capacity to do that.
The bulk of the child migrants—in conflict with what you
said earlier, Chairman, but I know your intentions—in Australia
is essentially one per cent above derelict. That is his standard.
He has no money, he was never given the chance to succeed. His
education was the most basic that can be provided. I say this
and I will stand up to any challenge because I now know in hindsight
what we were given as opposed to what was available to us. What
you people, what Britain recommended we should get, we did not
get. We have read the legislation relating to how the laws were
passed for us to migrate—I do not like the use of that word;
we are being unfair to the genuine migrant—and we know what
happened. We know it required Royal Assent, we know everybody
believed in England that we were going to be cared for in a way
that we would have been cared for here had we had the opportunity
to stay where we were. Thank you, Chairman. Chairman: Thank you
very much.
Dr Stoate153.
Again a very moving account and thank you for that, you have helped
us tremendously. I just want to clarify one point. Really you
are relating again, the same as previous witnesses, that there
was almost a conspiracy of silence, in other words people were
deliberately withholding information. Is it fair to say that? (Mr
Johnston) Two things are certain in life: one is death and
the other one is that that was inflicted on us. 154. That is what
I wanted to get to. What I want to know is where you think this
really was. Do you think it was the sending agencies which were
actively involved in this or do you think that in some way the
Government was either condoning it or deliberately turning a blind
eye, or do you think it was more a question that the Government
had washed their hands of it, put it under the carpet and was
not playing an active part? (Mr Johnston) There was collusion
with all agencies, government, Catholic and the various institutions
and the various governments, British, Australian and the Catholic
Church. It was a coordinated thing. One hand had to know what
the other hand was doing. Who paid for the ships that took us
over? Who paid the fares? Who signed the papers to release us
from England? Who received us in Australia? We had Australian
Government officials on the dock receiving us and telling us what
a great land we had come to. Everybody knew what was going on.
What was held back from them was the intention of these agencies
as to how we were going to be used and how they were going to
do it. That is what the people of England were denied. 155. You
do not believe that the Government was really aware of the agencies'
motivations although they were of course part of the process. (Mr
Johnston) That is correct. I say that because I am still very,
very uptight, having gone through this and it could so easily
have been avoided. Where were the British representatives who
sent us across there and stated in their legislation that they
had to follow this up, they had to make sure that we would receive
the same treatment as we would get if we had remained here? Nobody
like that in Bindoon. I had six years in Clontarf and two and
a half years at Castledare; I never spoke to a welfare officer
or a government person in all that time. Then two and a half years
on a farm where I was forced to—that is another story in
itself which you do not want to hear about. I was two and a half
years on a farm before I actually saw a welfare officer from Australia
and the day he saw me was the day he told me to put my resignation
in and report back to the child welfare section in Perth. Such
was the abuse and care that we received.
Dr Brand156.
You were clearly denied an identity independent from the institution.
They controlled your destiny while you were there. I find it extraordinary
that you were discharged from the institutions in a stateless
condition. Clearly we can say all sorts of rude things about the
institutions and no doubt we will, but it seems extraordinary
that this legal process with lots of civil servants involved in
setting it up, did not recognise that the period of care had to
have a transition into citizenship. Do we have any evidence of
anybody being helped to acquire a national status? (Mr Hennessey)
With the Bindoon boys, because all the evidence seems to show
that Bindoon was the most notorious of the institutions, when
our day came we were given a suit and the Brothers had a truck—not
a bus, not a car but an open truck. They used to shop once a week
and get all the groceries from Perth. You can imagine the bread
by the end of the week. When it was time to leave you said goodbye
to your mates. We cried because they were our friends. We were
put in the truck and left to ourselves, whether it was to farms
or wherever. (Mr Johnston) It is true. I can give you a
further idea, stemming on from what John has had to say. The day
I left Clontarf, three days beforehand I was sitting in the junior
classroom. It was March 1959, StPatrick's Day. I was removed from
the class because I turned 16. Funding stopped for the institutions
at 16 years of age. No matter what, you were just pushed out.
Many of them, I believe, had such tentative work to go to they
were on the unemployment or government welfare within weeks or
months of leaving the institutions. The day of my departure from
Clontarf to go to a place in Waroona, 70miles south of Perth in
the country area, a dairy farm, a utility pulled in this particular
morning with the father of my boss to be. I was about to get in
the cab of the truck and the Irishman that drove the truck said,
"No, chuck it in the back". It was raining I might add.
I threw my bag in the back and went to get in the front of the
ute. He said, "No, don't you dare get in there. My dog's
in there. You sit in the back". I sat in the back of the
ute for the 70 mile trip down to Waroona. The parting words still
ring so terribly with me and they came from the superior at Clontarf
at that time. His parting words to me as I sat in the back of
the utility were, "I suppose the next time I'll see you will
be in Freemantle jail". That was it. I had no money. I had
a case that had two changes of clothes. I did not get a suit.
Bindoon obviously were better served than we were. I got a sports
jacket and a pair of slacks and two working outfits and a pair
of boots and that was my lot, as was the standard for all the
children who left Clontarf to go to the various homes. No identity.
I was given a week's holiday after what seemed like an eternity
and I had nowhere to go. I rang Clontarf and asked whether I could
go there for the week because I had to get off the farm, it was
driving me insane. The superior answered and said, "No. You're
not coming back here". I said I could pay. I had to have
somewhere to go. I finished up offering £10 if they would
put me up for a week. I am earning £2.05 a week and I had
to pay £10 to go back to Clontarf to spend one week to get
off that farm. Such was my desperation to get off that farm, I
seriously considered chopping off a finger. I had gone to the
extremes of Detolling the chopping block, Detolling the bandages
I was going to use, the axe blade and I had even had a couple
of swings. That was my desperation to get out of there. I am just
so happy I did not do it but it could so easily have been done.
Mr Gunnell157.
We have had what is enormously helpful evidence from all four
witnesses but in each case, as it happens, the Catholic organisations
have been involved. Two questions arising from that. Do you think
that it is a coincidence that we have this particularly dramatic
evidence from people who in a sense went to the Christian Brothers
or were involved with the Sisters of Mercy before they went? The
second thing is that the Child Migrants' Trust tells us in its
evidence that there was litigation against the Christian Brothers
by 250 former residents as a result of which they established
the trust which has paid perhaps for some of the work which has
been done since then. Were any of you part of that litigation? (Mr
Dalton) You should be putting those questions to the Trust.
They are the only ones who know the answer, particularly to the
second part. We do not know what the funding of the Trust is. (Mr
Johnston) This is the litigation in Sydney which took place.
Yes, there were members here who were party to that, but their
intention was not to gain or make profit from it. The intention
was to have the numbers there because that was the only avenue
we had going at the time. We had to show that there were many
people affected by this. Even so, once again the Catholic Church
had to pay something in the order of A$11million for its defence.
That is incredible. When you consider the head of the Christian
Brothers' organisation in Western Australia had already publicly
apologised for what had happened.
Chairman158.
Did you say that the church paid A$11million on defence? (Mr
Johnston) And settlement. There was a A$3.5million settlement
and legal costs were astronomical. They employed the most highfalutin
people. The thing which defeated that case of course was the statute
of limitations in Western Australia.
Mr Gunnell159.
It is clear from the evidence we have that people did not take
action for personal gain but took action as an organisation in
order to secure a fund for — (Mr Johnston) No, that
is a separate action.
(Mr Hennessey) May David Spicer speak on our behalf because
David is a barrister.(Mr Spicer) I am a member of the Bar
but I am not an advocate today, I am speaking in a very different
capacity. There is a confusion here. The Trust has received no
monies as a result of any legal action.
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