THE EFFECTS ON FAMILY AND COMMUNITY

Forcible separation also affected the parents and other relatives. Few of the parents have survived to tell their own stories. Many of those who have felt such guilt and despair that they were unable to come forward.

Mum was kidnapped. My grandfather was away working at the time, and he came home and found that his kids had been taken away, and he didn't know anything about it. Four years later he died of a broken heart. He had a breakdown and was sent to Kew [Psychiatric] Hospital. He was buried in a pauper's grave and on his death certificate he died of malnutrition, ulcers and plus he had bedsores. He was 51.

Confidential evidence 143, Victoria.

My parents were continually trying to get us back. Eventually they gave up and started drinking. They separated. My father ended up in jail. He died before my mother. On her deathbed she called his name and all us kids. She died with a broken heart.

Confidential submission 106, New South Wales: woman removed at 11 months in the late 1950s with her three siblings; children fostered in two separate non-Indigenous families.

Factors affecting recovery are
1. Perceived social support facilitates adjustment
2. The opportunity for free expression of feelings facilitates adjustment
3. The presence of other life-stressors impedes adjustment
4. The ability to find meaning in the outcome facilitates adjustment

The loss of so many of their children has affected the efficacy and morale of many Indigenous communities.

That's also impacted on my own life with my kids. I have three children. And it's not as though I don't love my kids. It's just that I expected them to be as strong and independent and to fight for their own self like I had to do. And people misinterpret that as though I don't care about my kids. But that's not true. I do love my kids. But it's not as though the Church provided good role models, either, for a proper family relationship.

Confidential evidence 548, Northern Territory: Western Australian woman removed at 4 years in the 1950s and placed at a northwest Catholic orphanage and then at Beagle Bay Mission.

Forcible removal affected community life in another way, too. To escape `the welfare' and avoid their children being taken some families exiled themselves from their communities and sometimes hid their Aboriginal identity.

I didn't know anything about my Aboriginality until I was 46 years of age - 12 years after my father died. I felt very offended and hurt that this knowledge was denied me, for whatever reason. For without this knowledge I was not able to put the pathway of my own life into its correct place. When I did find out, for the first time in my life I understood why I had always felt different when I was a young man.

Man whose Aboriginal father lived as a white, quoted by Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 part III on page 65.