Tuesday, April 2, 2013

All the lost children

YOU don't see it coming. That's what they say, after the abduction, the theft, the removal, the relinquishment.

Despite everything - poverty, deprivation, violence - you don't think it's possible. They wouldn't take your child. But they did, and they do. Right up to the 1980s, it didn't require much: unemployment, the death or desertion of a husband, or no husband to begin with. Aboriginal blood, or illness, mental or physical. Hunger. Sometimes it was "the welfare" in shiny black cars. Recognising them, mothers would yell to their children: Run! It might be someone in uniform - a nurse, a nun, a police officer. Or, more insidiously, someone with the familiar face of family.
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