‘Every single person has a purpose in them burning.’

– Kate Tempest, Brand New Ancients

When I was sixteen (the age of consent, significantly), I defied my parents and hitchhiked north from Sydney with a friend to Australia’s first ever music festival, Pilgrimage for Pop, at Ourimbah.  During those heady three days I fell for a guy and never went home.

Three months later I was arrested at our flat in Manly and sent to the now infamous Parramatta Girls Home, defined by the press, and its inmates, as Australia’s most notorious home for girls under eighteen. You could describe the charge against me as ‘guilty of falling in love’, but the authorities called it ‘Exposed to Moral Danger’.

 

Trauma, by definition, is a threat to life or personal dignity.  Parramatta stripped us of all personal dignity. It was a place where wellbeing and personal safety was compromised on a daily basis.

A traumatic experience like this may seem an easy thing to get over – particularly if you succeeded in dodging beatings or avoiding ‘conventional’ rape by a male as I did – but those incarcerated at Parramatta (and its sister institution at Hay) have had a lifelong battle with post-traumatic stress disorder. We were all sexually assaulted. Gratuitous, routine internal examination using metal objects that caused bleeding, pain, physical scarring, humiliation and trauma is, in my view, rape.

PTSD is a complex condition. A symptom for me has been anxiety and fear – of always expecting something terrible to happen, and my freedom to be threatened.

Before Parramatta there were many things I’d never witnessed or experienced: self-harm, cruelty, dread, anguish, melancholy; a human toughness in young girls that was unnerving, a deep and perplexing grief that unravels your mind. No child should have to experience such overwhelming pain.

 

At the still-tender age of sixteen, you believe your mother can rescue you from anything. That the mere sound of your voice pleading for mercy will reverse any bad event, that her age and sophistication will influence the hardest of hearts. But the day I was escorted out of the Children’s Court in Sydney and bundled into the back seat of a blacked-out police car stripped of its interior door handles, her impotence was palpable and terrifying.

The sentence meted out by the magistrate was the standard six to nine months. The sense of helplessness, of losing control of your life, was almost too much to bear. I was often nauseous with anxiety and weariness. I broke out in a rash that nearly drove me insane. I tore my skin to shreds. I cried myself to sleep every night.

The other major humiliation upon arrival was having your hair hacked off. I asked for mine not to be cut too short as I don’t like my ears. I was given a short back and sides. My scalp bled. I was made to strip. My clothes and jewellery were replaced with an ugly uniform. There was no bra, no sanitary belt, and everything, including the large bloomers and singlets, was itchy and rough. My name was replaced with a number: 43.

All sense of self was destroyed.

The self-loathing was cataclysmic and a deliberate device. It was reinforced by physical shame: using toilets with no doors in full view of officers and girls, showing used pads before being given a clean one, showering in front of other girls and officers in three minutes flat.

I worked hard towards early release. The best way to do that was to be a good girl: to be invisible, keep your head down and your mouth shut. Parramatta ran on a system of prescribed harsh discipline and an inventive array of degrading methods to control and break you, including a complex points system. The more good points you built up, the sooner you’d be released. If you stepped out of line, points were deducted. If too many were deducted, you were locked in the dungeons, or sent to Hay (where so-called ‘difficult’ girls were drugged and transferred to in the middle of the night from Parramatta without further trial at the Children’s Court). It was tricky toeing the line and making yourself ‘disappear.’ The others didn’t like it. They conspired to break you down to their level, ever more serious rebellion the aim, even if it meant hurting someone. It was a sinister, formidable form of peer pressure, fuelled by a warped desire to be top dog. My fellow inmates terrified me as much as the officers.

 

To avoid punishment, you had to cooperate and behave yourself, yet the officers still found reasons to chastise you. A certain look, the way you held yourself, talking at the wrong time, taking too long to perform a task, not performing a task correctly, turning over in bed, smiling at someone, touching someone, refusing to eat, scraping your chair, not making your bed neatly, using too much toilet paper, laughing. Anything normal in the real world could become a grotesque transgression in Parramatta.

The brutality was not only meted out by men; the majority of officers were female. The job description seemed to attract a certain type: aggressive women with a bunch of keys on their belt and no empathy. I know of at least two girls who had their teeth knocked out when a female officer gripped their hair and bashed their faces into a bathroom sink. Others were punched, kicked, or thrashed with a leather belt, or with a fistful of keys. Violence is easily unleashed in secret environments. The officers basked in their dictatorial roles, endorsed by their superiors and their paycheck.

 

Not everyone at Parramatta was given the privilege of education. Most were sent to work in the laundry, or the sewing room or kitchen. That was their ‘training’: washing the blood and shit-stained sheets from the asylum next door. Scrubbing pigeon droppings off the timber rafters above the stinking hot laundry wing. Keeping the toilets spick and span on bare knees and without rubber gloves. Scrubbing steps and footpaths, and weeding the gardens. We were free labour. Everything shone. You could eat your dinner off the footpath. Being locked up, silenced, put to work and shamed, aggravated our original trauma (the sentencing) the way salt stings a wound.

What helped save me in there were books. As librarian, I had full access to a wide variety of literature (my teacher at Parramatta recommended me for the position). The novel that influenced me most was A Tale of Two Cities. The famous final lines – ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known’ – inspired me to write about my time at the home. The protagonist, Sydney Carton, is facing death by beheading, but there is an enormous sense of hope in those lines. A sense that even death, if you have faith and courage, can be a joyful outcome. It taught me that predictable happy endings are not necessarily the only salve.

After seven months I was sent home because of good behavior. That good behavior was more to do with self-preservation than a willingness to cooperate with state-employed thugs.

 

Right from the start, I had a need to write about the place and my time there, but writing about a personal trauma was not how I wanted to launch my writing career. The desire was to be a writer. To be read.

Shakespeare understood what the Greeks knew and demonstrated: that tragedy can be cathartic. But my experience has taught me that while it may be useful, such purging of the soul can leave behind a dark, pervasive rancor. When you drag up the past with gut-wrenching fierce anger and pain, it’s bound to create a cloud of constant recollection. The public views you as a survivor, rather than as the writer of well-written prose that you had hoped for.

 

Before my book, Girl 43, was published, I was a journalist trying to break into fiction. I never spoke about the home. Consigned to a back corner of my mind, not so much forgotten as ignored; a short, intensely sharp glitch in my life that should not have happened. This is a typical symptom of PTSD.

Unlike ordinary memories, traumatic ones can punch through at the slightest provocation and trigger anger, frustration, deep sadness. It’s normal to try and avoid and numb the memories. It might sound like a contradiction, that I wanted to write about it but also bury the memories, but life has its own way of forcing events, and Parramatta was a story that someone had to tell.

When I won the SHE/ARVON/Little,Brown Short Story Prize in 1997, one of the judges, who later became my editor at Virago, asked me to send her a novel if and when I had one.

I felt a sense of urgency and impatience. I did not want this influential editor to forget me. But who would be interested in Parramatta Girls Home? Who would care? Parramatta girls were sluts who deserved to be locked up.

Choosing Parramatta as the subject of my first novel was a huge risk. Yet, when I started writing, the memories came rushing back – every detail vividly real, even the smell. It began to feel important, urgent and necessary.

By chance, when I began to write the book, I spotted a small item in The Times about forced adoption in Australia. I knew immediately that I could combine the two stories.  A girl I knew at Parramatta had her baby stolen by the authorities and put up for adoption. The trauma led her to heroin addiction and later to suicide. I heard about her death when working at TV Times magazine in Sydney, in a Department of Corrective Services publication that happened to land on my desk. It used her suicide as an example of what can go wrong when addicted prisoners are not given proper medical and psychological support. I later found out that her suicide happened just feet away from officers, and that her fellow inmates – her friends – had shouted at them to intervene and save her.

My book was first published in 2001; it was another eight years before the two government apologies by former Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, and the Royal Commission Inquiry into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse was launched.

 

More than 30,000 young girls passed through Parramatta from its inception in 1887 until it closed down in 1974. It’s a particularly personal history and women who spent time there are naturally possessive about their experience as well as the place itself. I knew that other Parramatta girls and birth mothers might take offence if my book did not portray their precise experience, so I worked hard to give my fictional characters a variety of backgrounds. I was intensely aware of their pain as I wrote the book, and worried endlessly that they would feel violated and not validated. The intention was to give them a voice.

Because of this very personal aspect of trauma, you feel a strong sense of ownership. So when a book like The Natural Way of Things came along, inspired in part by events at the Hay Institution for Girls, it was natural for Parramatta girls to feel violated. And yet this book is important too, because it examines misogyny. Institutions like Parramatta were founded on misogyny, but misogyny is not an exclusively male perspective.

 

Statistics on trauma are revealing: 25–40% of young people experience at least one traumatic event. For adults, it’s 60%. People need and want to read about other people who have been through something similar. That moment of mutual recognition is powerful. The purpose of writing about trauma is to also leave the reader with a heightened sense of understanding the human condition. It requires honest conviction. It grated that I felt the need to disguise the agents of violence and hatred in my novel. In hindsight I wish I had taken the risk and named them.  With the Royal Commission Inquiry still ongoing, and several national apologies behind us – and no doubt more to follow for detained and brutalised refugees – now is the time to talk openly and acknowledge the moral disease in Australia that is too often swept aside or joked about.

That is, how anyone inconvenient or misunderstood who threatens the Lucky Country is locked away.

When I talk about the book to a formal audience the words and emotion gather at the back of my throat and almost choke me. The sense of being a bad girl resurfaces. I am stuck between valiant and pathetic. I go home feeling like some kind of fraud: my writing is not the focus, I am. And there inevitably comes the moment when someone says, ‘Get over it.’

This is frustrating – on the one hand I need to keep promoting the book, on the other I’m told not to dwell on the past.  But the past is important. We must not forget, because we need to learn lessons about the repercussions of this type of trauma, which run deep and permeate society. Whole families are affected. Friendships and marriages fracture and die.

To write the truth about Parramatta felt to me like a criminal act. I was so afraid of the ramifications because of past repression, that I changed the name of the institution in the book to Gunyah. (Gunyah comes from the Jagera language and is a shelter or humpy.) It was my tongue-in-cheek dig at a system that harmed and did not shelter.

 

Writing about trauma can seem like misery porn – what a horrible, modern expression. When you write about a trauma that derived from state-sanctioned brutality, in all probability it is not going to be read by the villains. And yet you do write for those people: they are on your mind during the process, and you want them to be deeply ashamed and repentant.

The dichotomy of writing about trauma is that it is disturbing and cathartic.

Fictionalising trauma is often a stylistic choice that is made so the author can explore territory that springs from her imagination. I chose to fictionalise my own story so that I could disguise real people and be creatively free.

It dismays me that stories about trauma are referred to as misery memoirs. Such books have a place in society. They authenticate an experience. Even if a book like Girl 43 is never read by those who are guilty, it should be read in schools and universities, in particular by people training to work in the social services sector.

 

Girl 43 has drawn out of hiding my own post-traumatic shock, and at times made life difficult. Does trauma reshape a person? Definitely. When the bandages finally come off the wound and all is revealed, the scars are not so much healed as scrutinised.

If you are self-conscious or unsure about exposing your trauma, then I advise against writing about it, because it will change and surprise you in ways you may not welcome or expect. Rather than soothe it can become a burden, a poison, an incurable disease, an unhappy ending that no-one wants to hear. And yet, the compulsion and duty to write about trauma, for many, is too great to ignore.

 

Had I not made the life-changing decision to get out of the country of my birth, I have no doubt I would have been a Parramatta recidivist. The authorities wanted that, and hounded me. It feels to me pretentious and grand to say I am self-exiled, a description associated with famous figures like Lenin, from Soviet Russia to Switzerland, or Victor Hugo, from France to the Channel Islands. The demons of Parramatta came with me to New Zealand, then the UK, and now France. But having lived away from Australia for 45 years, I now feel justified using that label.

 

 

Girl 43 (2014) is published by Hachette Australia.  Originally published as Invisible Thread by Virago, London, 2001.

Maree Giles

Read more about Maree Giles at mareegiles.com

More by Maree Giles ›

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  1. I can’t imagine how devastating and terrifying it would be to be incarcerated at such a young age. I don’t blame you for self-exiling from Australia and I hope you have found a peaceful home in France. Thank you for being brave enough to tell your story for all those that can’t.

  2. I can really understand an know where you are coming from, as I too am a victim of Parramatta girls home.lreally admire you for writing your book , something that is always in my mind is why when we never really did anything criminal why we were locked away from society for so long without any counselling , and made to feel like outcasts

  3. Thank you for the thoughtful comments about my essay on the challenges of writing trauma. The story of Parramatta Girls Home and the Hay Institution for Girls is powerful and unique, because these were the worst examples of how the authorities so easily and willingly exploited young girls and with total impunity. We are Forgotten Australians, and we bear the emotional and physical scars borne out of a corrupt, sinister and immoral system that failed us. We still have to justify our incarceration to family and friends. We continue to be blamed and viewed by others as somehow ‘bad.’ I will keep saying this until I die: it was the system that was at fault, a system that harboured and supported and actively encouraged abuse and violence. We have to make this clear to people, and claim back what was taken from us: dignity, grace, self belief and self respect. “Let no child walk this path again” is our hope for the future.
    Maree Giles

  4. Dearest Maree… you are an inspiration to all girls that have suffered at the hands of “MONSTERS”! I to was in Minda remand center then shipped off to Ormond training school for girls, I was 14 at the time. I have written one childrens book which was published and have for years wanted to write my story as well… but even to this day, I do think about doing so quite often but I end up with the horrors. I’m wondering if Noel Greenaway and Frank Valentine will get their just desserts for what they have done! they deserve to die but not without 12 months of severe torture first!

    1. Dear Natasha,

      I do not know your story but I feel concern for any girl who goes through the juvenile justice system. It is not at all easy, especially if a girl has not known any significant self-discipline in her life up to that time.

      However do you actually know Noel Greenaway or Frank Valentine?

      Please see my post below to Maree Giles.

      Best wishes for the future.

      Maris Valentine

    2. Dear Natasha
      I too was in Minda and Ormond when I was 14… I didn’t experience any sexual abuse,however there was physical abuse and harsh punishments!
      I am in the process of getting my records and am feeling anxious but hope to gain some insight from it.

      Regards Christine

      P.s 1973-74 I was in Ormond.

      1. Dear Christine… You are one of the more fortunate ones that didn’t experience sexual abuse while in the confines of walls and doors with locks, and the carers (so called), but that by no means at all excuses physical abuse! any kind of abuse Deserves nothing less than the death penalty. Sorry But I do not have such a forgiving heart!

      2. Dear Christine, you would have been in Ormond around the same time I was… I would be very happy if you would contact me on 0466 886 184. I usually do not answer unknown numbers but you can always text and I’ll know who you are. Take great care, keep safe, be well…. I look forward to hearing from you.
        PS… I make a wicked coffee xx 🙂

  5. Dear Natasha,

    Thank you so much for your comments. It is heartening to know that my book is being read and that people know and understand the truth about those so-called Homes and Training Schools.
    It will be hard for Greenaway and Valentine to deny the stories, because our experiences of torture, rape, beatings, humiliation and neglect are all very similar. It should not take a judge and jury long to reach the obvious and morally right conclusion: GUILTY AS CHARGED, and a long prison sentence.

    Maree

    1. Dear Maree,

      I hear where you are coming from and hear the sense of powerlessness and vulnerability that can easily overwhelm a person even later in life. I am sorry you experienced Parramatta and I am sorry the police seemed to target you.

      However I would like to say quite unequivocally that my husband, Frank Valentine is innocent of all charges against him. I have carefully done the investigative work. I would be a fool to ignore the allegations.

      You were at Parramatta for seven months [I was there for a week as part of my training to be a District Officer with FACS] but we have endured 3 1/2 years of defamation, investigation, gratuitous press inferring guilt, appalling language and sentiments on various Facebook sites and all the accompanying traumatic stress. We have no voice at the moment.

      My husband who had cardiomyopathy, has undergone two major open-heart operations for leaking valves in this time and stress has caused the valves to leak once again. There cannot be a third surgery. If my husband lives and goes to Trial he will be acquitted as he should be. If he should die I will write about it.

      How have the women “got it so wrong”? How have the police ignored all the obvious signs that my husband was unlikely to be guilty?

      There are a number of reasons that will come out at Trial. No one should assume guilt, especially without knowing the alleged abuser, but unfortunately people do and the story grows, as do the number of alleged victims alongside the vilification.

      Something very evil is being perpetrated in the name of making sure that every alleged victim has a voice.

      Best wishes,

      Maris

      1. Every single Parramatta girl was a victim of an evil government-sponsored system that allowed violence full reign behind high walls and locked doors. Every single Parramatta girl was sexually abused. You mentioned that you spent a brief time at the institution. Perhaps not long enough to witness what was going on. As the wife of Frank Valentine you are naturally going to support his claim of innocence. Please do not use my book or my name to defend him. Do that in a court of law.

      2. Mrs Valentine…. Please spare us the poor, and lethargic excuses you make for your husband. Is he or has he ever truly been your HUSBAND?…. I wonder what lies beneath.. things you do not know!

      3. MRS VALENTINE…. DO YOU HONESTLY BELIEVE, IN ALL YOUR IGNORANCE OF TRUTH ,- THAT ANYONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR “SO CALLED HUSBANDS” HEALTH ISSUES? HOW ABOUT THE HEALTH PROBLEMS OF THOSE YOUNG GIRLS THAT WERE TRAUMATISED AT THE HANDS OF THOSE THAT WERE SUPPOSED TO CARE?… UNDERSTAND THIS… “SOME GIRLS HAVE GROWN TO BE WOMEN, OTHERS WILL NEVER BE WOMEN BECAUSE THEY ARE STILL GIRLS.. AND THEY SUFFER! THINK ABOUT IT YOU CAN!

    2. These stories must be told. I was threatened constantly as a young rebellious teenager that I would end up in the Parramatta girls home if I didn’t conform to my mother’s formal and harsh religious ways. I am so glad I wasn’t caught for just being in love like you.
      Good on you. You should be proud of who you are and what you have been through to still be able to stand tall and say “I was a victim but it was not ok.” The “Me Too” campaign recently shows how many were abused by others and have not told. It’s time the world knows about these wrongdoings so we can right the future if that’s possible.

  6. Yes I did know Frank Valentine and Noel Greenaway. It was Mr Greenaway who had hurt me badly but also Frank Valentine in his own way. Mr Valentine was also a professional at bouncing me off walls while I was in isolation.

  7. Mrs Valentine…All you are doing is trying to protect your husband and in doing so you are aiding and soliciting, and giving credit to a monster!
    Maree is right… Don’t use a book and/or any name to defend him! He is damn well guilty and you are oblivious! I doubt you even know what the truth is! If as you say he is unwell? GOOD! I have no sympathy and he needs to suffer MORE! Even more isn’t good enough!!! Spare me Mrs Valentine! Spare me all your ignorance and spare those that have suffered the same way I have. Mr Valentine deserves everything he gets and more!!!

  8. Thank you for writing this article, and your book. Some might argue that there is enough pain in the world, and that memories of pain shouldn’t be stirred up- but I’m not one of them.
    Those who don’t want to hear are simply afraid. However, the truth does hurt. Badly. Those who are courageous enough to speak the truth should be supported and loved, and not discouraged because they’re ruining somebody’s pleasant mood with their misery.
    Are we going to ignore the truth because it might make us feel bad? That’s a child’s reaction. I hope that we are not so immature.
    Thank you, Maree.

  9. Dear Maree and ladies who have commented. My God right now March 2019 Valentine is in Court. I pray yo god he gets what is coming to him. Yes we Parra Girls that where there with him know what he did. I don’t know why his wife is denims it. There are Males that have charges against him. As for Greenaway I wasn’t there with him. Valentine would remember my father they had a very big confrontation under the. Coverway on one visiting day. About all the bruises I had on me. I have many times started writing my story but I’ve had to wait till all my 6 Children i were grown up. Before parra in parra and after till now. I spent a long time writing last year 2018 while I was going through Breast Cancer . But it’s been put away for now. I hope all
    You lovely ladies get your justice with these dogs. SML 157 Toddy

  10. Thank you to everyone who has left a comment. Hi Angie,

    I hope you’re well.

    I’m still looking for a producer to get the story behind Girl 43 into cinemas. It’s an important story for feminist justice, humanity, and a better future for women in particular.

    This story goes far beyond Parramatta Girls’Home and the 700-plus children’s homes across Australia at that time. A shocking indictment of Australia’s failure to protect future generations. The repercussions are evident across the country, with mental and emotional health issues at an all-time low. There are now and always will be children in care who are victims of violence perpetrated by their ‘carers.’ It’s an epidemic that is endemic in institutional environments where sadistic adults can easily take advantage and satisfy their own desires and evil tendencies. The strain on individual health in turn puts a strain on society and support systems. Australia is sick and it’s because we don’t care about what goes on in places of so-called “shelter.” When a young person is put into “protective custody “ you expect them to be protected not abused. Australia was founded on punitive detainment. It’s time for change. It’s time to start drawing a line of compassion under our history of abuse.

    Maree

  11. Well Maree we are now in June 2019 and ladies Parra sisters it is with great pleasure that I was able to be in Court with other Parra Girls and guess what 20 Charges Guilty. Then the judge read his charges out and the sentence for each one. it came to 85years. 22 yrs on the bottom with 13yrs to serve. Honestley it was the very best day of my life to see the look in his eyes.
    You Mavis Valentine you stood up and just looked over at us Girls when the sentence was read what did we say BYE BYE FRANK LOL and you just stood there and stared.
    The judge was awesome and she wanted him sent to Prison. We all stood in that Court room that day and just clapped our hands, it was the best day of my life.
    Now it Noel Greenaway’s turn as I speak he is in court, running scard every day.

    1. What a great day it was at Cambelltown on the 24th May 2019 . I too was a victim of his sick ways and was told by Maris that she forgave me for all my filthy lies ! Every time my phone rings i hope its a courtesy call that the Sick,Evil MONSTER is Dead . Sorry about hijaking your page to Vent at that delusional wife of his . Cheers Daruk74

  12. My name is Bernie Matthews. I am a qualified freelance journalist. I am also an ex-prisoner having served over 27 years for armed robbery. In March 2007 I was invited to attend the first reunion of Hay Girls at the old Hay Girls Home by some of the girls who knew me (most are grandmothers now) and it was one of the most harrowing experiences of my journalism career. I have experienced extreme forms of violence & brutalisation by prison guards in Grafton Gaol & Katingal Special Security Unit but nothing prepared me for the tales of brutality, rape and degradation the girls had experienced inside Hay & Parramatta Girls Home. As I tip-toed through the emotional minefield of that weekend I felt honoured and very privileged that the “girls” would entrust their stories with me and I vowed to do them justice. Reap As You Sow was the end result of that weekend and it was published in the 2007 edition of The Griffith Review – Unintended Consequences
    Reap As You Sow was shortlisted for The Best Investigative Journalism Award at the 2007 Qld Media Awards and was also shortlisted in the Nancy Keesing Award and Manning Clark awards. Five years after the publication of Reap As You Sow the Australian PM, Julia Gillard, announced the Royal Commission that finally dragged those atrocities out into the open resulting with the arrests of Valentine & Greenaway. May that pair rot in hell. and to all the girls who trusted me to tell their stories those many years ago I just want you to know that I have been in the process of writing a book I have tentatively called Daughters of the State which i hope will capture all the raw emotion of that Hay reunion and what it precipitated. A special thanks to Wilma, Marlene, Sharon, Dianne, Wendy and all the other girls. Rest in Peace Sharyn, Chris, and the others did not live to see their tormentors finally brought to justice. Bernie Matthews. 1 October 2019.

  13. I’m glad to have come upon this site and to have been able to understand at least a small portion of what my birth mother had endured. It certainly helps to give context, but also raises some questions. My mother was released after my birth in April 1960, and I now beg the question as to whether I was a result of the rape and torture of my mother, that I have not been able find.
    I was wondering if there was a known site where I could perhaps find some answers and possibly even someone who knew my mother, Margaret McEvoy. I hope this is not inappropriate.

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