Utterly sad yet utterly typical…

The Guard­i­an reports today on the deport­a­tion of Eng­lish chil­dren to Aus­tralia, see­ing as there’s a new movie out, Oranges and Sun­shine, about the Eng­lish social work­er who tracked these events and man­aged to bring the people affected togeth­er. The dis­reg­ard of human life exhib­ited by gov­ern­ment offi­cials (both Brit­ish and Aus­trali­an) as well as the tend­ency to con­sider Aus­tralia still a dump­ing ground for Brit­ish undesir­ables, dec­ades after col­on­iz­a­tion, is the strongest impres­sion you’re left with. Non­ethe­less, lying to chil­dren about their par­ents being dead or to par­ents about their chil­dren hav­ing been adop­ted is indeed noth­ing short of crim­in­al. The Chris­ti­an Broth­ers hor­ror briefly men­tioned in the art­icle relates to expos­ures in 1998 (largely unnoticed in Europe) that the Chris­ti­an Broth­ers insti­tu­tions were sites of mass rape and abuse. In 2001 the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee in Can­berra pub­lished a report with their final eval­u­ation of the events sur­round the orphan­age at Bindoon and oth­er Chris­ti­an Broth­ers insti­tu­tions; it is titled “Quite excep­tion­al deprav­ity” and not for the faint-hearted or those who believe that piety and reli­gious voca­tion guar­an­tee good­ness. This, too, is an inter­est­ing con­tem­por­ary echo of the Vic­tori­an dis­cus­sion of abso­lute author­ity in pen­al insti­tu­tions dur­ing the Aus­trali­an colonization.