The men who survived Kinchela Boys Home

I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. This week, devastating figures were released which show the overrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres RD Islander children in out of home care and the child protection system. It's damning evidence that not enough has changed since the Stolen Generations. Last year, we published a story about the long shadow cast by a policy of child removal centered on the notorious Kinchella Boy's

Well, Kinchillar is known as one of the most notorious homes. It was open in the nineteen twenties and closed down in the early nineteen seventies. Young boys from across New South Wales predominantly were taken from their families and institutionalized at that home and just went through some of the

The end of their lives.

Okay, So these boys who made it out, who survived that torture that you described, can you tell me more about them, about their stories.

I was really humbled to get the opportunity to hold the stories of people like Uncle Roger Pigeon Jarrett. Can you just start with me by just telling me your name in full, Rotch Jarrett. He speaks about June twenty five, nineteen fifty eight, when he was merely eleven years old, and he speaks with just vivid clarity about the day that the big black English riley rolled onto the mission, and how the sergeant stepped out of the car, came up to the house, sat his mother down on the

His other brother was only six, and he.

Speaks again with just real clarity about the moment that the sergeant who was acting on behalf of the Aboriginal Welfare Board grabbed him. Was going so he says that, you know, as they grabbed him, he clutched his mother's dress, and you know, the sergeant just was wrangling like a piece of meat.

A mom was crying. After this day, I still three with on my arm.

He said that the sergeant basically grabbed him, dragged him to the car and threw him in the back. And you know, he can still remember sliding across those seats, hitting his head on the window wiper and basically splitting it open. And it was from there, within a matter of hour that he was at the front gates of

My name is Richard Campbell. I'm a combat that gutty man from the back Obacker and the the KBSY bellies off the north coast, so we had their buckerheads cos Harbor.

But his first memory of Kinchler was being wrestled out of the car and being separated from his three young sisters. And you know, he tells this really graphic story of you know, his his sister's screaming in the car and you know him being at the gates of Kinchler and the car driving off.

And then we can eat he screaming as the car was going around the corner away from kitchen. We can still hear him screaming, you don't fade away in the distance.

You know, that was his first and most enduring memory and Kinchula because it was also the last time that he saw his sister in approximately twenty years.

And so these men, well they were children at the time they were taken from their families, taken to Kinchilla. So what did they tell you about what happened next, about what their life was like in the home.

I think the first really significant point is that, you know, Aboriginal families were stolen from their country and rounded up onto missions, and these young boys were then secondarily from that, you know, stolen from their communities. So they were stolen from their country, stolen from their communities, and sent to these institutions where they were then stolen from themselves. Uncle Roger Pigeon Jarrett basically says that, you know, the moment that you get to those gates is where you lose

That's when he became number twelve.

And it was the same for Uncle Richard, who as soon as he walks into the gates, he says, the first thing that happened to him and his brothers was that they just started getting bashed.

Just okay, Richard cambll anymore, you are there number twenty eight to be older brother bad You are not Robert Campbell as well, you number twenty nine.

They spoke about the minutes feeling like hours, and the hours feeling like days.

The boys were humiliated, they.

Were beaten, they were sexually assaulted and raped, they were staff they're enslaved, they're indoctrinated and re engineered.

You know.

Uncle Witty Walsh, who is another one of the survivors that I spoke to, you know, reflected on the fact that boys would go missing that you know, they were classified as flora and fauna at the time. You know, in one of the testimonies from Uncle Witty he spoke about basically the ex army men that ran the site, you know, would have animals that had names, but for the young Aboriginal boys that were on the site that were just subject to the most barbaric of treatment, they had numbers, right.

And so then when survivors say that some of these boys went missing, do we know what happened to them?

Yeah, we know that.

Recently there was a report from experts who used ground penetrating radars at the homes and essentially what they found were readings consistent with clandestine burials in other places around the world and at Kinchla. Now there's approximately nine sites that could hold graves of young boys.

Now that report has.

Been tabled with the Minister, the New South Wales Premier Chris Means and his Minister for Abridginal Affairs and Treaty, David Harris, have committed to further investigations at the site and to engage further specialists to explore in full, you know, the really serious question marks that are lingering over the place. But when I speak to the uncles around whether or not they are surprised about the prospect of their being

After the break, the survivors on a mission to reclaim the Conchilla Boys Home, so ben Kinchilla Boys Home. It closed down in nineteen seventy. Hundreds of boys were taken there. Can you tell me a bit about what life was like for them once they were old enough to be able to leave.

I think Uncle Richard summarized it really aptly by saying that, you know, most of he and the other survivors were basically on a suicide journey having stepped out of there. Now today there's only forty nine survivors remaining. Four survivors have passed away in the previous four to six months. You know, we really aren't getting towards that later chapter of the Stolen Generation survivors' lives, but the impacts from Kinchla have permeated every single aspect of these young boys' lives.

You know.

His words are that when you come out, you've got no idea of what love is. You can spell it, you can write it, but to feel what love is, it's been killed. Uncle Richard has had multiple kids to multiple women. He speaks about not having strong relationships with his children, about his children having challenges with substance abuse. For Uncle Witty Walsh talks about, you know, his children being removed from him. His grandchildren being removed from his sons and daughters.

I put the.

Gun in my mouth, but I was about I think it was about nointy at the time when I was going to shoot myself because they took us away from the woman that I married.

We've seen Kinchler actors this really fractious moment in these people's lives, and that has continued to reverberate every day, every week and every generation. We know that the number of First Nations children being removed from their families.

Today is at record rates.

The projections are for the years to come that those rates will continue to increase. They currently make up forty three point seven percent of the children in out of home care. We know that, you know, the pipeline of children from out of home care into youth juvenile detention centers is also ever expanding. So in the uncle's eyes, yeah, it's what's old remains new.

And so been.

One hundred years on from when Kinchella was opened. Some of the survivors want to try and reclaim that site. Can you tell me a bit about that, because I imagine that it would be complicated trying to work out how you might mark a place where all of these horrors happened to you in a way that feels right.

It's a great point, Ruby, And the first hurdle has been the survivors being able to reimagine what the site could be, that the place that was a catalyst for so much harm and heartbreak could be actually repositioned.

As a site for healing.

So that first hurdle was one of the hardest, I think for many of the now men to overcome. The second hurdle has been negotiating a just timely and fair agreement with the KEMPSI Local Aboriginal Land Council, who is the owner of the Kinchula site. Now, a lot of the survivors believe that their own community continues to turn their back on them, and that that is playing out

Ben, thank you so much for your time.

Appreciate it.

Thanks Ruby, thanks for listening to this episode of seven Am. As summer approaches, we've also been getting ready to share some new episodes with you at our favorite books, music and podcasts of the year. Our team is busy working away on those episodes, which we look forward to sharing