Foster mum dismissed abuse claims

WHEN Faye* and her sibling were placed in a foster home with food, warmth and stability, they didn’t want to leave.

They had grown up during the 1990s in a large family where their parents hadn’t been able to look after them.

In her evidence read out before Tasmania’s child abuse commission of inquiry on Tuesday, Faye explained her foster parents, Ruth* and Allen*, had been strict but offered the stability she needed.

“It felt nice being in a house like this after growing up so poor,” she said.

But everything changed when Ruth and Allen’s son, Louis*, moved back home after he was fired from his job.

Faye later learned Louis had been fired because he had had a relationship with an under-age girl.

A trio of staff members from the state government’s Children and Youth Services came to visit, asking how Faye and her sibling felt about Louis moving home. The workers promised to visit the pair regularly – but never did.

“Both my sibling and I wanted to stay in the home,” Faye said. “We didn’t understand the risk or implications of (Louis) moving home.”

She said Louis quickly started grooming them, gaining their trust and friendship, and “acting cool”.

“He started to come to our room and sexually abuse me before I went to sleep,” Faye said.

When she told Ruth what had been happening, she said “oh, is that all?”.

Eventually she told Allan, who said “this has happened too many times, they must be telling the truth”.

“I believe either Ruth knew what was happening and ignored it, or was in denial,” Faye said.

Child safety workers took Faye away from the home without giving her a chance to pack her things, leaving her sibling there for a time. “I believe Children and Youth Services continued to place female children in the home,” Faye said.

She said she was “torn because of my affections for Ruth – I was missing her as a mum”, so didn’t go through with pressing charges with police. But about a decade later, she and a number of other girls took the matter to trial. “We lost the court case, I don’t really know why,” she said.

Faye said she felt like her abuser had been able to do whatever he wanted and get away with it.

She also said she didn’t want to simply be paid via the National Redress Scheme, and then just “moved on”.

“To me, it almost dismissed what has happened. I want to be part of the conversation and make change,” she said. *Names changed to protect identities.