A MOTHER’S SECRET
A new SBS series uncovers the surprising truth for Michelle White
Michelle White grew up with so many questions. She knew her mum had spent time in the notorious Fremantle prison as a young woman but she knew little about the whys or hows. Her mother, Mary Driscoll, only talked about her time being locked up or getting into trouble with the police in the context of lighthearted or funny jokes. Even as an adult, when White began to suspect this dark humour concealed a more traumatic story, Driscoll warned her daughter off the subject. “She said, ‘I don’t want you to look into this until I’ve gone because you’re going to see things that are said about me that are not true. I just don’t want to go to that part of my life – it’s over’,” recalls White.
Five years on from Driscoll’s death at 74, after a long battle with emphysema, White decided she was ready to learn the truth. Her discoveries are revealed in SBS’s Every Family has a Secret (Tue., Jun. 25, 7.30pm), presented by actress Noni Hazlehurst. “She gave me the life she never had, but there was always a lot of darkness,” says White, 50. “At certain times, she would go into deep silence and you couldn’t speak to her for days, she would just shut down.”
At just 8 years old, Driscoll was taken by the authorities from her Indigenous mother Bonnie – who had been abandoned by Driscoll’s white father, George – and for the next 10 years sent to various institutions and children’s homes. The damaging effects on her were lasting.
“My mum said the only way you get to keep your kids is to marry a white man. I can remember thinking at a young age, that’s so incredibly sad. But clearly it was for a lot of people of my mum’s generation,” says White, who works in community arts and as a
journalist. “She was fanatical about housework and people reporting on the condition of her house, and how I was presented. There was definitely a lot of paranoia. I don’t think you can go through the experiences she had and not come out scarred in some way. My sister Mandy is nine years younger than me and has an intellectual disability and Mum absolutely refused any institutional care – even respite. She was so terrified of handing her over.”
Driscoll, like the many thousands of Stolen Generation children taken from their families by the state, experienced terrible treatment in various children’s homes, which were often run by religious orders. “She said, how can they be so cruel, these people of God? She would talk about getting beaten and locked up and deprived.” Exceptionally close to Bonnie, Driscoll would run away constantly. “They used to call her the homing pigeon because they would lock her up, she would break out and by the time she got home, the police were [there] waiting for her.”
In 1964, when Driscoll was 18 years old, working as a domestic servant and, White believes, probably still a ward of the state, she went from one institution to another after being sentenced to five years in prison. According to reports at the time, Driscoll was the ringleader involved in the premeditated assault and robbery of a middle-aged man. “In my mum’s case, the judge said due to the severity of the crime she should get life imprisonment and it was only because of her young age that he sentenced her to five years,” says White.
While White believes Driscoll and her friends may have tried to honey-trap their victim, the research she uncovered suggests they were likely coerced into admitting to more serious charges. One of Driscoll’s co-accused was beaten into giving a trumped-up confession and the police officer responsible for the case was later implicated in a number of wrongful convictions.
Driscoll served her sentence in the convictera built Fremantle Jail and was released on parole for good behaviour just three years later. She soon met David White, who would become her husband and in 1969, Michelle was born. “Her and my dad were like best friends. She was so happy when they got their first house; that they had a house. She just thought she’d turned her life around and was winning because she got to keep her kids and she had a house and she had a husband,” she says.
Despite her traumatic early life, Driscoll found peace before she died.
“For the last few years of her life, she spent nearly every day with my kids. Seeing their bond, I think she’d got over a lot of the trauma and let a lot of things go. She had a deep sense of that injustice and cruelty and the institutionalised racism she experienced. Her way of dealing with it was talking about it in a humorous way to cope with the trauma. And later in life, just trying to get on with it and live the best life she could.”
“She was so terrified”