Editor’s letter
IWAS FOUR YEARS old when my best friend was abducted. We’d been inseparable since she was born, two months after I was, and had spent much of our short lives sharing playtime and imaginary tea parties. Our happy, simple existence was a far cry from the adult complexities that, it turns out, were playing out over our heads. I’ll never forget the morning my parents told me her mum had taken her back to Germany to live – they’d stolen off to Melbourne Airport in the night-time. I recall thinking, too, that my mum seemed remarkably unsurprised. Later that day, we visited my friend’s dad, a dark, hunched figure who couldn’t bear to see me after that. I was too much of a reminder of his daughter. Most of all, I remember wandering off from the adults as they talked in low tones that day, to stand in my friend’s empty, still bedroom.
That was in the ’70s, when parental abductions were rare or at least rarely reported. Now, every week, two Australian children are abducted and taken overseas by one of their parents. If you include domestic abductions, 15 Australian children are wrenched from their home by one parent or the other each week. Those are the official figures, the known abductions. Horrifyingly, the real number is likely higher again.
In her brave interview on page 50, Amanda Sillars, a child abductee now in her 40s, tells how that experience still affects her relationships, even with her own children. Her words echoed my friend’s life. The next time my friend came home to Australia, we were 15. I sat beside her at her dad’s funeral. She went on to marry a Canadian – I was her bridesmaid on that happy day, but I couldn’t shake a sense of foreboding.
Sure enough, a few years later, she left her husband, taking her two small Canadian children back to Germany.
The webs we weave in families are complex and in our increasingly mobile, interconnected world, likely to become even more so. But we must never forget that children are the most vulnerable victims.
Relationships with parents is an unexpected theme this issue, with the amazing Dawn Fraser telling our News Editor, Michael Sheather, she still sees the spirit of her late father, even in her new Noosa home (page 38). And when it comes to reconciling your family history, I can’t imagine many stories more confronting that Magda Szubanski coming to terms with the fact her dad was an assassin. In one of the most candid interviews we’ve ever published, Magda shares with Editor Juliet Rieden her incredible, emotional journey and how writing her book – the brilliant and award-winning Reckoning – initially about her dad, brought long-sought peace and fulfilment to her own life at last (page 24).
From everyone at The Weekly, we hope you find some peace in your life this month, too. Happy reading.