TODAY’S CHILDREN SUFFER FOR MYTH

HOW many more warnings do we need that the “stolen generations” myth is destroying Aboriginal children?

This time it’s from former WA Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan.

O’Callaghan, responding to a report on the suicide of young Kimberley Aborigines, said one 16-year-old boy, on drugs and sexually abused, should have been removed from his violent home.

“People are still worried about the perception of the Stolen Generation,” he told Sky News on Saturday. “But in trying to keep these Aboriginal kids in contact with their culture, we are actually risking their safety.”

He’d know. His Operation Fledermaus had 54 men, most from Roebourne, charged with 360 child sex offences.

Yet the “stolen generations” make politicians deaf.

Not one court has upheld a true “stolen generations” claim — someone claiming they were “stolen” from caring parents just because they were Aboriginal.

But I can name many children damaged by this myth, like a girl, sexually abused at seven, who was later made to leave her loving, white foster carers by social workers fearing a repeat of the “stolen generations”.

She was returned to Aurukun, where she was raped again.

As long ago as 2001, WA’s deputy coroner was sounding a warning after a three-year-old boy died from malnutrition and pneumonia.

She hesitantly noted: “Experience has shown that in the long term taking Aboriginal children from their communities is not an effective solution socially, although in this case it may have been medically advisable. We have a dead child.”

But in 2015, WA’s Chief Justice, Wayne Martin, had become alarmed: “There has been an over-reaction to the Stolen Generation, which has resulted in people being too willing to allow Aboriginal kids to remain in environments that they would not allow non-Aboriginal kids to remain in.”

Hilary Hannam, a former NT Chief Magistrate, later agreed: “Departments are far too hesitant to take action.”

Yet on it goes. Last month a Darwin judge accused Territory Families of conducting an “experiment” on an Aboriginal child. She had autism, ADHD, speech problems and more, but Territory Families wanted to take her from white foster parents, one a specialist paediatrician, and send her to grandparents she hardly knew so she could access her Aboriginal heritage.

How many more children must suffer from the “stolen generations” myth?