- Title
- An orphan's escape : Memories of a lost childhood
- Creator
- Golding, Frank
- Date
- 2005
- Type
- Text; Book
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/165227
- Identifier
- vital:13222
- Identifier
- ISBN:0 7344 0828 5
- Abstract
- As late as 1961, nearly seven thousand children were in the custody of Victorian institutions or under the care of the Children's Welfare Department. Many of them were institutionalised simply because they had been born out of welock; more than half were admitted because of so-called 'neglect'. This is what happened to Frank Golding and his two brothers. On Christmas Eve 1940, the boys - Frank (not yet three), Bob (four), and Bill (six) - found themselves on the doorstep of an orphan asylum. They were certainly not orphans, but the boys spent most of their lost childhood inside the walls of the Ballarat Orphanage. 'An Orphan's Escape' is not just about surviving in the emotional wasteland of state care. It would take Frank fifty years to learn what had been happening 'outside the wall' while he was inside. Where were his parents? Why didn't they come for him? Why wouldn't anyone tell him? Frank's childhood puzzlement lasted half a lifetime. Theirs was by no means the only appalling story of the time. Hundreds of similar stories were told to the Federal Senate Committee's 2004 Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care. His parents rescued him at last, but the battle for their children had been at a huge cost. Files from the welfare department, the army and the police opened up a dark pit that his parents had kept hidden. Although his parents had been irresponsible in the early stages of this saga, 'An Orphan's Escape' reveals that evidence Frank discovered in the files showed they care deeply about their children.
- Publisher
- Thomas C. Lothian Pty Ltd
- Rights
- Copyright © Frank Golding 2005
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Ballarat orphanage; Orphans; History; Biography; Victoria; Australia
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