The original Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum at Wacol had various names including the Wolston Park Hospital. Credit:Michelle Smith Susan Treweek, who had spent the majority of her life inside state run orphanages and mental health facilities, despite never being diagnosed with a mental health problem, spent eight years at Wolston Park, after she was first placed in Osler House in 1980, aged 15. She believes between 25 and 30 children were placed inside Osler House during her detention. “I was assaulted when I first got to Osler House by one of the male staff,” she said. “Sexual assault became a bit normal, if that makes sense. There were a lot of men there. And when you are drugged up on medication, it is really hard to fight them off.

Abused ... Sue Treweek suffered under state care. Credit:Michelle Smith “I was assaulted (sexually) in 1983 and gave birth to a son. They adopted him out, said I could never be a mother. “But as bad as it was ... the disabled children who were placed there, they have never had a voice. And they had it as bad as any of us.” Sandra Robinson said she escaped Wolston Park in 1968, a year after she had been placed there as a 15-year-old. Through the Freedom of Information Act, she received her medical files in 1997 and discovered she had been assessed three months after arriving at the asylum and found to be suffering from no mental illness. The doctor recommended her immediate release and placement in a business school. However, no action was taken to remove her.

Ms Robinson said as a “habitual runaway” she had been placed in Wolston Park by child welfare officers as a last resort. “I ran away early and they caught me. I was locked up in a room for two weeks and it was more or less ... open slather for any guy (who wanted to come in) by the staff. They (the men) just came in whenever they wanted. And they told me then that if I escaped again, that there was a lot of suicides in the Bremer River, that’s the river that ran through Goodna. And I thought they could probably get away with that, because no one was stopping them from what they were doing.” Ms Robinson said she didn’t speak about her experiences within Wolston Park for decades, until she discovered she was not alone. “I had it in my little head that they had stopped doing it, so I never told anybody, I never spoke about it until some of it hit the papers (in the mid 1990s). I never spoke about it,” she said. “Then I found out that they were doing it for years and I had a real guilt trip about that for many, many years, because I should have done something, I should have said something.”

Dr Adele Chynoweth, a visiting academic at the Australian National University College of Arts and Social Sciences learnt of the Wolston Park abuse while the curator of the National Museum of Australia exhibition, 'Inside: Life in Children's' Homes and Institutions', which opened in Canberra in November 2011. Shocked that these women had never received formal acknowledgement of the abuse they received while wards of the state, she said it was her “duty” to keep researching and shining a light on the issue. “These children, and it was young men and women, did not have any diagnosis of mental illness, they were locked up without any diagnosis at all,” Dr Chynoweth said. “The children were administered quite strong drugs, some drugs that are now banned. Paraldehyde for example, which is known to melt plastic, so you can imagine what that may have done to young bodies. “Members of staff had a field day with these young, vulnerable women, in terms of physical, psychological, sexual and emotional abuse.

“Until the Queensland government stops trying to cover this up and come clean, we won’t know the extent of what happened in there.” Dr Chynoweth said her research and interviews had led her to believe that the cover up of Wolston Park was “passive” or “a cover up by default”. “A group of Wolston Park survivors tried to take the state government to court (in the late 1990s) but it was argued that it was beyond the statute of limitations,” she said. “It was mentioned in the Forde Inquiry (the 1999 state inquiry into abuse of children in Queensland Institutions), but the survivors of Wolston Park didn’t come under the re-dress scheme because it was argued they were there under control orders, the Forde Inquiry investigated those under care orders. “But there were so many in Wolston Park as minors who were not under a control order, but they just slipped through the cracks. It’s using terms of reference as a denial.”

Dr Chynoweth said Queensland would not be able to move forward until it had addressed it’s past.

“The Queensland Government, before it can have any credibility on child protection, has to acknowledge the Wolston Park Hospital nightmare. “I know of six survivors. There aren’t many left. I think the Queensland Government is probably waiting for them all to die and for it to go away. “As a culture, it is now our time to listen and believe, otherwise we are just re-abusing them.” Brisbane priest, Father Wally Dethlefs was a Chaplain at the now-defunct Wilson Youth Hospital, later renamed the Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre, in the mid 1970s. After he became aware that children from Wilson were being transferred to Wolston Park in early 1974, he would make the trip from Brisbane’s inner city to Wolston Park in Wacol to visit them, as he knew “otherwise they would have no visitors at all”.

“I was quite shocked it had happened in the first place, because Wilson, when I worked there in the early to mid 1970s had psychiatrists on staff and I was quite shocked that some of those young people (minors) were transferred to Wolston Park,” he said. “They would just get in a visiting psychiatrist from the community and that visiting psychiatrist would...just tick the box and they would go (to Wolston Park). I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but it didn’t seem to be for the child’s welfare.” Mr Dethlefs said he had “no doubt” the children at Wolston Park were being abused. “The young people who went through Wilson (Detention Centre) suffered enormously. But the young people who went through Wilson and then went through Wolston Park, I think suffered even more. And I think the state has an obligation, not only to apologise, but also to do whatever they can to assist those people today. Because they wear even more scars, they carry even more scars, then those people who were in children’s homes and detention centres, who were treated so badly.” The Father said he took his concerns to the government and met with then Health Minister, Llew Edwards.

“But nothing was done.”

Sir Llew Edwards, who was health minister between 1974 and 1978, defended his government’s record and said systems were put in place during his tenure at the ministry to separate and acknowledge the difference between “the mentally handicapped and those with a psychiatric illness”, a distinction which had not been previously made. However, while he recalled meeting with Father Wally Dethlefs, he said he did not recall being told of any specific cases of abuse. “If there was a complaint, I can give you an absolute assurance...if it was reported, systems were introduced in that time to have them investigated. We appointed a new position called a patient’s friend and that person was independent, they were employed by the government, but they were independent of the various hospitals and care centres, and that person could be approached in total confidence,” he said. “We had the patient’s friend in all these centres and the friend would be a very well qualified psychologist or a very well qualified person who had spent years nursing or caring for intellectually handicapped people and they were independent and they reported direct to me as minister. “I can assure you that any complaint that came to me was certainly investigated. It may not have got the response that the particular complainant wanted, but we always fully investigated with an independent person.”

Survivors have documented their experiences of being too drugged to speak or locked away when government officials came to visit. Others have said they were just too scared to tell anyone, too fearful of the punishment they would receive. Ms Treweek, who is now the subject of a movie based on her experiences at Wolston Park; Scab Girl Asylum; the Sue Treweek Story, said she has had a former patient’s friend corroborate her story. Dr Chynoweth said she had spoken with the same patient’s friend, who still works within Queensland Health, who had substantiated her research. The women at the centre of the abuse believe their story, while “made public from time to time” is not public knowledge because “people are ashamed”. After years of lobbying, the Bligh Government issued an apology to “those who as children in the care of the State of Queensland suffered in any way while resident in an adult mental health facility” in 2010.

But the abuse at Wolston Park remains officially unacknowledged, it’s victims without compensation. “Everyone wants to say how bad it is, but no one wants to actually deal with it,” Ms Treweek said. “I’d like to know that it can never happen again, for people like me to have a little bit of input about policies which are being developed for children and adolescents in mental health and some monetary compensation for all of us. We’ve been given nothing.” Ms Robinson, who has been asked to comment at the latest Queensland Commission of Inquiry into Child Protection after being told by a government officer that “you (are all) the worst cases of abuse we’ve ever heard” said formal acknowledgement of the Wolston Park atrocities and compensation was long overdue. “I have given up on justice, it will never happen,” Ms Robinson said.

Loading “Every one (of the Wolston Park survivors) silently screams for different reasons. They did IQ tests on us back then and mine was above average. I am not an idiot. I have more than most in my life, but I scream because I wanted to be a proof reader, I wanted to be an accountant and I look at myself and I never got ahead. And I know, I know ... I silently scream, I sometimes stand inside this room and inside I yell, because I could have done so much. “And a lot of us have children who were born with something wrong. I would like, some sort of (compensation) something to make the quality of life better for our families. Not a million dollars, but something for our families.

“Maybe there are a different lot of people out there who will listen to us now.”