In toxic age of poverty and abuse, Maltese child migrants suffered untold cruelty all their lives

Content warning: This story is about child sexual abuse. It may contain graphic descriptions and strong language, and may be confronting and disturbing. If you need help, please see support services.

‘Luca’

Luca was one of numerous siblings, and since it was the 1950s in Malta and his mother had mental health issues, his parents struggled to provide adequate care. Luca was approximately 10 when he and several of his brothers were placed in a Catholic orphanage. When he was 13, Luca and his brothers were placed on a boat bound for Australia as part of the Catholic migration scheme, and sent to a boys’ home run by the Christian Brothers. “

“There was no schooling for us because we couldn’t even speak English. So for the first three weeks we stood in school just like dummies… I’d never had no schooling whatsoever after that.”

The Brothers who looked after Luca were frequently cruel and dealt out harsh punishments for the slightest misdemeanours. If Luca made a mistake while working, which happened often since he’d never been on a farm before, he was viciously beaten.

When Luca was 15 years old, Brother Daniels fetched him from his dormitory, took him into another room and instructed him to kneel on the ground where he was forced to hold his arms out in a crucifix position. “I thought he was going to get me to pray or something. He made me kneel down and he put my pyjamas and he tied them around my head, around my eyes. And I felt somebody grabbing my two arms like that. And then he lift my shirt up and he dropped my pants down and he masturbated on my back.”

Following the abuse, Luca ran away from the home, but was found by the police and returned to the home where he received a beating. Back at the farm Luca continued to work hard for no pay. In addition to physical violence, he encountered racism from the clergy and slowly began to learn English, to avoid the punishments he received for speaking Maltese.

“I said to Brother Superior, I said ‘How come I don’t get no mail?’ He said ‘How can you get mail yourself from dead parents?’ And I couldn’t tell my brothers, I didn’t want to break their heart. I kept it to myself.”

In the early 1990s he discovered his mother was still alive in Malta and had been told the boat carrying Luca and his brothers had sunk and she had lost her sons. He also discovered his father had died two years before. Realising the Christian Brothers had lied about the death of his parents, Luca mourned his father and made several trips to visit his mother in Malta before she too passed away.

With no education, Luca spent his adult life working manual labour jobs. He continues to suffer from depression and insomnia, has considered suicide and has been married several times. Having never previously disclosed the abuse, it wasn’t until he had a breakdown that his current wife realised something was wrong and helped him seek counselling.

‘Valentin’

After disembarking in Western Australia when he was 5, Valentin and his sister went to live in a Catholic orphanage run by the Sisters of Mercy. Two years later, Valentin was removed was placed in a home run by the Christian Brothers where he discovered a culture of violence that still haunts him to this day. In addition to physical abuse, Valentin was sexually abused by one of the Brothers in his dormitory.

“One night Brother Flanagan came to my bed. I was crying because I had wet my bed. He knelt down beside my bed and started to rub my hair and my stomach. Then his hands went down my pyjamas and he played with my penis.”

After being moved from a dorm into a smaller room sharing with only one other boy, Brother Flanagan started coming to his room. “Every now and then he would put my hand on his penis and he told me to play with it while he was lying over me… He would give me lots of lollies. He told me not to say anything to anyone, this was our secret.”

Unable to bring himself to disclose Brother Flanagan’s nightly visits, Valentin complained to his father about the physical abuse. Eventually his father removed Valentin from the Christian Brothers’ home and brought him home to live with him.

After finishing school, Valentin found work as a labourer while attending vocational college to improve his literacy. He lacked self-esteem, had poor communication skills and, confused by Brother Flanagan’s attention, started engaging in sexually inappropriate behaviour. Valentin went to see a doctor at 18 who referred him to a psychiatrist. He was diagnosed with anxiety and depression related to childhood trauma and prescribed medication, which he has continued to take for most of his adult life. It wasn’t until his thirties that he first disclosed the sexual abuse to a counsellor.

In the late 1990s, Valentin was offered $2,000 as part of a class action against the Christian Brothers, a figure he found insulting and refused to accept. “I said, ‘My car’s worth more than that’.” Ten years later he was awarded a compensation payment of $30,000 through Towards Healing and a further ex gratia payment of $45,000 from the Redress WA scheme. “I’m getting better all the time now. Like I’ve even gone off the medication. But I still keep to myself, you know. I’m sort of like a loner.”

“They used to hit us across the knees with baseball bats… I used to go to bed and I’d be so sore. And the next morning I’d get up and I’d be so sore I couldn’t walk”

‘Tumus’

Placed in an orphanage at 4 because his parents had a large number of children and found it impossible to look after them all in their small house, at 10 he was sent to Australia as a child migrant, with several of his brothers. “I was told... and I’ll never forget it... I was told, ‘You are going to Australia to get a better education and to get a better life’.”

When they arrived in Australia, Tumus and his brothers were sent to an orphanage in rural Western Australia, run by the Christian Brothers, where he was sexually abused by Brother Weldon. Brother Weldon “had a habit of coming along and when you had a shower. You had these curtains... He’d pull ’em open and just... just stare at ya... not all the boys, because there would have been maybe eight of us as working boys.”

“He used to... take me up to his room... What he used to do... go to his room, when the picture shows were on a Sunday, “Lift up your shirt, pull your pants down, face the wall” and I could hear the bed going squeak, squeak, squeak, but I didn’t know what it was... but of course, when I got older and well out of there, then I could work out what it was.’

When he was 15, Tumus ran away and walked 25 miles to the nearest police station to report the abuse. “I explained the situation to ’em that Brother Weldon was interfering with me. Well, I think I said something like, you know, he was touching me... And all I got was a smack in the mouth and told... ‘Don’t tell lies about these good Christian men’.”

Tumus told the Commissioner that his first marriage was a disaster. “It was because I had no... I’ll be straight, I had no sexual experience. I was hopeless. I didn’t know anything about sex because, you know, in the orphanage, ‘If you look at women you go to Hell’… simple as that. So I just kept my head down... simple as that.”

‘Nikolai’

When Nikolai’s mother was hospitalised in the mid-1950s, he and his sister were sent from Malta to Australia to start new lives. “My father was dead, so we came here to live in Victoria with our older brother when I was 14. About a year later I went into a Christian Brothers boys’ home where I was physically and sexually abused by Brother Lucien and another Brother. My mother died while I was in there.”

At 17, he reported the abuse to a priest. “When I asked if I should see the police, he said to wait until he’d done his inquiries. I went back to them frequently and was always told it was ongoing. Then I went away with my job and never went back.”

Nikolai was devastated when he later learnt that two friends he knew from the boys’ home had killed themselves. “I know they were abused by the same Brothers as me; I’d spoken to one of them about it, he was a very good friend of mine. He was a terrific sportsman, someone I admired... It got that bad when I found out the two of them were dead, I tried to commit suicide myself.”

Over the years Nikolai said he’s taken tablets to ease bouts of depression, and said he’s found intimacy difficult within his long marriage. “We have two girls born 20 years apart. I regarded sex as a bad thing, so that’s why there’s the gap. I’ve told my wife a bit about it, but I don’t want my daughters to know, I don’t want them to suffer.”

The impact of his childhood abuse continues to affect Nikolai. “It’s very hard to explain what goes through your head and how hard it is to forget these things that have happened to you – and how hard it is to go to sleep. You lie there for hours and hours, and all you want to do is just sleep, and you can’t.”

‘Domenica’

As a child in Malta in the 1950s, Domenica never knew exactly why her mother gave her and most of her siblings up for care. She suspected it was because her father was a violent alcoholic and she spent most of her early childhood in an orphanage.

“My mum kept having children but none of us were home with her… I think she did it all in good faith, you know. But she wouldn’t have known we were gonna get treated like we did.”

At 11 in the mid-1960s, she and several of her siblings were taken to Western Australia, and sent to live in a girls’ home run by a Catholic order of nuns, while her brothers went to a different orphanage. Life at her new home was harsh, particularly because the nuns were physically violent towards the children.

“They used to hit us across the knees with baseball bats… I used to go to bed and I’d be so sore. And the next morning I’d get up and I’d be so sore I couldn’t walk. I was only a young girl. And you’d think I was an old woman, the way I walked ’cause I used to be sore all over the place. And then they used to pick you up by the ears or twist your nipples… They even used to kick you in the vagina.

“Every time I used to hear footsteps I’d be shaking… I don’t think Hitler would have thought half of the punishment they gave us. You know, they were so cruel. They used to get a bucket of water, stick your head under. I got it so many times, I learned to hold my breath … She said to me ‘One of these days I’ll kill you’. She said that to me ‘I’ll kill you with your head under water’.”

When performing chores assisting the priest to set up the church for a service, Domenica was encouraged by the nuns to sit on the priest’s lap. “He used to get me sitting on his knee and then part my legs with his knee like that, and pull my pants across and he used to finger me… And I couldn’t understand it. Here’s this nun telling me to go sit on his lap. And I couldn’t go and talk to her about it because she’d think I’m a liar and then I’d get the biggest belting around. And every time I was on church duties the same thing happened.”

Domenica was regularly abused by the priest for approximately two years, as well as by a group of older girls who would molest her in the showers and toilet cubicles.

At 15, Domenica ran away from the home but was found by the police and taken to a remand centre before being made a ward of the state. At 18, after her wardship was terminated, Domenica met and married Tobias, but the marriage only lasted five years.

When she was 40, Domenica returned to Malta to visit her mother. Her father had already died.

“I was pleased I did it. But my mum, she didn’t feel like my mum because she gave me up. Oh you know, I came to Australia when I was young. I didn’t feel anything for her.” Her mother has since passed away.