Val Bourke was 12 years old the first time she came face to face with the man known by the girls at Glebe’s Bidura orphanage as “Dr Fingers”.
In 1964, a 16-year-old Patricia Farrar spent a weekend at the Metropolitan Girls’ Shelter, next door to the orphanage. Charged with being “exposed to moral danger” after police found her in the Royal George Hotel, she was lined up with a dozen other girls for what was supposed to be a medical exam.
“One of the other girls … said to me, ‘when he sticks his fingers up, pretend it hurts’,” Farrar recalls. “I’ve never forgotten it.”
In 1973, nine years after Farrar’s ordeal and 30 years after Bourke’s, Jenny Tuita blacked out during the same traumatic examination. She is pursuing legal action against the state government for the lifelong trauma incurred.
NSW is the only Australian state that has not held an inquiry into the treatment of children in state institutions, and the only state that does not compensate those who suffered psychological and physical abuse in its care.
Survivors say both are long overdue.
When Farrar read Tuita’s story in the Herald, it was the first time she had heard someone speak about the examinations since that weekend in Glebe. Her charge was dismissed when the magistrate deemed her to be from a “good family”.
“It was my first experience of a class system,” Farrar recalls. “There was one rule for one, and one rule for others … and having a vaginal examination was part of that process.
Source: 12ft
This practice continued for more than 60 years and was overseen by the NSW Child Welfare Department. There was NO consent given, either by the under-age girl or her parents or guardians, and it was routine for all girls going through the Child Welfare system. I am please to have been able to offer my account after all these years and hope other women will come forward to we can bring about an inquiry. Dr Patricia Farrar