AustLit
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Autobiographies of childhood, a publishing trend within the memoir “boom” of the 1990s and early 2000s, frequently contain depictions of childhood trauma, particularly child abuse, and this is evident in Trauma Texts. Within this collection, there are many life narratives featuring child abuse and child sexual abuse, with the trauma often occurring in familial and institutional “home” spaces.
For a full list of works containing experiences of childhood trauma, click here
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Rod Braybon’s life story, written by Vikki Petraitis, of growing up in the notorious Bayswater Boys’ Home in 1950s was referenced in a submission to Victoria’s Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations. Braybon’s traumatic childhood experiences while in institutional care are now being witnessed and acknowledged by not only his biography’s direct readers, but by State government institutions as well. As the Terms of Reference for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Childhood Sexual Abuse were established on January 11, 2013, stories such as Braybon’s will continue to influence national conversations about individual and collective trauma.
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Image courtesy of author's websiteIn the early 1950s, Rod Braybon's father died, leaving his mother with eight children she couldn't care for. As a ward of the state, Rod was passed from institution to institution until he finally ended up at the notorious Bayswater Boy's Home run by the Salvation Army. Rod endured years of ill-treatment at the hands of the Salvation Army, then spent a life-time repressing the memories that haunted him. Finally, after seeing a chance article in a newspaper, Rod decided to speak out. His story created a nation-wide sensation and won a prestigious award for the journalist who broke it. (...more)See full AustLit entry -
See full AustLit entry'So I Hit Him is an extremely powerful memoir that will shock many people, yet is intensely inspirational. Born in a former workhouse hospital in Manchester, England with multiple disabilities and not expected to survive, Michael was placed in care almost from birth. By the time he was 17, he had been placed in over 30 institutions and had suffered every manner of physical, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect. His Asperger’s became the key to his survival in a hostile world, enabling him to endure punishment, deprivation and emotional conflict.
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Cover image courtesy of publisher.See full AustLit entryWhen Senior NSW Police Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox told the ABC's Lateline programme on November 8, 2012, that the Catholic Church had covered up crimes by paedophile priests, silenced investigations and destroyed crucial evidence to avoid prosecution, the public outrage that ensued triggered a Royal Commission, possibly the biggest ever held in Australian history, into institutional child abuse. One of the cases of Church interference Fox outlined was that of Patricia Feenan's son, Daniel who was a young altar boy when he was first raped by a priest in the Newcastle-Maitland diocese.
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See full AustLit entry'At age seven, Graham Rundle was taken by his father for a ‘holiday’ to Eden Park, a Salvation Army boys’ home outside Adelaide. As soon as his father left, Graham was given old clothes to wear and told from now on he was known as ‘44’. The book vividly portrays what happened to Graham over the following eight years, from 1959 until 1968, living in fear of sexual abuse by the people who were supposed to care for him.
This extraordinary book contrasts the dark moments of unbelievable depravity with some of the sweetest and most innocent acts of kindness.
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Cover image courtesy of publisher.See full AustLit entry'In 1942 eleven year old Emil Braun cheated death when he escaped the clutches of the Nazis. Many years later, after making a new life for himself in Australia, Emil and his daughter Suzy face the greatest trial of all.' (Publisher's description)
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This image has been sourced from online.'Seen through the eyes of six year old Tomas, this true story unfolds through the games Tomas plays as he is transported to Sered, Auschwitz and Terezin Concentration Camps, intertwined with the inspirational bravery of his pregnant mother Lolli, who managed to keep Tomas and her newborn baby alive where 1600 children perished and 123 survived. It is incredible to have a small child describe the infinite love expressed by the people on the edge of that abyss. When the doors on the cattle cars bound for Auschwitz slammed shut the victims became silent, faceless statistics and here is a boy giving them life again. (...more)See full AustLit entry -
The Stolen Generations is the collective term for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their homes and families. More information about the Stolen Generations is available through BlackWords here.
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This image has been sourced from Web.See full AustLit entry'Too Afraid to Cry is a memoir that, in bare blunt prose and piercingly lyrical verse, gives witness to the human cost of policies that created the Stolen Generations of Indigenous people in Australia.
'It is a narrative of good and evil, terror and happiness, despair and courage. It is the story of a people profoundly wronged, told through the frank eyes of a child, and the troubled mind of that child as an adult, whose life was irretrievably changed by being tricked away from her family and adopted into a German Lutheran family.
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