Getting screwed at the school for crime

In 2004 the Australian public got a rare glimpse of the memories that haunt people like Keith Higgins when the Federal Government handed down a Senate Committee Report Forgotten Australians. It was a report culminating 17 months of investigation into Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children. During that investigation The Community Affair References Committee compiled volumes of evidence from the victims of institutionalised abuse.

On August 30, 2004 Senator Jan McLucas, who chaired the inquiry, choked back tears at a press conference when she spoke of the harrowing tales of abuse suffered by children in care from the 1920s to the 1970s.

Unfortunately, the veil of secrecy that enveloped Tamworth Institution for Boys remained intact and Senator Lucas and her committee never heard the stories of Keith Higgins. Or Neddy Smith, James Finch, Harry Swanson, Archie McCafferty, Billy Munday, or Peter Schneidas. They are stories consigned to a shameful history that remain buried in the dark recesses of their owner’s mind.

Tamworth Institution for Boys remains the Frankenstein monster of a bygone era. It was a monster the NSW Child Welfare Department cloaked in secrecy to brutalise and emotionally scar children in its care. It served no other useful purpose.

The end-products of that institutional process continue to occupy Australian prison cells and mental institutions today. The brutal child minders employed to overseer the process escaped detection and possible legal retribution. They all retired to lead productive lives as respected members of society.