Traces in the archives: Evidence of institutional abuse in surviving child welfare records

The 2004 Forgotten Australians report is the most recent in a series of enquiries highlighting the prevalence of abuse in Australian child welfare institutions. The final report was heavily reliant on oral evidence from survivors and called for ongoing historical research to investigate the conditions which allowed such abuse to exist. This paper is a preliminary response to that call.

Drawing on the records of a range of Victorian child welfare organisations, it argues that there is evidence in the archives both for the existence of institutional abuse and of individual and systemic responses to the problem. However, the evidence is not always found in the obvious places, nor does it support a simplistic explanation of the prevalence and tolerance of abuse in such settings.