The myth exposed: another "stolen generations" case fails in court Yet another "stolen generations" case is lost in court, this one brought in Western Australia by two parents and seven of their children claiming the state failed in its fiduciary care. The case has familiar elements, including claimants who'd constructed a memory of being the largely blameless victims of nasty officials, when in fact contemporaneous documents reveal the children were removed not because they were simply Aboriginal but because they were in great need. Those officials first stepped in when one child was taken to hospital as a six month old weighing half a kilogram less than she had at birth. Those officials acted under the Child Welfare Act which applied to all children, and they had monitored this family repeatedly after finding it lived in a dirty humpy with beds for just three. Said the judge: The documents to which I have referred support three findings. First, Don and Sylvia's living conditions, and their home environment relevant to the care of their children, were being monitored by officers of the Child Welfare Department in the years after the Siblings were removed from their care. Secondly, the observations made by those officers, or information provided to those officers, was to the effect that until approximately mid-1970, Don and Sylvia continued to live in the humpy in circumstances which were largely unchanged (as compared with when the Siblings became wards) that they engaged in heavy drinking and that their relationship was marred by domestic violence. Thirdly, that information was relied upon by officers of the Child Welfare Department in considering whether the Children should be permitted to return to live with Don and Sylvia. The parents are listed in documents as having admitted most of their children into care themselves after being threatened with being taken to court for neglect. The father agreed to pay maintenance. No "stolen generations" case has ever succeeded in court. The one case that is sometimes claimed as an exception - that of Bruce Trevorrow - in fact establishes that in South Australia there was no law permitting the taking away of children just because they were Aboriginal. In that case, a female welfare worker secretly broke the law by giving away to a foster family a baby she thought had been half-starved and badly neglected by a father she'd falsely assumed was a "habitual drunkard" and a mother she'd heard had "gone walkabout" from her family and had not visited her baby in hospital. As the judge in that case ruled: Mrs Angas may have been well-intentioned ... but was well aware, or ought to have been aware, that the removal of the plaintiff from his family, and his placement with the Davies family, was undertaken in circumstances that were understood to be without legal authority, beyond power and contrary to authoritative legal advice. But had Trevorrow been left where he was... The "stolen generations" are a dangerous myth. No one has yet identified even 10 children stolen just because they were Aborigines, but so powerful is this myth now that I can identify children who because of it have been left in terrible danger - only to be killed, raped and die of neglect. Thanks to reader Alan.