From the desk of Roland Rocchiccioli – 20 November

From the grave I can hear my late mother, Beria, saying, “And about bloody time, too. What they did to us kids was criminal!”

IN 1916, Beria, aged five, together with her three sisters, were declared state wards and sent to the Salvation Army Girls’ Home; first to country Collie, then Cottesloe, Western Australia. Her brother, James, went to the Swan Boys’ Home. She never saw him again.

In 1952, a meeting with her sister, Linda, was too extraordinary. Minutes into the conversation the other woman realised Beria was unaware. “I’m your sister,” she said. “Really?” replied Beria, unphased. “I’ve often wondered what happened to you.” They never established a relationship. They did not know each other. The moment had passed for any meaningful, sisterly association.

Such was my aunt Sylvia’s trauma she never mentioned the home, or the experience, again.

When Beria and a chum were caught picking grapes from one of the pendulous bunches hanging from the dozens of grapevines covering a 75-yard-long pergola connecting the two houses they occupied, the punishment was spiteful. No ice cream on Christmas Day, and no swimming for the whole of the summer holidays. The home was only yards from Leighton beach where the Indian Ocean was the colour of lapis lazuli, and the sand blinding white. Beria loved the water.

They blamed Beria for breaking another girl’s bottle of lavender water. She admitted to putting a splash handkerchief, but pleaded innocent to the breakage. Such was her fear, she soiled her pants. Dysfunctional matron Ensign Pratt called her a thief and a liar. “They locked me in the bathroom for a week, except for school. I had a mattress on the floor, and I had my meals on a tray.” When the bathroom was needed Beria had to stand in the hall. Still, at 90, she pleaded innocent.

Consequently, Beria’s capacity for emotional passivity was unsettling. When her demonic, Slavic husband (not my father) ripped-out her prolific, established grapevines to stop her from making her celebrated grape jam, she said, “I didn’t comment. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it upset me.”

Beria had four children with an age difference of six and eight years between each. Unquestionably, they were loved but the first two were subjected to strict discipline. Any breach resulted in home detentions and deprivations. She knew no better. Her parenting skills were based on the cruel, loveless methodology of the Salvation Army officers. She said, “I was in the home for 11 years, and I cannot remember ever being hugged.” She saw her mother twice in 13 years – the tyranny of distance and penury.

By the time I arrived, Beria had observed, and was smart enough to recognise, an alternative approach.

Recently, I had an email from a 90-year-old cousin in Perth, whom I have never met. She wrote, “Your uncle James is my father, and I wondered if you might have a photograph of him. I’d like to know what he looked like?”

Those of us, whose mothers or fathers were treated so cruelly, and by so many, are the victims of their criminal behaviour which went unconstrained and unabated. It is impossible to believe someone, somewhere, did not know what these vile people were doing to these hapless children.

I know exactly Beria’s reaction to the Andrews’ Government worthy initiative, “That’s all very well, but why has it taken you so bloody long? It should’ve happened years ago.”

Roland can be contacted via [email protected].