Tug of love: one girl, two families
When a young, vulnerable indigenous foster child is caught between two worlds in a tug of love between two families — one black, one white — who suffers most?
A little girl is screaming. On a searing summer’s day the piercing sound fills a suburban home, punctuated by inconsolable sobbing. Her face is smeared with tears, her hair is plastered to her face and although she’s exhausted, the look she carries is one of frightened bewilderment.
She is not yet five. For almost seven hours she has been resisting this moment, locking herself in the bathroom, crying out “Mummy”, trying to cling to the man she calls Daddy by biting the bottom of his T-shirt as two child welfare officers try to remove her from the home she has known for much of her short life.
The stand-off, which police attend, continues for so long that a last-minute sitting of the children’s court is held to end it. And even when that hearing is over and the still distraught child has finally been carried out of the house by a welfare officer, it takes almost three more hours, as she grabs the outside door frame of the car, screams at the stoic women tasked with removing her to keep away, and finally, spent, sobs “Mummy I just need to give you a kiss”, before she is secured into a car seat and driven towards her new home.
The children’s court magistrate presiding over this unsettling case will later describe this scene as avoidable and “one which exposed a child to inappropriate tension… and an environment which could underpin both fear (and) anxiety which had the potential to have long lasting effects”. His stern words are directed at the two people who have devoted themselves to the preschooler for most of her life. In the agonisingly long and complex process of trying to keep her in their care, via multiple reviews and a failed $200,000 legal battle funded by extending their mortgage, they have been routinely praised for the love and stability they have provided her.
None of that, however, can change the one thing beyond their control, which has brought them to this dramatic stand-off on this stifling day. The little girl they have fostered for so long is Aboriginal. And they are not.
This is a love story with devastating consequences. It centres on a child who has been in care for most of her life, the long battle for the right to raise her, and a culmination so traumatic that an Aboriginal traditional owner who witnessed her removal from her foster family, horrified, would later describe it as “the Stolen Generation in reverse”.
“This child is stolen because she’s Aboriginal,” says another indigenous elder who also observed the event at a home in southern Australia. “She was rescued from her birth family in her first year of life. Then she was in a safe place, in a loving home and she was stolen from them because she was Aboriginal. They would not do that to a white child.”
Exposed to drugs in utero, and possibly also to domestic violence, Katie* was born to trauma in 2016. Before she was even a month old she was hurriedly removed from her parents, and the responsibility for her daily and long-term care was transferred to the head of the area’s child welfare department. In a move later affirmed by the local children’s court, a bureaucrat would decide where and with whom she lived. In the first weeks of her life, Katie became part of a disturbing cohort: an Aboriginal child in care. Just six per cent of Australia’s children are indigenous, yet they represent 37 per cent of those who have been removed from their parents. In 2019, one in every 17 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Australia was living in out-of-home care.
Around the time Katie was born, Paula and Wayne Saxon* were becoming increasingly consumed with the question of creating a family. They had largely settled on adopting a child from overseas, but time and limited options prompted them to consider fostering locally, which they believed they could do long-term and with the possibility of eventual adoption.
In early 2017 they were introduced to Katie, then living temporarily with another foster family. Despite their differing heritages, they thought they could negotiate the culture gap. “I guess we just felt we could give her the best of both worlds: stability, security, access to her culture, love and a full understanding of where she comes from,” says Wayne, a thoughtful man who speaks quietly but intensely about his love for the little girl he would quickly consider to be his daughter.
Although they were seeking a permanent arrangement, the Saxons did not allow themselves to think of adopting an indigenous child, which rarely happens. But they willingly opened their hearts. “As long as we could care for her,” says Paula, “and she lived with us and I could raise her until the age of 18, when she could make her own choices, I didn’t have a problem with that.”
Katie’s heritage, however, meant that she would be subject to some special provisions. States tend to prioritise kinship care for all children where possible. But as an indigenous child, there was also the matter of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle, a nationally accepted policy that seeks to avoid a repeat of the Stolen Generations. Endorsed by all governments around Australia, it intends to keep indigenous children, where possible, in indigenous care.
Katie had already lived with several families in her short life and on their first supervised visit the Saxons were told to expect a hyper-vigilant child who was wary of strangers. Yet to everyone’s surprise the little girl kissed her new foster mother as she was leaving. “You’re open to it,” Paula says on the question of love at that first meeting, which they marked by snapping their first family portrait. “And I know I can love this child as my own. But that takes time.” Wayne found the encounter surreal. “It’s just not a normal situation, going and meeting a little child who in two weeks is going to be coming home with you.” Still he felt immediately protective. “Of course you do. You know how vulnerable the child has been.”
They knew there was a chance Katie could be returned to her birth family; under the child placement principle, foster care by non-Aboriginal carers is the lowest priority. But the Saxons believed this chance was remote. At a round table meeting attended by several child welfare authorities early in 2017, they were confident their intentions for a permanent placement had been heeded. “They said, ‘We’ve exhausted all options for kinship and she is not going back’, ” Wayne recalls. “We made it very clear. Because we didn’t want to be in a situation in several years’ time where we had bonded with her and then she got pulled away from us.”
Believing they would be raising Katie to adulthood, the couple prepared for their new future. They set up her bedroom with books and toys and explored ways to expose her to local indigenous activities. Katie soon developed an especially tight bond with Paula, and the new family unit began to strengthen as Katie was introduced to the wider family. Although still emotionally fragile, the young girl became active and increasingly confident. Wayne allowed himself to dream ahead. “As a dad you’re sort of looking out for that moment when you’re walking down the aisle with them. It’s a bit old-fashioned but that’s what you want to basically do. As soon as you get a daughter you’re dreaming.”
And then, several months in, came a call that up-ended their certainty. Since her removal and unbeknown to the Saxons, Katie’s extended biological family had been trying to have her restored to their care. Several relatives had not been deemed suitable but in early 2018, less than a year after Katie came to live with the Saxons, her aunt was approved as her kinship carer.
Within a month Michelle Jones*, a young mother who would be continually praised for her manner and the quality of care she would likely provide her niece, was seeing her regularly. While those meetings were also supervised, and invariably attended by one of the Saxons, Michelle hoped to develop a bond with Katie. But the child’s future, it turned out, was still far from certain.
In April 2018 an indigenous specialist was among several people who recommended that the two-year-old should continue to live with the Saxons because of previous attachment experiences and the potential impact of a further placement disruption. Months later, however, staff at the local child protection unit overturned that decision; Katie would go to her aunt. “Katie has an opportunity to grow up within the context of her biological extended family and to develop knowledge and a clear understanding of how she came to be in her aunt’s care,” the area’s head of child protection said in yet another review later that year. “The placement with extended family also provides Katie the opportunity to develop her cultural and spiritual identity and a sense of belonging within the context of her biological family.”
The Saxons were distressed, although Paula remained more optimistic than her husband. “Straight away when I got that first phone call that said they had overturned the decision … I just thought we’re fighting against a system here,” says Wayne, incensed at being treated like Katie’s carer rather than her lifetime foster parent. “How do we win?”
Their answer was to ask for another review. As that convoluted year ended, a more senior public servant concurred that Katie should live with her aunt: “The Aboriginal Placement Principle dictates that Ms Jones should be prioritised over every other form of available care, particularly where this is also considered to be in her best interest. Whilst I recognise and acknowledge that Mr and Mrs Saxon have provided high quality, stable and loving care to Katie since early 2017, I consider that Katie’s long-term best interests are best met within her biological extended family.”
The costs of the prolonged process to determine Katie’s future were mounting. With each review, months passed. As her aunt waited for her, her bond with her foster parents deepened. She marked her first three birthdays with the Saxons. And still the question of her future hovered, “a complex and difficult matter that is somewhat confronting when viewed in the context of the profound effect that a decision either way will have on Katie’s future course in life”, a forensic psychologist reported in mid-2019.
Commissioned to conduct an independent assessment, the psychologist noted that Katie had “thrived” from the high standard of consistent and nurturing care by the Saxons, and acknowledged that removing her from them after so long might cause her “lasting and irreparable harm”. As Katie’s primary carer, Paula in particular “would suffer a profound sense of grief and loss if Katie was to be removed from her care, akin to that of losing a child of her own”.
Even so, he considered that Katie’s aunt was best placed to ensure she was raised with a positive sense of her heritage and identity, a move that was in the child’s best long-term interests. But he did sound a warning. “Ms Jones’s capacity to manage Katie’s relationships with other family members, and to ensure that she is safe and protected, is yet to be demonstrated. It is noted, for example, that other family members... have not been found suitable as carers for Katie, and that both of Katie’s parents have significant adjustment issues that they need to address. Ms Jones’s capacity to manage these relationships in ensuring that Katie is safe and protected from harm is yet to be demonstrated.”
Given the close bond they had developed and their significant role in her upbringing, however, Katie needed to have a continuing relationship with the Saxons. “If this decision was made,” the psychologist advised, “it would be crucial that Mr and Mrs Saxon manage and contain their disappointment and distress, and work collaboratively with [authorities] and Ms Jones to ensure that this change is presented to Katie in a positive and encouraging manner.”
Although they considered Katie their daughter, the responsibility for her daily care, and where and with whom she lived, still lay with a public servant. In late 2019, assisted by the forensic psychologist’s report, the departmental head handed down what was to be the final report on Katie’s future. “Balanced against any risks to Katie associated with a move away from her primary carer are the significant long-term benefits to Katie if she is raised as part of her biological family,” the bureaucrat found. “ … I have concluded that it is in Katie’s best interests to be with her biological family and immersed in her culture and community.”
The Saxons were confounded. They’d believed from the outset that kinship options had been exhausted by the time Katie came to them. Almost every review had found that although they had showered her with wonderful care for so long, the best place for Katie was with her aunt, who had still spent only limited time with her. Meanwhile, so much time had elapsed that despite regular visits from Michelle, Katie had spent most of her life with the Saxons, whom she called Mummy and Daddy.
By the time this latest report was issued, Katie was closer to four than three. Two lots of people were desperate to raise her. In the final words of that long report, the departmental head made one devastating declaration. “In making my decision I wish to acknowledge Mr and Mrs Saxon’s understanding at the time Katie was placed in their care was that there were no suitable kinship options and that the placement would be permanent. I understand that my decision, and Katie’s transition, will have a profound impact on the Saxon family and offer my sincere apologies for the pain and suffering they will experience as Katie moves from their home.”
“We thought we were the best choice for her,” Wayne says now, downcast, when reflecting on those tumultuous months and years. “There was too much emphasis on the placement principle and not her best interests.” Days after receiving the report, the Saxons launched legal proceedings, believing that they could best make decisions for Katie until she turned 18.
The toll for realising that dream, however,
was rising. Paula stopped working – “advocating became a full-time job” – and they lived on one income. The couple worried constantly about Katie’s future, appealing to ministers and even the Prime Minister, and they hardly slept. “I think they were [wondering] all the time, ‘Why are you fighting us? This child is a black child, she should go and live with a black family.’ After years and years it wears you down,” says Wayne, who, with no prior mental health issues, was suddenly on antidepressants. “It’s put a strain on us as a family,” he says quietly and then turns to his wife, who nods assent before he continues. “I tried to end it a few months ago in the middle of the court case,” he says, quietly, “because it was all too much… I felt constant stress and worry: looking after the family, earning money, trying to be there, driving for [birth family] contact, be in touch with lawyers, be with your family. There’s so many demands on your time… The focus goes out of your life. Your sole focus becomes on saving Katie.”
By the end of last year, their last chance lay with the children’s court, which in late December handed down its verdict. On balance, the magistrate found, it was “all but an even contest as to what is in the best interests of this child”. However, where a family was considered competent and capable of caring for and protecting a child, then children should be returned to their birth family. “And this is such a case.”
The Saxons would have to relinquish Katie, and some of the magistrate’s final words to them were bittersweet. “It is universally recognised … that the Saxons have done a wonderful job caring for the child. From their perspective, they have created a strong family unit with… themselves as parents to which the child refers to them. The role of such carers is a full-on responsibility, and perhaps little reward for them, other than that, of course, of watching a child develop and grow in an environment of love, protection and care.”
A transition plan for moving Katie to her aunt’s was arranged over several weeks. The Saxons tried to come up with ways to stall, hoping that might lead to other options for keeping the little girl with them. Then Wayne began to realise they would lose her and was worried about how they would actually part. “They wanted us to take Katie out of the house. They wanted us to put Katie in the car. They wanted us to say goodbye to her,” he says passionately of the downward spiral that would ensue. “We’ve had four years of her as our daughter and we said, ‘We’re not going to betray Katie. So if it comes to the point where she is going to be taken out of our house we don’t want her enduring memory to be one of us letting her go’.”
Eventually they were told by child welfare authorities that Katie would be removed from them on a weekday in January. The day before, several police officers arrived at their door and stayed for hours. “They had been contacted by [child welfare] as a warning that there was going to be a removal and it could potentially need police assistance,” says Wayne. “I think they came around as good police to get a sense of the story, to see that these people are sensible and that the child is not at risk.”
Their time caring for Katie was down to its last hours. Continuing their recent pattern of anxiety, neither Wayne nor Paula slept more than a few snatches that night.
Katie wakes to her last morning in their home. At 10am two child protection officers knock on the door. The Saxons answer but do not invite them in. Katie remains inside as 10.15am approaches and the Saxons’ authority as carers is officially revoked. By then Katie is distressed. She has locked herself in the bathroom.
As the morning ends, the stand-off endures. Mid afternoon, a special hearing of the children’s court is convened. Paula and Wayne listen in via phone from their house, where the lengthy process of removing Katie is into its sixth hour. They insist they are not preventing her from leaving, that the door is open should she wish to go, but the magistrate disagrees. “This child is under the lawful watch of the [department head] and you are in a sense kidnapping the child.”
The hearing lasts 40 minutes. Around 5pm Katie is finally carried outside by one of the child protection workers. Wayne stands with his arms in the air. “Because the [magistrate] had said that I couldn’t prohibit them from taking my daughter away. And I look back at it now and think that I was pretty weak. Here’s my daughter biting on to my shirt and I’m not trying to protect her.”
Around 8pm, after Paula has spent time sitting in the welfare workers’ car trying to console the daughter she is losing, a disconsolate Katie is driven away. Later that night she is transitioned to her aunt Michelle’s care.
The day was deeply traumatic for everyone who witnessed it. “She was never going to go away calmly because she didn’t want to leave her mother and father,” Paula says adamantly, when asked if there was another way to have let her go. “And I was never going to do that, physically strap her in, screaming, and forcing her to go off for the rest of her life.”
While supportive of the child placement principle, one of several indigenous elders who observed the removal believes the quality of care and love Katie received from the Saxons should have been paramount. “They talk about cross-generational trauma and they’re about to perpetuate it,” the elder says. “This is the best place for the child. Culture you can get elsewhere… If this was going to be about culture, who’s talking in these court cases? There were no Aboriginal views. They are white people making decisions for this child based on a culture they know nothing about.”
Another traditional owner says of Katie’s removal: “Unfortunately this is the Stolen Generations in reverse, trying to fix the errors [of the past] by force, because the fact is that that little girl would not have been forcibly removed from that placement and placed with kin if she wasn’t Aboriginal.” This community leader also supports the child placement principle “as long as it’s not detrimental to the child. Within an appropriate time frame those principles do need to be enacted, not three or four years on, when the child has already established an attachment and it’s not inflicting more trauma on the child… Why are we forcing this on this little girl, just because they are kin?”
The reasons are deeply held. “Since colonisation, harsh and discriminatory policies and practices, including the forced removal of children from their families, have led to feelings of loss, grief and injustice about the involvement of ‘welfare’ services in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” says the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, the national non-government peak body advocating on behalf of indigenous children and their families. The child placement principle, it says, recognises that indigenous Australians “have the knowledge and experience to make the best decisions concerning their children and recognises the importance of each child staying connected to their family, community, culture and country”. But theory does not always translate into good practice. “All the evidence shows that the application of the principle is poor in almost every jurisdiction and it has devastating consequences for everyone,” says Professor Megan Davis, Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of NSW.
In 2016, Davis was commissioned to conduct an independent report for the NSW government on indigenous children in out-of-home care. Her two-year review found that the child placement principle tended to be poorly applied, a major issue being that case workers often failed to adequately check for suitable kinship carers. “The failure to implement that element of the child placement principle has really severe consequences,” she says, adding: “There’s very little family finding that’s done at the point of removal [from the birth family]. What we found in our inquiry was a large number of families who had rung [child welfare] departments and said, ‘I’m willing and able to be assessed to take my kin’ and their calls were never returned.”
Davis is also concerned about the lack of accountability of many case workers, who seem to be shielded by claims that they are overworked when errors surrounding child removal are uncovered. While child protection is a stressful job, it’s also “a profession that eludes scrutiny”.
Still, the costs on either side can be considerable, with lingering effects. “When staff are involved in the removal of a child or young person, it’s acknowledged as one of the most challenging parts of their roles,” a spokesman for the local child welfare agency says, while declining to comment specifically on this case and how it affected those charged with removing Katie that day. “Where possible, children are removed from parents and carers in a planned process. Removal without consent of a parent/carer is a traumatic and stressful course of action for all involved.”
Weeks after her removal, Katie’s stamp on her old home is diminishing. The Saxons’ phones are still filled with photos and videos of her, but her pretty pink room seems to have lost its soul. Paula sent Katie two large boxes filled with some of her favourite things a few days after she left, but much remains: a dolls’ house, shelves of books and stuffed toys. The new uniform she was to have worn on her first day at school this year still hangs in the cupboard.
“I don’t think Paula ever felt that Katie was going to leave,” says Wayne, who, although more of a realist than his wife, is still shocked at the ending to his family’s story. “I never thought it would come to them coming into our house and taking our daughter away,” he says. “It has turned into a terrible tragedy in a way. What could have been beautiful and sensible for Katie as well, having a wonderful foster family that could bring her up and enable her to see her birth family, we’re now in a situation where she has been traumatised and she probably won’t have a connection with us or see us again.”
Katie now lives with her aunt, who remains angry that she was denied access to her niece for three and a half crucial years while non-family members were able to raise her. After learning that the Saxons had taken part in this story, she declined to be interviewed. Despite both the departmental head and the forensic psychologist stressing the importance of continued contact, the Saxons have not been able to visit Katie since her removal.
* Names have been changed