Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The House of Horror – An Alternate View

 

There has much been written and reported about the terrible conditions in which children were found living in an outer suburb of Adelaide. The parents involved have been sentenced up to six years for the abuse which occurred there. The government has undertaken an inquiry into how key child protection authorities were unaware of what was happening but the inquiry was placed on hold until the police had declared that the matter has been fully investigated. Apparently this has only happened recently even though the matter was first brought to public attention in 2008 and it has been sometime since the parties concerned have been sentenced.

“The House of Horrors” is an unfortunate term used by the media to define public concern at what happened in this home. The main protagonist according to the media is Tania Staker who, as the mother of twelve of the children in the house, but not the biological mother of those who were most at risk, is the major focus of the media coverage and is portrayed as an evil woman who needs to be hated and reviled for what she allowed to happen in this home.

It is about time that I talked about my experience of Tania and what working with her meant, as well as the conflicts this presented in terms of my own practice as a Social Worker. But to start with, I need to make a firm statement that at no point do I condone the behaviour of any of the adults in this home nor do I condone the abuse meted out to these children. What happened should not have happened and these children should have been protected. However, they weren’t.

Soon after the children were removed from their home I was contacted by a colleague who was doing some advocacy work with Tania. At this point it wasn’t clear what had happened except that the conditions of the home were appalling and that a number of children were removed. In the first instance Tania and her children were removed and placed in a home especially designed to house so many children. At this point Families SA (FSA) clearly were not concerned about Tania and her ability to care for her own children. Nor were there any allegations made against Tania in regard to her treatment of the other four children. My understanding, from conversations with Tania, was that there were no care issues in regard to Tania’s treatment of her own children until the allegations were made against her by children who were not her responsibility. If she was as wicked a woman as the media had us believe, then why weren’t her children removed from her at the moment the house was raided by police and child protection officers?

While the blame is levelled at Tania there are a number of issues which have not been addressed. For example, Tania and her ten children were living in Geelong for a number of years. During that time they were known to child protection services primarily because of the violence of the children’s father. The level of violence was of the most extreme nature. This in and of itself should have been enough for child protection services to have been involved and to have put in place some protection for the Staker children. It didn’t happen. The inability for states to share files and to follow up on families who move from one state to another is a failing of the system. At what point were FSA notified of this family? If it was prior to the raid why didn’t they take action earlier? If Tania Staker knew her children were likely to be removed because she was not providing adequate care I am convinced she would have done whatever was requested of her. Her children are extremely important to her.

To some extent the failure of the system is culpable and someone needs to take responsibility for this failure. Perhaps the Minister?

I know that this matter was initially seen as a political issue because it was an opportunity for the government to demonstrate that they were taking strong action against child abuse I also know that the planning and most of the decisions which were made regarding the removal of Tania’s children were coming from above the regional manager of FSA and that there was political influence which wasn’t necessarily in accord with the managers, supervisors and Social Workers who had to do the ground work and finally remove the children. I know that there was much discontent around the way all of this unfolded. At this point the level of abuse was unknown yet the political involvement indicates that the number of children involved made the case special and needed to be handled in a different way. It needed to be public and it needed to be seen as strong and impressive.

The final allegations made against the adults living in the house set the stage for Mr Rann to stand strong on his fight against crime and now he had child protection too for his “tough on crime” mantra. What makes this particularly sad is that the media jumped in to support him by helping to present a scapegoat – a woman who presents poorly in public and who has the public face of a woman who is to be hated.

Let me tell you what I know of the true Tania Staker. Tania is a loving and caring woman who has lived with violence and every type of abuse you can imagine her whole life. Tania sought love in her children because it was from them that she was loved unconditionally, particularly when they were very young. After her children were removed there wasn’t a time when Tania didn’t cry because she was grieving for her children. For what it is worth, I like Tania. The pictures depicting her in the papers were not the Tania I knew.

I can remember, quite early in my contact with Tania, that I returned home from visiting her and my wife asked me how my day was and I broke down in tears. I had heard some stories about what had happened in the house and what was allegedly Tania’s involvement. It didn’t match with the woman I knew. I couldn’t believe that this was happening, I was in total confusion and I was deeply distressed. How could I like a woman who was so vile and abusive? I have trained myself as a Social Worker to see through the behaviour and acknowledge that the behaviour is not “the person”, that people represent more than just their behaviour. I have been working with violent men for many years and found that this was very helpful in developing different ways of working with them and was a way by which I wouldn’t judge. It also gave me the ability to be confrontational, respectful and creative. But with Tania I was completely lost.

I came to realise that regardless of the stories and the way she was presented in the press I had to follow my assessment and what I saw and experienced of her. I had to firmly stick to my Social Work principles and I had to acknowledge that it was my view which was important to me and that is what determined my practice. There was one problem that I struggled to deal with until recently. Most people I met couldn’t see through the image that was presented by the stories and what happened in that home. Does Tania deserve to be understood? Is there a certain set of behaviours where you no longer express any understanding?

I once said to Tania – “It appears to me that your life has been full of violence.” She began to cry because this was a statement of fact and was probably the first time it had been acknowledged. I had heard about the pattern of drinking and violence she had experienced from the day she was born until the very present. I wondered how a person lives through that level of violence and how one sustains a sense of self, unless of course you try to invent that over and over again in each child you have. There is no doubt that Tania attempted to give her children as much love as she could, and there is no doubt that she loved them. It is interesting that there have never been any allegations levelled at Tania about her children being abused. I can tell you that the feelings she held towards the younger children of the other family were different to those she felt for her own children. But where were the parents of those other children, particularly the mother? I know where the father was, he was abusing Tania. The space Tania found herself in was one of confusion and fear. She spent time at the hotel gambling and attempting to forget not only what was happening in the home but also the traumas of the past. It was a place that few of us would understand. There were six adults living there and Tania was being abused by most of them, particularly her partner at the time, the father of the children who were taken to hospital. She told me one story in particular of a situation where she was being violently abused by her partner in front of the younger children and how they were encouraged to be involved in the abuse. For Tania, too, it was a ‘House of Horror’.

There is no doubt in my mind that Tania was the scapegoat and yet her story has never been told. I was never told anything about the allegations which brought her before the court because her lawyer believed this would be unhelpful. Tania desperately needed someone to talk to about these events but complied with her lawyers’ wishes.

At no point did anyone talk to me about the work I had done with Tania. No one was interested in an alternate view, not even her lawyer. At no point did FSA invite me to the many meetings Tania had with them. I was irrelevant to Tania’s story. I offered nothing which would enhance their distorted view of her. No one was prepared to stand by her and explain the circumstances which lead to the abuse.

Why is it that we have the recurring image of Tania giving the fingers up sign to the media? Why don’t we have a picture of the mother of the children who were abused or pictures of the four men who were present in the home at the time? We are obsessed with mother-blaming and are reluctant to look to the men who are often perpetrators of violence and who, in this case, were responsible for what eventually occurred.

One social worker was assigned to work with the Staker children and Tania. I doubt if that worker knew anything about Tania’s past and what happened to her in that home. I wonder how she survived the conflict she must have felt between the way Tania presented and what was reported. It is very confusing I know to be landed with two sets of conflicting information. I can only imagine that acting as a Social Worker in this situation would have been very stressful. At one level there was the political push to have this matter resolved quickly, at another you would know that it would be unwise to present the alternate view and to advocate for Tania and her children.

The best indication I had as to what was happening to this worker was when I was present at a Care and Protection Meeting and I Tania’s Case Worker was present and she refused to look at me. I was the enemy, when really I was doing my job. It was at this meeting that I was told that I couldn’t make any statement at all. This was a new rule brought in to silent me in this particular case I believe. I actually didn’t realise that I was so important.

I often wonder about the children. I know that some of them had abusive experiences while in state care. For the younger children I hope they have a better life and get to know their mother at some stage even though I have my doubts that the State will ever allow that to happen. Some of the children will be damaged for the rest of their lives unless the appropriate services are put in place. My guess is that the State figures it has done its job because the adults are jailed. What are they going to do when these adults and particular Tania wants to meet with her children? She is not a danger to her children and needs to have appropriate access to them. Perhaps that is why they have sent her to Pt Augusta to serve her sentence.

My greatest fear was that by presenting my view of her would have destroyed my credibility as a Social Worker. I no longer care about that. I do the best I can and if people don’t like the way I assess clients and the way I see my world and that of clients, then I frankly don’t care.

The writing of this should have been done a long time ago. I apologise to Tania and her children for not having done so.

3 comments:

  1. i spent 3 mnths in with tania at pa,there is always two sides to every story,the media have only heard one side,most of the aboriginal women that go to pa,cannot read or write ,tania was there every day filling in there forms helping them every way she could,i am grateful to her as well as she made a very traumatic experiance for me easier ,i am her friend

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  2. Thank you for writing this. While I appreciate the chance to hear her story I don't think it makes her any less responsible. In fact all of the adults in that home are equally responsible, even the ones who witnessed it. I am sure all the adults in that home had abusive childhoods themselves, but they still would have known what they were doing was wrong. The sad thing is that unless the children who were abused or the children that were witnesses (all victims) are placed with loving permanent families, receive therapy and support, they may end up in abusive relationships in the future.

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  3. Actually. Tania comes from Broken Hill. Grew up just out of town. ( Round Hill ) And that behaviour runs in the Staker Breed.

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