A new book is documenting the childhood abuse and exploitation described by Norman “Johno” Johnston, who was sent from the United Kingdom to Western Australia at the age of seven after World War II. His former wife, Wheatbelt author Kathleen O’Reilly Johnston, wrote the biography, titled *Johno*, after recording and cross-checking his memories over several years.
Mr Johnston, now 83, spent more than six years at Castledare Junior Orphanage in Wilson and St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf in Perth. He told ABC News Australia that he was stripped of his identity and subjected to significant ongoing abuse while in the care of the institutions, which were among those examined during Western Australian hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse.
He described frequent physical punishment, including beatings for minor infringements. Mr Johnston also said a Christian Brother tried to drown him in the Canning River after he witnessed the sexual abuse of another boy. He said the incident left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the account reported by ABC News Australia.
At 15, Mr Johnston was deemed too old for school and sent to work on a farm. He said he lived in a windowless shed, worked about 100 hours a week and received two pounds and five shillings a week for two and a half years, until a welfare officer arrived. He later joined the army and served in Vietnam.
The wider experience of UK child migrants has been examined by a parliamentary inquiry in Britain. The Christian Brothers apologised to Western Australian victims in the 1990s and reached an out-of-court settlement with some of them, the source reported.
Ms O’Reilly Johnston said she had wanted to preserve Mr Johnston’s story because she increasingly understood its historical importance. She travelled from the Wheatbelt to Perth each week, hand-wrote his answers, checked them against historical evidence and returned the manuscripts to him for review. Mr Johnston examined the manuscript throughout and agreed that the account of sexual abuse should remain, despite the vulnerability involved, because it was part of the truth.