Camp Chair
Active Member
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2014
- Messages
- 218
- Reaction score
- 187
Because Tania was only jealous of the five children Luke had with this other un-named person who ended up living with them....
the biological mother of the 5 kids was already a no hoper...who didn't give much of a s**** for her kids and allowed Tania to rule the roost within the house - subjecting just these five kids to neglect and psychological torture......
all the other kids were probably viewed as OK by Tania and allowed to live the backward existence that she (Tania) and the other Adults lived...
Were the other kids neglected...of course...but to the degree of these other 5.... probably not..
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?
...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’.
T.Tonkin (Social Worker)
http://socialworkchallenges.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/house-of-horror-alternate-view.html