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First compensation win for the stolen generation

By Debra Jopson

Valerie Linow, 61, says she's just happy her testimony was believed

October 18 2002 - Sydney woman Valerie Linow was shaking and overwhelmed yesterday after becoming the first member of the stolen generations to win monetary compensation for her cruel treatment after authorities removed her from her family.

The New South Wales Victims Compensation Tribunal has awarded Mrs Linow $35,000 for the sexual assault and violence she suffered while working as a domestic servant for a family when she was aged 16.

The Aboriginal Welfare Board had removed her at the age of two and placed her in children's homes in Bomaderry and then Cootamundra. From there, she was sent to her employer, who she said thrashed her with barbed wire and raped her.

"It's a big shock, because I'm the only one out of thousands of members of the stolen generations who got through and was believed that these things did happen. This is the most important thing - the believing," said Mrs Linow, 61, a pensioner.

Seven months ago, a Victims Compensation Tribunal assessor accepted her abuse claims but refused to compensate her. Tribunal chairman Cec Brahe overturned that determination on appeal.

After losses by stolen-generations members in the High Court, the Federal Court and the NSW Supreme Court, National Sorry Day Committee co-chairwoman Audrey Kinnear said this was a breakthrough in a legal system where a win had seemed impossible.

"This decision validates the fact that the harm done to the stolen generations is worthy of compensation," she said.

"It's set a precedent and it will give other people courage to do the same."

Said Mrs Linow: "I have got my justice after 45 years. I'm free because it was tormenting me all the time. I feel like I am reborn. I can go forward and leave this dreadful past behind.

"It's not the money that's important to me. It is the knowledge and recognition that this happened to Aboriginal people. No one could pay any amount for what happened to us because we lost a lot."

She will put some money in a funeral fund for her and her husband Warren. "This was the only plan I had - that we go in comfort."

Source:The Age

Stolen generations claim succeeds

Media Release
Public Interest Advocacy Centre

14 October 2002 - Mrs Valerie Linow, an Aboriginal woman from NSW and a member of the stolen generations, has been awarded $35,000 by the NSW Victims Compensation Tribunal (VCT).

The compensation was awarded for sexual assaults that occurred while Mrs Linow was a domestic worker on a rural property in NSW where she had been placed by the Aborigines Welfare Board when she was 14 years old.

PIAC has represented Mrs Linow in her claim in the VCT as a test case to establish an alternative process for members of the stolen generation seeking compensation for harm that occurred to them while in state care. Her claim was for psychological trauma suffered as a result of the assaults.

Her application included police documents that reveal the early stages of a police investigation and reports from a psychiatrist.

The original application was dismissed but was overturned in an appeal handed down by the VCT on 16 October 2002.

The success of Mrs Linow's case will give hope to other members of the stolen generations who suffered a similar fate.

One in six people who appeared before the Human Rights Commission' National Inquiry in 1995-1996 claimed to have been subjected to sexual or physical abuse.

PIAC has called for Australian governments to establish a reparations tribunal for the stolen generations. A model for the tribunal is detailed in its recent report, restoring identity, which has received widespread support. One of the functions of the tribunal would be to consider claims for compensation such Mrs Linow's.

Unlike the Victims Compensation Tribunal it would also be able to provide measures to restore the lives of those removed from their families, via measures such as counselling, funding for support groups and cultural healing.

Media release from: Public Interest Advocacy Centre

Further information:

• NSW Victims Compensation Tribunal (VCT)
• Urgent steps towards healing - the NSDC view
  13 November 2002 - National Sorry Day Committee (NSDC) - Extract from a paper presented at a seminar entitled "Are We Bringing Them Home?" by Dr Peter O'Brien.
• Restoring identity - achieving justice for the stolen generations
  27 September, 2002 - Media Release, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC); Media Release, Public Interest Advocacy Centre. Indigenous people have expressed widespread support for a reparations tribunal for the stolen generations
• Stolen generations fury at memorial `whitewash'
  May 27 2002 - Representatives of the stolen generations will ask the Federal Government for land in Canberra to build their own memorial because they consider references to their history at the new Reconciliation Place to be a whitewash.
• Tears flow for sorry time at boy's home
  May 27 2002 - When the "old men" from the notorious Kinchela Boys' Home at Kempsey spoke out together for the first time yesterday about being taken from their families, Colin Davis felt unexpected tears during the introductory song We were Babies.
• Stolen lives
  Beatrix Campbell on the 'sisters' who are challenging Australia to admit to its forced separation of Aboriginal families.

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