Abuse Law – Institutions – Parramatta Girls Training School, NSW

State Government-run Institutions

The New South Wales Government established reformatory schools and detention centres to provide institutional care and confinement for young people deemed to be in the need of ‘correction’. The Child Welfare Department were responsible for the management of these government-run institutions.

Parramatta Girls Training School

In 1887, the New South Wales Government established and opened Parramatta Girls Industrial School, situated at 1 Fleet Street, Parramatta NSW. Parramatta Girls Industrial School accommodated around 160 to 200 girls at a time, and some younger boys, most of whom had been charged with crimes or committed for welfare reasons. In 1912 the Parramatta Girls Industrial School moved to the control of the State Children’s Relief Board and became the Parramatta Girls Training Home.

Girls were committed to Parramatta Girls Training School for a variety of reasons: they had been committed by welfare organisations; were classed as ‘uncontrollable’; had been charged with crimes; been before a children’s court; were on remand or because they had not settled into foster placements (boarding out) or other institutions.

Parramatta Girls Training School was managed by a Superintendent who supervised and reported to the New South Wales government (through its agencies).

Parramatta Girls Training School closed in late 1974. The buildings were redeveloped as Kamballa, for girls, and Taldree, for boys. Girls who were at Parramatta were sent to the newly opened Reiby Training School.

History of Abuse at Parramatta Girls Training School

Parramatta Girls Training School was notoriously known to have a dark history of abuse of children in Australia.

The officers/staff who patrolled within Parramatta Girls Training School were considered “bottom of the barrel” types. The NSW Child Welfare Department gave power and control over these young girls to a collection of desperate, uneducated thugs. Superintendent Percy Mayhew ruled Parramatta Girls Training School like a warlord. He taught new officers to fondle, beat and rape the girls.

At Parramatta Girls Training School there was no counselling, no special programs, no diversional therapy, and no real school lessons. The girls were forced into unpaid labour in the commercial laundry from early morning until dinner time. The work was monotonous, heavy and hot. Female officers kept the girls working hard under an iron fist.

Survivors have reported that life in Parramatta Girls Training School was lived most days with your nerves on a knife-edge. Any attempts made by the survivors to fight the system led to solitary confinement, or worse – girls would be threatened with a trip on the overnight train to the dreaded Hay Institute (a maximum-security prison for girls in the Riverina district that remained a guarded state secret until the early 2000s).

Throughout the history of Parramatta Girls Training School the buildings were bleak and run down and there were riots and complaints by girls, which attracted a number of inquiries. These inquiries, held at intervals from 1889 to 1961, reveal persistent problems with overcrowding, discipline and management. They also reveal the complex and intense relationships between the girls. Oral histories of the home confirm the strong bonds that developed within the home, and the girls’ awareness of abuse and exploitation.

Parramatta Girls Training Home was investigated in 1945 by the Delinquency Committee of the New South Wales Child Advisory Council, led by Mrs Mary Tenison-Woods. The report was extremely critical of the management of the establishment and of the approaches used to deal with the girls within it. As a result, the institutions’ name was changed to Parramatta Girls Training School. However, on the inside, the staff stayed the same and very little changed for girls.

In 1973, protests outside Parramatta Girls Training School by the Women’s Liberation Movement, led by Bessie Guthrie, attracted media and parliamentary attention. A show on the ABC, This Day Tonight, exposed the brutality of the institution. This pressure contributed to the government’s decision to amend the Child Welfare Act to, as Child Welfare Minister Richard Healey said at the time, “to reflect the most positive attitudes of a modern community towards its minors and get rid of any Dickensian overtones.” (Abandon All Hope).

There have been multiple investigations into conditions at Parramatta, both while it was open and also after it was closed, via inquiries and royal commissions. It was discussed in the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) as an institution where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were removed from their families were taken to. Both Parramatta and Hay were the subject of multiple submissions and investigations during the Forgotten Australians Senate Inquiry (2004), and Case Study 7 in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2014). All reports concluded both Hay and Parramatta were harsh, places of discipline and control, where abuse of all kinds occurred.

The Girls Training School Precinct, located at 1 Fleet St, Parramatta, NSW, has been listed on the Register of the National Estate since 21 March 1978. In 2017, after significant lobbying by Parragirls and other groups, the Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct was inscribed on the National Heritage List. The inscription notes that “the Precinct demonstrates how colonial and state governments chose to address the perceived problem of vulnerable women and children, who they regarded as needing protection and control, through the use of institutions as a core element of the welfare system.”

We are specialist abuse lawyers and can help you receive acknowledgement, meaningful apology and financial resolution from those institutions and systems of power that failed to protect you from harm. If you would like advice in relation to a childhood or adult sexual, physical and/or psychological/emotional abuse claim in any jurisdiction in Australia, please reach out to Littles Lawyers today. 

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