SYDNEY, July 17: Lola belonged to the generation of Australia's `stolen' children who were separated from their indigenous families and became adults knowing very little of their aboriginal parents, culture and heritage.

Taken away from her family at four, she grew up in an institute for aboriginal girls, where it was drummed into their heads that they should marry white men.``They told us that aboriginal men were not good,'' says Lola McNaughton, research caseworker for Link-Up, an organisation now trying to reunite families which lost all links with their past decades ago.

At 13, Lola was moved to the house of a white family as domestic help, where the man tried to sexually assault her. At 18, she was moved to another home. She was a woman in her thirties when she finally met her mother.

One can hear hundreds of stories like Lola's today in Australia. Thousands of aboriginal and Torres Strait Island children were removed from their parents between 1910 and the 1970s. Many are still looking for their kin, accusing the nation of genocide and demanding that Australia apologise for it.``It was believed that the aborigines proved a problem to Australia's future.

It was believed the older generation would pass away and children be simulated into western society. It reflects genocide,'' says Ronald Wilson, president, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), which conducted the inquiry on the issue.

Last month, Prime Minister John Howard said legal advice showed that an apology following the stolen children report could open the government to compensation claims. ``We hope the government will apologise. That is important,'' says Wilson.

The New South Wales Lower House of Parliament this month apologised ``unreservedly'' to aborigines for the suffering of the stolen generation. Aboriginal woman Nancy De Vries recounted her sad story of being parted from her mother when she was just 13 months old and meeting her 53 years later. Nancy was moved to 22 different homes before she was 18.

The HREOC report tabled in Parliament detailed allegations by some aborigines from the stolen children generation who testified at the Commission hearings that they suffered sexual abuse at the hands of white families. They also claimed the government knew of the cases then but turned a blind eye. ``There have been cases of sexual abuse in adoptive homes and institutes,'' says Wilson.

The Catholic Church last year regretted its involvement in the removal of indigenous children from their families and admitted that some children could have been sexually abused while under Church care. ``We learnt nothing except basic education, cleaning and praying. We had no sex education at all,'' says Lola.

The inquiry which was required to trace the history of forcible removal of children ``by compulsion, duress or undue influence'' and effects of removal found condition of missions, government institutions and children's homes often poor. The experience of the separated children contradicted the view that it was ``in their best interests.'' Some families who feared separation exiled themselves from communities and hid their aboriginal identity.

Some tried to protect their families by continually moving, others called themselves Maori or Indian. But the aftermath of those years when children were snatched away from their mothers is going to haunt Australia for a long time, maybe forever.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.