By Derek Schlennstedt
There was a deep seated silence at the Victorian Parliament on November 27 as Premier Daniel Andrews apologised to the people who had suffered sexual abuse as children while involved with Puffing Billy railway.
Victims clutched the hands of loved ones as they were told that a ‘village of people’ had failed to protect them.
Mr Andrews apologised in the Victorian parliament to people abused by convicted and deceased sex offender Robert Whitehead. Mr Whitehead had who used his position at Puffing Billy to abuse children for decades, while the tourist attraction’s management board repeatedly failed to report complaints to police.
Speaking at Parliament Premier Andrews said for generations the railway has been a place for “memories bathed in sunshine”, but beneath it lied “a much darker, much more sinister truth”.
“Instead of being a place where childhoods were enjoyed, Puffing Billy became a place where childhoods were destroyed… as a collective, we shamefully diverted our gaze,” the Premier said.
“People knew. People knew and they did nothing. Some of our most trusted institutions and individuals not only failed to speak up, they even tried to cover it up.
“Allegations were ignored, complaints were supressed, and records were destroyed …. They chose to protect the most guilty over protecting our most innocent.”
“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village as well to utterly fail a child.”
Those failures were marked in an ombudsman report by Deborah Glass which was tabled last year and centred on Mr Whitehead, who was a volunteer at Puffing Billy from 1961 until 1990.
He was first convicted and jailed in 1959 for child sex abuse and when released, was re-employed as a rail worker and volunteered with Puffing Billy before going on to assault six children between the 1960s and 1980s. He died in jail in 2015 after pleading guilty to 24 charges.
As part of the ombudsman report nine recommendations were made, including an official apology.
For many this apology has brought relief and closure.
Mr Wayne Clarke was among Whitehead’s victims to receive a formal apology from the Victorian government and said it was a “dream come true”.
“After 44 years, and after I unfortunately had my experience with whitehead at Taradale train station it means a lot,” Mr Clarke told the Mail on the steps of parliament following the apology.”
“It’s the end of the whole 44 years for me now, so hopefully I can get on with my life and enjoy the rest of it.”
In a final statement at Parliament Daniel Andrews said while there was no way the state could restore all that had been stolen, it could end the culture of secrecy.
“On behalf of the parliament, the government, and the people of Victoria, for every childhood that was stolen, for every future that was compromised, for every family that was betrayed and for every life that was destroyed, we are sorry,” he said.
