Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1494132
8 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 MARCH 2023 NEWS MATTHEW VELLA ON 18 February 2017, Dery Sultana is on a bus in Mel- bourne when his sister calls him from Malta. Sultana, a creative and video editor whose muscle had been part of the Where's Everybody atelier back in its heyday, is looking for a feature film idea. Here it is, says his sister – a MaltaToday report on the horrific sexual and vio- lent abuse endured by Maltese child migrants in Tardun, a middle-of-nowhere outpost in Western Australia where the Congregation of the Christian Brothers educated and trained a small army of kids and teens. "That report marked the start of a five-year project," Sul- tana tells me of the article on the Australian Royal Commis- sion hearings into child sexual abuse, which showed that 7% Australia's Catholic priests had been accused of abusing chil- dren in the six decades since 1950. By far the worst was the order of the St John of God Brothers, where a staggering 40% of religious brothers are believed to have abused chil- dren; 22% of Christian Broth- ers and 20% of Marist Brothers, both orders that run schools, were alleged perpetrators. The Ellul brothers, which Sul- tana's film focuses on, where among the 259 boys and 51 girls from Malta who were sent to Catholic institutions in Western Australia and South Australia. They too were part of the historic 'safety valve' that ensured children in poverty in Malta could have a chance at a decent life in the industrialised post-war world. "I had no idea about the child migrants," Sultana says. "And when I read the report, I want- ed the world to know about it." Manny Ellul, the middle brother in the Ellul family, was Sultana's first lead to the story, through one of the com- ments he posted on his young- er brother Raphael's testimo- ny, one of the main victims of the Christian Brothers' abuse. Now 73, at 10 years of age Raphael was sent to Australia under the Catholic Child Mi- gration Scheme with two of his brothers. "I was not allowed to speak Maltese with any of the Maltese boys at Tardun," Ellul had told the Royal Commis- sion, typical of his time, unable to speak English. "I remember that if I was heard by a broth- er to say anything in Maltese, I was smacked, hit with a strap and sometimes punched with a fist." "The children who came here did not speak one word of Eng- lish," Sultana reflects. "They were sent into a world of child slave-labour, under the pretext that they were being taught trade skills. Their lives evolved so differently to other children, and they belong to a generation which back then just did not speak up about the problems afflicting them – it was a gen- eration that lived with shame." Their prospective education in Australia was sold to them as an "adventure", but working in Tardun was nothing short of full-on farmwork: moving heavy superphosphate and wheat bags, clearing land, cut- ting down trees, burning off, constructing miles and miles of fencing, milking cows at four every morning, shearing sheep, and baling wool. 250,000 acres of land with some 300,000 sheep, 1,000 head of cattle, 500 pigs and some 6,000 acres of crops. The school became notori- ous for the sexual abuse visit- ed upon other Maltese child migrants, with one witness, V.G., to the Royal Commission testifying on gang-rapes from the brothers and being forced to perform oral sex on several brothers. When in 1967, a Mal- tese delegation visit the Tar- dun school – V.G. believes it could have been an education minister, possibly Alexander Cachia Zammit – he tried to Child migrants in a wilderness of despair After their testimony in the Australian Royal Commission on child abuse and clerical sex abuse, Maltese filmmaker Dery Sultana finally met the Elluls, siblings who endured the horror of the Christian Brothers in Tardun, to commit their story to film. He wants the Maltese to learn what happened to the child migrants shipped off to an uncertain destiny of horror Their prospective education in Australia was sold to them as an "adventure", but working in Tardun was nothing short of full-on farmwork: moving heavy superphosphate and wheat bags, clearing land, cutting down trees, burning off, constructing miles and miles of fencing, milking cows at four every morning, shearing sheep, and baling wool Raphael Ellul left Tardun bereft of any real education, drifting into a motorcycle gang at 19, becoming an alcoholic for nine years before giving up the vice upon his second marriage. "They were transplanted from the dense urban towns in an island, to an Australian expanse in which they had no hope of finding any help for their ordeal. Who would, they tell?"