Art has resonated with our societies, civilisations and individuals, reverberating through history, from time immemorial.

Cave walls through ancient frescoes and Renaissance masterpieces to today’s exquisite galleries host artworks that strike at the heart of our being. Works that preserve in time our nature, our cultures, our achievements … and our crimes.

Robert House has an acute sense of how the art continuum can be both catalogue and vehicle for change of the human condition, and remedy for its trespasses. Without recalling history, we may be condemned to forever repeating it.

As a survivor of all forms of child abuse, and a determined activist for the rights of other survivors, he wants an assurance their plight is not forgotten by history.

Robert commissioned The Raft of the CLAN – a giant 2.5 x 4-metre painting by Melbourne-born New York artist Peter Daverington – for this express purpose. It was unveiled in 2018 at Parliament House by former prime minister Julia Gillard.

Daverington, inspired by historic art, was drawn to Théodore Géricault’s 1818-19 The Raft of the Medusa, a painting that shocked a nation with its harrowing depiction of shipwrecked sailors abandoned by the French government.

The Raft of the CLAN’s parallel, with the millions of children brutalised and abandoned the world over historically by those charged with their welfare, is clear. Intense and panoramic, The Raft of the Clan is a catalogue of abuse, lies, deception. In its heaving waters, here be monsters.

But equally important is its depiction of victory over the predators, of strength and pride, of defiance and activism.

As Daverington says: “Our country’s children were abandoned by the very government that was entrusted with their care, left to fend for themselves against predators who hide beneath the cover of religion and state.”

Robert House, a Melbourne artist and tradesman, was propelled into an activist role after meeting members of the Care Leavers of Australasia Network. His first protest was with just 10 people but it galvanised him to the cause and in short order saw him agitating vigorously for what was to become Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse.

The Royal Commission’s appalling submissions and its withering findings highlight an appalling history that House wants remembered by much more than media clippings and politics of the day.

The Raft of the CLAN is the vehicle for that purpose and it is one he plans to take to the great galleries of the world. For the horrors of child sexual abuse, forced labour, corporal punishment, mental abuse and more are a world pandemic. They continue in many places, especially the Third World, with little or no opposition.

“I’ve been in awe of every CLAN member and the determination to be a driving force with the ability to bring about global change. I want to preserve the campaign,” says House.

“As with great historical paintings, this is one of those stories that needs to be preserved in time so that 300, 400, 500 years from now people will still be talking about CLAN. I don’t want the story to be lost.”

Detail within The Raft provides a pictorial realisation of that story, of survivors and sacrificial lambs, of whistle-blowers and warriors. Of the highest hopes being realised, of receding storm and emerging sunlight, of safe landfall. It is a major milestone in an ultra-marathon of recognition, discovery, acceptance, redress and buttressing against future abuses.

At the painting’s core is the process of story-telling. The perimeter, too, with its 35 individual faces, is a series of stories too – each a vital player in bringing about the Australian Royal Commission.

House says its multiple mini-tableaux reflect different factors at play in the child abuse disaster.

“The protest signs reflect the existence of human rights, and our determination to maintain them,” he says.

“The burning of Notre Dame symbolises the old church structure being burned down. The bright cube is symbolic of joining all the dots to bring about change and represents the unity of our story.

“The pair of shoes are archival history, direct from the CLAN orphanage, providing a physical presence. The child with a cat is a symbol of innocence, of the right to play as kids.

“It’s awful but there are stories of cats receiving so much more affection in the orphanages than kids. The cat is about affection denied.”

House says the painting’s church figures reflect the faces of institutional failure.

“The masked figure is all those – the governments, charities, states, police, mental asylums and prisons, media, the whole box and dice – who didn’t listen, who covered it all up. It represents that failure but the idea is also that the mask and runes become a touchstone for activism and resistance now and in the future.

“The mask connects everything and everyone who wants to stand up against these atrocities. It’s a universal identity that can connect people all around the world. And that resistance is against all those who choose to harm children, as well as the enablers and the complicit in our society. It is an identity that inspires and connects. So the mask has a multiplicity of meanings.

“There’s a picture of my birth mother, about the grief of losing your mother or parents, the lack of opportunity to have parents – all the parents who weren’t there for whatever reason, death, poverty, divorce, lack of support.

“The birds are about the coming of a new order. Even though these institutions have shifted, we need to maintain pressure. There will always be issues. These aren’t doves, they’re seagulls, scavengers – it’s about keeping people accountable.

“The pole, with its blue and yellow colours, represents CLAN. The bins too. The abused kids were often considered the garbage of society and so this is a resurrection mounted on those rubbish bins, recycling bins perhaps.”

The painting’s drowned figures represent the suicides and deaths, those people who didn’t make it out of the orphanages, or care, or the mental asylums.

“They’re people who fell off the raft, people who died as a product of being in care,” House says.

In middle is a child on a laptop, she’s the auditor of time, acknowledging history. Meanwhile, the child at the raft’s front giving the bird is all about defiance and support around building that defiance.

“The sunrise is about the rise of the historical institutional child, rising up as an adult,” says House.

“The overall tone is to celebrate a great victory, about people winning over the powers of darkness.”

Raft of the CLAN portrait captions, clockwise from bottom left

• Chinese artist Xinjun Zhang inspired Robert House’s commissioning of The Raft of the CLAN. Resident in Australia, she holds a master’s degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing and is a fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. CLAN is keen for artists to continue expressing the perpetuity of the Care Leaver global struggle.
• Liam Perry is among the next generation of Care Leavers. Born a heroin baby, he has led a tough life in and out of Care, eating from bins as a child and serving time. He struck up a friendship and has worked as an apprentice roof tiler with CLAN President Robert House. Says Robert: “He’s inspired me.”
• The Unknown Care Leaver. This image depicts the mask worn by CLAN leader Robert House at the George Pell trials, with characters for ‘Warrior Movement Initiate Disturbance’. The anonymous face represents Care Leavers of all ages, those languishing in mental institutions, jails or aged care, those who died prematurely or took their own lives – and also the ongoing advocacy and resistance of children in care and their families.
• Jim Luthy, OAM, former Salvation Army Gill Memorial Boys Home resident. A life member and former president (2010-2014) of CLAN, he was instrumental in securing an international apology from the Salvation Army in 2010 for the abuse inflicted on children in its care. He has also pursued installation of recognition plaques for Salvation Army Care Leavers.
• Bill Shorten, former Federal Opposition Leader and CLAN patron after visiting the Australian Orphanage Museum in Bankstown. In a 2018 National Apology speech to parliament he said: “We are sorry for every crime that was not investigated, every criminal who went unpunished. And we are sorry for every time that you were not heard and not believed.”
• Rodney David Le Cudennec, PhD, teacher, policeman, African aid worker and author of The Lie of Innocence and champion of CLAN’s efforts. He represents the academic input of the Care Leavers’ advocacy. Has developed a curriculum for students disconnected from mainstream education, delivered papers to global conferences, and is co-writing a book on the absence of heroes in political life.
• Frank Golding, OAM, author, researcher, historian, teacher, CLAN vice-president. His childhood as a Ward of the State of Victoria in the ‘care’ of three foster mothers and three orphanages has driven his Care Leaver advocacy. He has published 16 books, including An Orphan’s Escape, detailing his experience in The Ballarat Orphanage.
• Vlad Selakovic, Ward of the State number 89758, former CLAN President 2017-2019, a Care Leaver of many Boys’ Homes, a tireless advocate assisting at CLAN protests. “I started off in Children’s Homes, I went to youth training centres, I went to prison farms, and I graduated to Pentridge,” he says. “My crime was very simple. I was placed in institutions for ‘care and protection’ because my mother died when I was eight years old.”
• Robert House, former CLAN president, artist, art collector, abused as a child in a Sydney orphanage. CLAN representative on the Advisory Committee on the National Memorial to Victims & Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. Robert conceptualised and personally commissioned The Raft of the CLAN with artist Peter Daverington. “One of the best ways to create and preserve a journey in history is through art. It allows you to actualise your highest hopes and document the struggles and victories of CLAN,” he says.
• Dr Joanna Penglase, OAM, CLAN co-founder, author, researcher and advocate. She advertised in 175 NSW newspapers, calling for people from orphanages, children’s Homes and foster care to come forward and document their accounts. The first person in Australia to articulate the day-to-day oppression of and neglect of children in Australia’s orphanages, children’s Homes, foster care and missions. Her PhD thesis, Orphans of the Living: Growing up in ‘Care’ in 20^th Century Australia, became a book.
• Leonie Sheedy, OAM, Victorian Honour Roll, CLAN co-founder, CEO, member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Redress and the National Apology Advisory Group. Architect of national campaign for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Through a love of history, she campaigned for and founded the Australia Orphanage Museum. She supported numerous people in their submissions to the royal commission. One of seven Sheedy children who went to a total 26 Victorian orphanages and foster Homes. Her scarred image reflects the determination of all Care Leavers.
• Roy Janetzki spent his teenage years in three orphanages, enduring physical, mental, and sexual abuse at the hands of four Catholic clergymen. After escaping one orphanage, police beat him and the courts returned him to another orphanage where he was further abused. He and his wife Rhonda, who also suffered sexual abuse in a Catholic orphanage and foster care, are deeply committed CLAN members.
• Alf Stirling bears 70 scars from beatings incurred in slave-labour Salvation Army Boys Home at Bayswater, haunted by repeated sexual assaults, suffers hearing loss and back damage from brutalisation. Still sleeps with an axe under his bed. He and wife Bev are strong advocates and have protested Care Leaver mistreatment through thick and thin in freezing cold, stifling heat and pouring rain.
• Michael Bamfield is an artist and country-based Care Leaver and a committed CLAN member. He has contributed his works to two art exhibitions staged by CLAN. His work, The Broken Art, is part of the Australian Orphanage Museum.
• Brian Cherrie, placed in several Homes, sexually abused repeatedly at Box Hill Salvation Army Boys Home. He has been a strong and committed campaigner for the human rights of Care Leavers to justice and redress. “I was too young at the time to realise what was even happening but as you get older, the psychological damage from the self-blame and self-shame comes through,” he says.
• Robert Fitzgerald, AM, Royal Commissioner into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Former Community and Disability Services Commissioner and Deputy Ombudsman in New South Wales. Background in commerce, law, public policy and community services, including numerous not-for-profit agencies.
• Peter McClellan, AM, QC, chairman Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, senior jurist with Supreme Court of NSW, Land and Environment Court of NSW, chairman of the Sydney Water Inquiry and Assistant Commissioner at the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Donated tie he wore at first Royal Commission hearing, in Melbourne, to Orphanage Museum.
• Jennifer Coate, Royal Commissioner into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Jurist with the Family Court of Australia, County Court, Children’s Court and Magistrates Court of Victoria, Victorian State Coroner. As President of the Children’s Court, she oversaw the establishment of the Children’s Koori Court. Donated coat she wore at first day of Royal Commission, in Melbourne, to Orphanage Museum.
• Bob Atkinson, OA, CLAN patron, decorated former Queensland Police Commissioner with a lengthy career of detective and police prosecutor work. “Our inquiry was limited to child sexual abuse in institutions. Many children suffered horrendous physical, psychological and emotional abuse as well. I think because of the sadistic nature of some of the physical abuse, it approached the level of sexual abuse.”
• Andrew Murray, Care Leaver from Rhodesia, Royal Commissioner into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Rhodes Scholar, former Senator for Western Australian whose parliamentary focused on, among other things, institutionalised children. Donated tie to Australian Orphanage Museum. First patron of CLAN and instrumental in initiating, with CLAN, the Senate Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care.
• Helen Milroy, Royal Commissioner into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, child and adolescent psychiatrist, GP and consultant in Childhood Sexual Abuse at the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children, Winthrop Professor at the University of Western Australia, member of several state and national mental health advisory committees and boards with a focus on the well-being of children.
• Jenny Macklin, CLAN patron, former federal Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. She has assisted in funding CLAN and a photograph of her as a child in a nappy feature in CLAN’s Australian Orphanage Museum. A great advocate for CLAN who relates closely to Care Leavers.
• Steve Hutchins (dec), CLAN patron, Senator for NSW, Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care chair.  “How could men and women of faith routinely abuse boys and girls sexually, physically and psychologically? There is no way to describe what these boys and girls went through, other than to say that they entered the gates of hell. The Forgotten Australians report was a tribute to the lobbying of the Care Leavers Australia Network, particularly by Leonie Sheedy, which eventually led to the apology by the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.”
• Claire Moore, CLAN patron and member, former Queensland senator and shadow minister for carers. First national politician to throw her support behind CLAN, advising the network to never give up. Agitated for more time for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. “I do have to mention … Leonie Sheedy and the amazing CLAN group, whom we got to know through important committees around the Forgotten Australians—those Forgotten Australians who will never be forgotten anymore. We made that promise to them.”
• Jason Clare, active CLAN patron, federal Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness. Opened CLAN’s Sydney office. Agitated for Care Leaver access to NSW police records. “We are talking about kids who were flogged and raped and ran away, and they can’t prove they were ever there because police won’t provide the records that show it,” he said. Australian Orphanage Museum hosts a photograph of him as a baby.
• Malcolm Turnbull, CLAN patron, former Australian prime minister. Apologised to Care Leavers while Opposition Leader. “As government ministers and bishops and chairmen of charity committees congratulated themselves on their generosity and kindness, too many of you were left in the care of people who abused you, who beat you, who raped you, who neglected you cruelly … already feeling alone, abandoned, and left without love, many of you were beaten and abused, physically, sexually, mentally—treated like objects not people.”
• Julia Gillard, former prime minister, announced the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2012, met with CLAN CEO Leonie Sheedy and President Jim Luthy at Kirribilli House in 2013, unveiledThe Raft of the CLAN at Parliament House on the day of PM Scott Morrison’s the National Apology in 2018. “Even I was taken aback by how much the Royal Commission uncovered and how absolutely harrowing that material has been,” she said.
• Richard Marles, CLAN patron, Deputy Federal Opposition Leader, officially opened the interim Australian Orphanage Museum in Geelong in 2019, stating: “To survive what you have survived, to come through it with the resilience that you have, and to go on and lead the incredible lives that you’ve done, to make the contribution to our nation that you have, is astonishing.”
• Steve Irons, Care Leaver, CLAN patron and member, former Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and Assistant Minister for Vocational Education. The only former ward of the state in Parliament, he led the Federal Apology to the Forgotten Australians. Secured $2.5 million government funding toward the Australian Orphanage Museum’s permanent home. Highlighted horrors faced by children in care, citing a woman paid $80,000 for her trauma: ”She was raped daily. She calculated she received $16 for each rape.”
• Amanda Rishworth, Federal Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education and Development, Shadow Minister for Youth, great supporter of CLAN, worked with Care Leavers, sexual abuse survivors, campaigned for National Redress Scheme. “The impact of abuse … has been life-long and severe, and include physical injury, mental illness, suicide attempts, alcohol abuse and broken relationships.”
• Kevin Rudd, former Australian prime minister, delivered the 2009 National Apology: “We reflect too on the burden that is still carried by our own children, our own children, your grandchildren, your husbands, your wives, your partners and your friends, and we thank them for the faith, the love and the depth of commitment that was helped see you through the valley of tears that wasn’t of your own making.”
• ‘The Psychologist’ represents the clinical side of Care Leaver abuse, the medical fraternity which never understood the plight and suffering of CLAN survivors. The doctors who failed generations, tens of thousands, of Care Leavers. The doctors who did not care for the abused children.
• Derryn Hinch, broadcaster, Senator, former chair of the parliamentary committee on the national Redress scheme: “Something has to be done, because you’ve got people who were child slave labour in Australia. 500,000 kids were in care around the country, so something has to be done for them as well.”
• Peter Daverington, artist and creator of The Raft of the CLAN, inspired by Théodore Géricault’s painting The Raft of the Medusa. “I’ve certainly been moved by the accounts of people I’ve met in the course of this commission,” he says. “It was very eye-opening and humbling to meet beautiful people who have struggled throughout their lives. They’re beautiful, intense people.”

This story constitutes the foreword and image captions of the book Trust Us: The Book All Australians Should Own, published by the Care Leavers Australasia Network and featuring details of the Peter Daverington artwork Raft of the Clan.  

It is available at www.clan.org.au