The House of Horrors in Katanning

Meshel Laurie (0:00)

The following podcast contains accounts of child sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.

This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie. In 1985, after a messy relationship breakup, Maggie Dawkins took a short-term job in the small Western Australian town of Katanning. Maggie's job was to shepherd and mentor a small group of bright young people from Perth through projects in rural communities in Western Australia. The hope was that at least some of them might enjoy it so much that they stayed, bringing their expertise and youthful energy to those communities. Maggie's group of young people quickly struck up friendships with local young people, and that was the point at which heartbroken young Maggie became the only champion of the kids from Katanning's St Andrews Hostel, who were desperately in need of one. As a result of this turn of events, Maggie has been part of the fight against institutional child abuse for the last 40 years. She's written a book called To Be Believed, A West Australian Scandal, and she joins us to talk about it.

This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.

Maggie Dawkins (1:20)

My kids came from Perth, okay? I had a 14-seater bus, and I drove the 12 kids, my participants.

I drove them to Kittanning. I was allocated Kittanning. I drove them into a foreign community, a rural community. Most of my participants were urban.

They'd never lived in the country. They didn't have much money. They had to do so many hours of community work, and that was doing work for the council. So it was actually slave labor. They were working for about a dollar an hour. If you look at it rationally, it was pretty grim. But they were there and they were doing council work like tree planting, putting up pine log fencing, doing gardening for the council. They were restoring an old flour mill.

Meshel Laurie (2:21)

So tell us how from this delightful project, you ended up meeting these waifs from St Andrews Hostel.

Maggie Dawkins (2:28)

So Katanning, it's a three and a half to four hour drive from Perth, and it's 40 kilometers from the Albany Highway. So it's 40 kilometers east of the Albany Highway. So it's sort of tucked away a bit. The Katanning regional town, it's probably got back in those days, I don't know how many people, but now about 3,700. So we're not talking about a large town, but it was central and it had a high school and a hospital, and it had services, right?

Meshel Laurie (3:05)

Yeah.

Maggie Dawkins (3:05)

So we know that schooling has always been compulsory. So how do we get kids who live, say, 75 kilometers out from Katanning to school every day?

So you either have parents who can do the commute, or you have a government bus that does bus trips. And if you think about it, in those days, especially in the 80s, there weren't sealed roads.

Meshel Laurie (3:42)

I was just thinking a bus would take hours.

Maggie Dawkins (3:45)

Well, some of the kids were on buses for an hour and a half, two hours, two and four. So what would be better was if you had a government hostel next to the high school where the kids could board, and the parents could then go and pick up the kids on a Friday and drop them back on a Monday. My 12 were given an allowance, and on Friday or Saturday night, they had enough money to pull to buy a jug of beer at the pub.

Because there were a number that were underage, I used to go to the pub with them so I could stop the underage ones from drinking and be the supervisor. We had these wonderful evenings at the Federal Hotel, where we'd play the jukebox, and dance, and be stupid, and have fun. Doing that, my participants got to know some of the local lads.

I had a mixed group of males and females. And so some of my male participants challenged the local boys with pool. And so we used to have a country versus city pool matches at the pub. And it was just great fun.

Meshel Laurie (5:16)

So was it, you knew these kids socially then? Because I know that some young people disclosed unimaginable abuse to you that was happening in their lives. Now, I assumed you had been hired to go into the hostel in some capacity.

Maggie Dawkins (5:32)

No.

Meshel Laurie (5:32)

So you were just a nice lady they met.

When you think about the trust it takes to do what they did, as I say, I assumed you were there working with them day in, day out, and that built that way. But you were just a nice lady and-