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21-August-2015
21-August-2015

Photographs supplied by Sandra Brown

The plaque commemorates former residents of Hay Girls home who were wards of the State and many suffered abuse while in care. At the reunion of the former inmates in 2007, a rose, named after one of the former officers of the jail who treated them humanely, was also planted to commemorate the event.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was held in 2014. 

From 1961 to 1974 the Hay Gaol was managed by the New South Wales Child Welfare Department as a particularly coercive maximum security institution for girls between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. The Institution for Girls in Hay, as it was officially known, was established in response to wide scale rioting at Parramatta Girls` Home in 1961.

The aim of Hay was to separate the girls involved in the riots and those whose behaviours generally were considered too difficult to be managed at Parramatta. Once in Hay the girls encountered a system of strict dehumanizing discipline and routine, often cited as being harsher than what they would have experienced in a women`s prison. The girls became victims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and left their time in state care in a worse state than when they arrived. Many of the girls were aboriginal.

Location

Address:355 Church Street, Hay Gaol Grounds, Hay, 2711
State:NSW
Area:AUS
GPS Coordinates:Lat: -34.503364
Long: 144.850975
Note: GPS Coordinates are approximate.
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Details

Monument Type:Plaque
Monument Theme:Culture
Sub-Theme:Crime
Approx. Event Start Date:1961
Approx. Event End Date:1974

Dedication

Actual Monument Dedication Date:Saturday 3rd March, 2007
Front Inscription

Dedicated to the girls 13 - 18 years of age
who were incarcerated here 1961 - 1974
by the NSW Department of Child Welfare.

              Hay Girls Reunion
              3 - 4 March 2007

             Forgotten Australians

"LET NO CHILD WALK THIS PATH AGAIN"

Source: MA
Monument details supplied by Monument Australia - www.monumentaustralia.org.au