Part of the problem and the emotional harm suffered arose in situations where the removal may have been justified, but the child was plucked from the birth family, and their birth family was not given any information about what had happened to their child. Even if the parents were not equipped to deal with parenthood, surely the parents should get updates about what happened to their children, and be allowed to contact them? The children thus felt utterly abandoned, but have found out as adults that their parents did unsuccessfully try to find out what had happened to them. This is where some of the pain and hurt stems from.

A while ago, a friend of mine was walking through a supermarket with her then newborn son in one of those slings. A supermarket employee barreled out of a doorway without looking where he was going. He was wheeling one of those low trolleys and rammed into my friend’s legs. She went crashing to the ground, and her son went too. His nose was bleeding, his head was bruised, and he was crying hysterically. She was very badly shaken and bruised. What did the supermarket do? Absolutely nothing, from what I understand. No apology, no offer to pay for medical care, no flowers, no nothing. My friend’s sister took her and her baby to hospital, where they stayed for two nights under observation. In the event, both mother and son recovered fully.

In the “bad old days” before tort law reform in my State, there’s no way the supermarket would have behaved like that. They would have been solicitous in the extreme, because they would have been afraid of being sued.

Now, as your story about your “aunt” above illustrates, tortfeasors don’t give a sh*t, because they don’t have to care anymore and they don’t have to say sorry. So they won’t tell their staff to take care when wheeling trolleys and look before they come out a door, or tell staff to watch out where they leave buckets in case elderly ladies trip.

Mind you, on the other end of the spectrum, a lawyer colleague of mine encountered a woman who was suing the local council because she slid down a child’s slide at the park and hit her tailbone when she came off. She was 30 years old and inebriated at the time. The play equipment was clearly child-sized and not designed to be used by adults… I’m not sure if there was any permanent injury, but surely it would have healed reasonably quickly even if she had cracked her coccix (my sister fractured hers when she was a kid, so I know that it takes a few weeks to heal). That kind of action is just a disgrace really.

I think I would have responded to your childhood pain the same way your parents did. A late middle-aged extended family member of mine (let’s calle her my “aunt”) fell in a supermarket. She fractured her ankle, but otherwise her injuries were minor. Next to where she fell there was an unattended mop and bucket, which my aunt’s husband - my uncle - photographed with his mobile phone. Both my aunt and uncle admit the floor was not wet, and indeed the supermarket claimed that the employee had not begun to mop when she fell.

Anyways, as time passed, the psychological injury from the fall turned out to be quite considerable and my aunt lost a lot of confidence and would rarely go to public places. After a few communications with the supermarket a small amount of “compensation” was paid for the ankle, but they steadfastly rejected any fault or ongoing liability, but “apologised” for any loss she may be feeling,

My uncle wanted to sue big time as he was convinced they could “clean up financially.” They were not doing very well financially, and my uncle had already made big plans for the $30,000 - at least - he was convinced “they” could “get.”

My aunt found his opportunistic avarice - and attendant willingness to compromise any principle or ethical position - to be distasteful and even more upsetting that the injury itself. In her ethical space, her fall and subsequent loss of confidence reflected more her own negligence and a pre-existing tendency - as a woman extremely anxious about her pending old age - to be more at fault.

In her own inimitable locutions, “darl, sometimes in life shit just happens.”

I found myself wanting to agree with my aunt, but even more I wanted them to have an extra $30,000. I reasoned that commercial enterprises had become so amoral and clinical in their dealings with ordinary people that “screw them, that can work both ways.”

The form-letter “apology” for my aunt’s minor injuries only seemed to compound the supermarket’s ruthlessness. If it happened again, I would arrange ‘QCs at ten paces’ for my aunt and tell the supermarket to stick its apology where the sun don’t shine.

I have to disagree with you. The whole psychopathology surrounding a government apology to the so-called “Stolen Generations” was about a whole lot of other politically motivated agendas. Agendas overwhelmingly of people not “stolen.”

So they either say, “Well, that’s not true at all” or “Well, our government has improved hospitals out of sight since the last government”. Or they blame the party that went before.

But you’re right - if a politician actually honestly admitted he or she was wrong, it’s likely that the politician in question would be crucified by the media. I think this is wrong. I’d far rather have a politician who honestly admits that he or she has it wrong than a politician who tries to wriggle out of things all the time.

I couldn’t believe that the defendant’s legal advisors had advised them to do this. I guess it was a stalling exercise, but still…

Anyway, perhaps that explains my point of view…

I was struck by how closely this matches what I hear so often from people from or affected by the Stolen Generations (tho not necessarily in regard to medical costs obviously).

As I understand it, the whole notion of the apology that came out of the Bringing Them Home report was based on established international principles (from memory called the Van Boven principles?) regarding compensation.

I make the point NOT to try to turn the thread into one about the Stolen Generations, but rather to wonder/ask whether the notion of an apology is not really that foreign a thing from a legal perspective.

On a slightly different tack, I think one of the other reasons why apologies are not always so forthcoming in some circumstances is not so much the possible legal consequences as the consequences in the media (aka the ‘court of public opinion’).

For example, I think one of the reasons why politicians are sometimes so reluctant to specifically apologise (and I’m NOT talking about the Stolen Generations) is because from a media perspective, saying sorry can be equivalent to an admission of guilt (which is part of the reason they sometimes ask the question about it so stridently).

John, I’ve got nothing against popular culture per se - that DH episode sounds very interesting - all aspects of apology and forgiveness. And even a situation which is somewhat similar to my sister’s accident (although it wasn’t the husband of a friend, thank goodness).