It was. The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry catalogued horrors pretty much everywhere.
The scale is almost beyond comprehension. It leaves us reeling.
It is enough to make us despair about humankind. No wonder some Christians even clasp the notion of "original sin". No wonder the word "evil" has such potency.
Let’s not pretend "evil" is just because of "civilisation" or "colonialism". It will be present in some form or another in most times and places. The Bible, for example, certainly tells us so.
Europe has an intellectual tradition of romanticising indigenous peoples and the "primitive". More commonplace was seeing them as ignorant and requiring the benefits of Western "progress".
If you lusted after their gold, as in northern South America and Central America, massacres were fine. If you wanted land, in the traditions of self-interest, a way would be found.
You would scorn foolish liberal romantic notions of "noble savages", natives uncorrupted and living in harmony with nature.
French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau became seen as a standard-bearer for the idea that people are innately good. Urban civilisation and the emotions of envy and self-consciousness made people bad.
But while it is racist to demonise or belittle other cultures, it is also racist to patronise with naive notions.
Civis believes neither in the noble savage nor the civilising effects of progress. People at just about every time and every place are capable of much "evil" — and much good.
Reflecting on the inquiry, we should focus on the grievous abuse that transcends eras — the sexual assaults, extreme violence and the worst psychological and physical torture. That "evil" should not be diluted by mixing it with mores of different times.
The thoughtful among us these days would be appalled at the idea of washing mouths out with soap or locking children in rooms for long periods.
But if that was once the norm in families and institutions, we should be wary about casting the first stone.
Another generation will look back on today’s practices and condemn some as cruel and barbaric. Although we might not know today which these are, we can be sure the future will cast its judgmental eye on the past.
The court news ensures we know heinous abuse — that must be condemned yesterday, today and tomorrow — remains far too commonplace.
We have let suffer the little, and not so little, children in state and faith-based care.
A key lesson from the report is that we and our representatives must be forever on vigilant guard against harm and atrocities.
When British intellectuals in the 18th century debated "primitivism", as well as North American Indians they used Highland Scots as examples. Writer Tobias Smollett described them thus: "They greatly excel the Lowlanders in all the exercises that require agility; they are incredibly abstemious, and patient of hunger and fatigue; so steeled against the weather, that in travelling, even when the ground is covered with snow, they never look for a house, or any other shelter but their plaid, in which they wrap themselves up, and go to sleep under the cope of heaven. Such people, in quality of soldiers, must be invincible. . . ." — The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771).
