The statistics on the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare websites are frightening. Every year approximately 55,000 children are the subjects of substantiations of notifications of neglect and abuse. One in thirty-seven children receive child protection services. Indigenous children are seven times as likely to be receiving child protection services as non-indigenous children. As of June 30, 2014, 43,009 children in out-of-home care were in relative/kinship or foster home care and 49 per cent of foster care households had multiple children placed.

Forty per cent of these 55,000 children have suffered emotional abuse, 28 per cent have been subject to neglect, 19 per cent subject to physical abuse, and the remaining 14 per cent are victims of sexual abuse. Statistics such as these have given rise to a national conversation, highlighted in 2015 by the appointment of Rosie Batty as Australian of the Year.

It is therefore timely that Kieran Carroll’s play The Truth is Longer than a Lie should have had its first performance last November. Carroll’s play is an adaptation of the published PhD thesis of Neerosh Mudaly and Chris Goddard, which describes the rising incidence of child abuse and neglect in Australia and draws on case studies and true accounts by victims, their families, school counsellors, child protection unit workers and other agencies.

Carroll’s play echoes with the disturbing truth. It is direct, honest and powerful in its simplicity and its depiction of two families entangled in a web of lies, violence and despair. 

Carroll has chosen to focus on two contrasting families. Andrea and Ben, a successful real estate agent, live in an affluent suburb. Their teenage daughter, Amy, attends a prestigious school. Since the age of three, she has been sexually abused by her obsessive father, who is addicted to child pornography.

Paula is a working-class mum, struggling to survive and provide for her son, Matthew, who escapes into a fantasy world as Spiderman. After the failure of her disastrous and abusive first marriage, Paula married Rod, who has become more violent and abusive as their marriage has deteriorated, and Matthew has once again become the innocent victim.

Andrea is in denial, while Paula finds herself powerless to escape the horrible circumstances that confront her. Gradually, Amy and Paula are both forced to recognise the terrible consequences of their situations and seek urgent help. Amy confides in her school counsellor, Janice, while Paula seeks the assistance of the child protection unit after Rod has been shot by police who were responding to a report of domestic violence. Amy leaves her home to live with her best friend Jodie and her mother, while Paula takes Matthew to live with his grandmother.

Carroll relates the stories of Amy and Matthew in twenty-seven short scenes. There is no need for elaboration or theatrical artifice. Each scene depicts a stage in the journey towards resolution, as we observe the eventual destruction of relationships and the family unit and of the physical and psychological well-being of the two children. Occasionally, the scenes are interspersed with the verbatim voiceover accounts of a ten-year-old child. Though brief, they are a gut-wrenching testament to the horror of abuse of the innocent.

Carroll cleverly avoids the pitfalls of moralising and sensationalism. His short scenes allow his audience to draw their own conclusions about the morality of the perpetrators’ actions. There can be little doubt, given the raw realism of the dialogue and the reality of the setting of each scene in a home, at a nightclub, at the child protection unit, in a hospital or at a railway station, where Amy saves Matthew from leaping beneath a train.

These are real people experiencing real abuse, struggling to repair their broken lives and confronting their fears. Carroll’s world contains no fantastic invention. His aim is not to excite our imaginations, but to provoke us to take responsibility as citizens to recognise, admit to and act upon a social injustice, indeed a crime that needs to be justly and effectively dealt with, not only for the sake of those who are suffering but also for the welfare of society.

Carroll’s narrative is simply told, but its message is complex. Like Mudaly and Goddard, he shows that only through intervention can any possibility of resolution be reached. It may be the intervention of the police, acting upon a report by a neighbour. It may be because of the meeting between Amy and Matthew. It may be because of their referral to the child protection unit and the sympathetic and enlightened actions of Bronwyn, the child protection officer.

While it is clear that Ben and Rod are the perpetrators of the terrible abuse, Carroll is careful not to apportion a stark, ill-considered judgment. He demonstrates the obsessive nature of Ben’s sexual addiction and Rod’s abuse as a child at the hands of his father, acknowledging that the abused may become the abusers. He will present the empathetic professionalism of Bronwyn in contrast to the ignorant ineffectualness of her colleague Danielle. All the pieces of this complex puzzle are laid out in a drama that is provocative and compelling. Only truth can fit these pieces together to make these people’s lives whole once more.

Whatever agents of resolution Carroll is able to conjure in his short play, the damage remains. Andrea remains unable to say, “I believe you,” to her daughter. Matthew no longer needs to believe he is Spiderman, but the memories and the pain remain. Ben and Rod face ruined lives. Each character at the close of the drama remains a victim. The final scene expresses hope for Amy and Matthew as they find comfort in each other’s company and shared experience.

The Truth is Longer than a Lie is a thought- provoking and moving account of the destructive nature of child abuse and domestic violence in a society purporting to be open, free and just and governed by laws designed to protect and nurture. Carroll’s adaptation of the Mudaly and Goddard book deserves to be played on a multitude of stages. The play is deliberately confronting, although I suspect it has avoided cases that have had more violent and deadly consequences. It is an important vehicle for further debate and would provide an excellent resource for discussion after a performance.

Matthew’s outburst will constantly remind us of our obligation to listen and believe:

That’s always the problem with these people [professionals], they don’t want to believe the truth, they want to believe the easiest side ... They don’t want to hear the truth because the truth is so much harder to understand and so much longer than a lie about the truth.

Carrol has exposed the lie with scalpel-like precision and compelled his play to utter a truth that cannot be ignored.