By Jane Southward -
With gratitude to a Sister of Charity Foundation scholarship as well as the volunteers who stepped up to raise her, a young solicitor begins her career at the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. She speaks to JANE SOUTHWARD.
Amber Boatman lived in and out of foster homes as a child as her troubled but much loved mother tried desperately to raise three young children, on her own, in Sydney’s west. Her mother had always been addicted to drugs, aside from a couple of years where she managed to get clean, but life was turbulent. Boatman moved schools seven times and was an orphan and State ward before she turned 10.
“My mother taught me so much,” says Boatman, 23. “She was the one who taught me about accepting people as they are and to be kind and generous. We had almost nothing but she was so giving and willing to help out wherever she could. She had her own demons, though, and struggled with addiction.”
Boatman never knew her African- American father, who separated from her Australian mother and returned to the US before she was born. “When I was little, I was taken into care a few times. Mum got some treatment, and the condition of her getting me back was to sign up to an Aunties and Uncles program. That’s how I met my foster parents,” she reflects.
