Thousands of young people who spent their lives being shunted between refuges and foster carers can't find out why they were taken from their parents in the first place.
And their plight is no different to tens of thousands of older people who were once in care in Australia who are still battling to learn their real identity and what happened when they were children.
Four young care-leavers who now work as youth advocates told a royal commission examining Australia's out-of-home care system that many children are moved from care homes multiple times and this increases the risk of sexual abuse.
Kate Finn from the Youth Movement Initiative said on Monday the biggest risk for children in care was "instability".
She said one boy in Victoria was moved 22 times to different placements and his story was a common one.
"He was moving every six months at one stage and he was never able to form a support system with a carer and with an agency worker or with a school even," she said.
"When you are feeling isolated you reach out to anyone in friendship, which is why I suppose you have sexual abuse, especially through the internet."
The commission heard on Monday there are more than 50,000 children in out-of-home care across the country - the majority are in kinship or relative care and about five per cent are in group homes.
In the second part of a hearing which began last March the commission is examining the policies and practices of agencies which provide care for children.
Tash Dale, a youth consultant with the Create Foundation, spoke of how children in care were fearful of reporting abuse.
They feared not being believed and being moved on, especially if they liked where they were living.
Young people just out of care also had great difficulty getting access to their case files.
Ms Dale said she was still going through the process of trying to get full details of what happened in her family from state agencies in Western Australia.
She found it very hard to get a straight answer as to why she and her brothers and sister were taken into care.
Because she is only allowed to request information for a defined period of time she has to submit a stream of applications one after the other, she said.
A lot of young people are frustrated.
"They are asking: why can't we get the file - it's our life," she said.
Many give up.
Also on Monday, Leonie Sheedy, the CEO of Care Leavers Australia Network, whose oldest member is 99, said their situation was the same.
"Nothing has really changed. It's pretty sad to hear those kids talk about their experiences," she said.
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