Ministers say sorry to children sent abroad into hands of abusers

THE Scottish Government apologised yesterday for the ‘trauma, loneliness and despair’ of children sent to care homes abroad.

Thousands of youngsters were sent to institutions in Australia and Canada where many were subjected to physical and sexual abuse and wrongly told that their parents were dead.

Lawyers acting for the Government told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) yesterday that the forced migrations ‘could not have occurred without state sanction’.

The apology followed the disclosure that more than £2.4million has been paid in compensation to former child migrants.

The inquiry in Edinburgh heard more than 120 expatriate Scots have so far received £20,000 payments under a redress scheme set up by the UK Government to compensate those effectively deported to parts of the Commonwealth. The inquiry heard how in 2010, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown made an unreserved apology to former migrants for the abuse they had suffered.

Yesterday, lawyers for the Scottish Government offered their own apology.

A number of organisations involved in migration schemes also apologised, including Barnardo’s, which said the policy had been ‘misguided and wrong’.

Representing the UK Government’s Department of Health and Social Care, Lynda Towers said more than 1,500 ex-gratia payments had been made under the newly introduced redress scheme, including 121 to former child migrants from Scotland.

The scheme only opened in March following a recommendation by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England and Wales.

Child migration programmes were operated by organisations under the direction of the state up until the early 1970s.

The English inquiry heard evidence relating to institutions such as Bindoon in Western Australia, run by the Christian Brothers, where children were used as labourers to construct buildings and sexually abused by priests.

Graeme Watson, representing the Christian Brothers, told the SCAI children from Scotland were among those sent to Australia. He quoted an earlier apology given by Brother Julian McDonald, of the order’s Oceania province, who said the migrants had been ‘turned into child labourers to build a monument to human folly and blind ambition’.

John Scott QC, representing the In-Care Abuse Survivors group, said the migration programmes had caused ‘pain, suffering and lasting damage’ to children who were often already abused and vulnerable. The inquiry continues.