Will there be justice at last for the real Lost Boys?
The stories of the British children who were abused and separated from their families are being heard at last. reports
The walls of the office belonging to Margaret Humphreys in West Bridgford, Nottingham, are covered in old photographs. Among them is an image of a group of British children stepping off a boat on to Australian soil, squinting into the broiling sun. They represent just a fraction of the 4,000 children, some as young as four, who were dispatched from Britain to countries across the Commonwealth from 1947 to 1970.
Those running the child migration schemes were charity and church groups, supposedly helping the youngsters onwards to a “better life”. Last week, as the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) got under way, a nondescript conference room in central London heard the appalling truth about what they really faced. During the day, they were viciously beaten and forced to work “like slaves”. At night, they would be plucked from their dormitory-room beds by predatory paedophiles and subjected to unimaginable degradation.
The tip of the iceberg is a well-worn cliché when it comes to the child abuse scandals that have reared their heads in recent years. The inquiry – which has had four chairmen and cost more than £20 million since it was set up by Theresa May, then home secretary, in 2014 – is the most wide-ranging of its kind ever held in Britain. It will hear evidence from 13 different investigations into institutional child sex abuse at Westminster, in children’s homes, within churches and the ordeal suffered by the thousands sent overseas in a programme overseen by the British government.
For Margaret Humphreys, such damning testimony is nothing new. The softly spoken social worker founded the Child Migrants Trust 30 years ago, and has fought for justice for these lost children ever since. Now, finally, they can speak to the country that abandoned them.
“They were told they were orphans, were sent to the other side of the world and some were abused in the most awful circumstances,” says Humphreys when we meet in the lobby of a central London hotel. “They were lied to from the beginning and, to this day, they continue to live with the consequences of the abuse and betrayal they suffered.”
Humphreys has had to lobby for their stories to even be considered, let alone to kick off the IICSA proceedings. At first, she was told the inquiry’s terms of reference would only stretch as far back as 1975 – after the transports to the Commonwealth had already finished. The 72-year-old successfully argued for that to be moved back to 1947.
The plight of the child migrants is historic, but ongoing. Hundreds are still hoping to what the inquiry heard last week was “widespread and systematic sexual abuse”. Vulnerable, poor and illegitimate children were forcibly separated from siblings and wrongly told their parents were dead in order to ship them overseas more easily. “The terms trauma and sexual abuse don’t even begin to convey what happened to these people and help us understand the utter degradation,” Humphreys says. “These were children who already didn’t feel they belonged to anybody and had deep wounds of abandonment.” Helped by her husband Mervyn (one of the small team of a dozen or so who run the Child Migrants Trust), she has reunited thousands of families; a photograph of each meeting has been put up on the office wall. The charity is still working to reconnect around 200 people with their families. It is a race against time now to find elderly parents before they die. It took Humphreys 23 years of campaigning to elicit an apology from the British government. In 2010, Gordon Brown, the then prime minister, told the Commons he was “truly sorry” and announced a £6 million fund to reunite families. Last week, that money finally ran out. It is not yet known if more is forthcoming. Humphreys will give evidence to the inquiry this week. Eight child migrants have also travelled over from Australia to appear. One witness died in the process of preparing testimonies over the past six months. Many of their abusers have also passed away. Is it too late to seek justice? At this Margaret Humphreys firmly shakes her head. “It’s not in the past for the victims,” she says. “They have to live with what happened every day.” When I was three, my mum dropped me off at a Nazareth House run by nuns in Romsey, Hampshire. My father had died in the Normandy landings and she was marrying another man. It was only supposed to be temporary, but I didn’t see her again.
I was there, on and off, until my 11th birthday. The worst abuse was the terrible violence. The sisters used to cane you for wetting the bed. One day, we were polishing the floor. I got a splinter in my hand and stopped to pull it out. The nun screamed at me and smashed me across the head with a broom handle. Then she grabbed me and, with her full force, lifted me off the ground and threw me down a flight of steps.
I was left in a room on my own for days before they took me to hospital. I still have headaches and pains even today. There was also a priest who committed sexual violence and rape.
When they told us we were going to Australia, we were taken to London in tartan suits. We were put on the SS Maloja and told we were going to Queensland, but we got off the ship at Perth. By that time, I realised I wasn’t going to find my mother and just wanted to get away.
I was taken to Clontarf [an institution run by the Catholic order the Christian Brothers], surrounded by 1,000 acres of forest and farmland, and put to work. On the second day, they called us all up and told us if any child complained, they would be given a severe beating.
Four serious violent paedophiles operated there. One came later, who was the worst of the bunch. I was there between 1953 and 1958 and was sexually abused so many times, I lost count.
Eventually, one day, I got on a push bike, no gears or anything, and rode 300km away from Perth. I slept in public toilets before I got my first job.
Today, I’m married with two children and two grandchildren. I had nightmares about the sexual assaults for many years and still do, but to a lesser extent. I first met Margaret Humphreys in the early Nineties and I was reunited with my mother in America five years ago. My mother told me she had come back to take me home, but the Sisters of Nazareth told her I’d been adopted.
My mother died last year, but it meant everything, after so many decades without family or identity, to finally meet her. I was born in Stepney, east London. My mum met my dad during the war, but when they separated I was put in an orphanage. I was shipped out to Australia when I was eight years old. First I got sent to Castledare [another Christian Brothers institution] and two years later went to Clontarf.
I was sexually abused there in my first year. I was in bed one night and a man called Brother Murphy [now dead] came to the dormitory. He woke me up and said I’m going to take you to the toilet. We ended up in his bedroom. I knew what happened was horribly wrong.
At night time, you could hear him walking down the dorms. I would lie there and absolutely freeze; I wouldn’t even breathe. He picked different boys, but we never spoke about it between us.