BRITAIN’S “STOLEN” CHILDREN
P15
When did child migration begin?
The earliest recorded British child migrants left Britain for Virginia in 1618, but most of them were sent in the late 19th and the 20th centuries. Exact figures are hard to come by, but it seems that between 130,000 and 150,000 children – usually orphaned, abandoned, illegitimate, or just poor – were sent to live in foster homes and institutions in the colonies: mostly Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In the last big postwar wave, which ended in 1970, at least 3,000 children were sent to Australia.
Why were they sent there?
For a range of reasons. British officials wanted to reduce the costs to the state of looking after destitute children. There were also labour shortages in the colonies, and the imperial authorities were keen to populate them with “good white stock”. “If we do not supply from our own stock, we are leaving ourselves all the more exposed to the menace of the teeming millions of our neighbouring Asiatic races,” said the Archbishop of Perth, welcoming child migrants to Australia in 1938. Many of the organisations that ran child migration, however, did so for benevolent purposes; to provide children with a better life in the colonies. In 1870, Dr Thomas Barnardo spoke of rescuing children from “abominable filth” and “atmospheric impurity”.
How were they removed from their families?
Boys and girls, mostly between the ages of seven and ten, but some as young as two, were shipped overseas by charitable and religious organisations including the Fairbridge Society, Barnardo’s, the Church of England and various Catholic groups. The consent of a parent or guardian was sought in some, but by no means all, cases. Many children were removed without their parents’ knowledge, and told they were going to a “land of milk and honey”. To enable them to make a new start, it was seen as being advantageous to cut family ties: some children, wrongly told they were orphans, were separated from siblings and deprived of basic details about their identities. Birth certificates were often shortened to omit details of parents. As a result, many migrants regard themselves as having been “stolen”.
What happened to them abroad?
It varied from country to country. At least 100,000 “home children” were sent to Canada to work as agricultural labourers and domestic servants, before child migration was stopped there in 1948. They were essentially used as indentured labour, often under very harsh conditions. Canadian home children’s charities estimate that only 2% were actually orphans: more than half were abused; they were also stigmatised, as being of “inferior stock”. New Zealand had the smallest and best-run scheme, with some 550 children sent to foster homes. Nevertheless, many have complained of maltreatment and loneliness. In Australia, most were sent to isolated rural institutions that have since become notorious.
Why are these homes notorious?
Hundreds of former migrant children have given reports of poor food, hard labour, beatings and sexual abuse. In 2015, 215 former students of the Fairbridge Farm School in Molong, New South Wales, were awarded $24m (£15m) in compensation; 129 of them alleged sexual abuse. One man told of spending three years in hospital with a broken back after the principal beat him with a hockey stick for milking the cows late; he was also raped. Another victim said conditions were akin to “slavery”. In the homes run by the Christian Brothers, conditions were even worse (see box). A 1998 House of Commons Health Select Committee report found that sexual abuse was widespread, systematic and exceptionally depraved. The Child Migrants Trust described these institutions as “almost the full realisation of a paedophile’s dream”.
Did all those in the homes suffer?
Not all. But according to the Select Committee report, “most former child migrants seem to have been subjected to considerable hardship of one form or another”. One graduate of Fairbridge Molong, David Hill, a former managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the author of a book on the school, found that 60% of those he interviewed said they had been sexually abused. The Australian Royal Commission into Child Abuse recently revealed that 853 people have accused the Christian Brothers of abusing them at their institutions.
How did these injustices come to light?
Thanks in no small part to the Child Migrants Trust. It was formed by Margaret Humphreys, a social worker who was contacted in 1986 by an Australian former child migrant looking for her parents. Humphreys went to Australia and placed newspaper ads asking others to come forward. She got a flood of responses: the Trust has since reunited thousands of migrants with their families. It also campaigns for recognition and reparations. Both the Australian and UK governments have issued formal apol
ogies, in 2009 and 2010 respectively.
What does the new inquiry hope to achieve?
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) is investigating child migration programmes from 1947 onwards, as one of its 13 investigations. Chair Professor Alexis Jay and her panel last month began to hold public hearings, in order to give victims a voice and to undertake a “sustained and specific analysis of allegations of sexual abuse of child migrants, and possible failings by institutions based in England and Wales in relation to that abuse”. It has emerged that in 1956, three British officials inspected 26 Australian institutions, and gave clear warnings of poor standards; no effective action was taken. As many former migrants are nearing the end of their lives, the IICSA regards this strand as “particularly urgent”.