Australian PM Kevin Rudd issues apology to British child migrants

Australian PM Kevin Rudd issues apology to British child migrants

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/6577850/Australian-PM-Kevin-Rudd-issues-apology-to-British-child-migrants.html
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Kevin Rudd, the Australian prime minister, has issued an emotional apology to 7,000 British child migrants who suffered abuse and neglect in the country's state-run orphanages and religious institutions.

By Bonnie Malkin in Sydney
Published: 1:04AM GMT 16 Nov 2009

Speaking to a crowd of 900 survivors of state care who had gathered in Canberra, Mr Rudd apologised for his country's role in the migrations, which continued until the 1960s.

He also apologised to the 500,000 "Forgotten Australians" who were taken from their families and placed in care homes around the country.


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Australian apology to British child migrants: speech in full "We come together today to offer our nation's apology. To say to you, the Forgotten Australians, and those who were sent to our shores as children without their consent, that we are sorry," Mr Rudd said.

"Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry for the tragedy – the absolute tragedy – of childhoods lost."

Mr Rudd spoke specifically about the experiences of thousands of British children taken from their families and sent to Australia.

"We acknowledge in particular the children shipped to Australia as child migrants, robbed of your families, robbed of your homelands, regarded, not as innocent children, but sources of child labour," he said.

"To those who were told they were orphans but were taken here without their parents consent, we acknowledge the lies you were told, the lies told to your mothers and fathers and the pain the lies caused for a life time.

"To those of you separated on the dockside from your brothers and sisters, taken alone and unprotected to the most remote parts of a foreign land, we acknowledge today that the laws of our nation failed you.

"And for this we are deeply sorry."

Some in the audience wept openly as Mr Rudd shared painful stories of children he'd spoken with — children who were beaten with belt buckles and bamboo, raped and who grew up in places they called "utterly loveless."

He said he hoped the national apology would help to "heal the pain" and be a turning point in Australian history.

The apology was welcomed by victims of the system, despite ongoing calls for compensation.

It came two days after Gordon Brown said he would issue an apology to all child migrants deported from Britain early next year.

Child migrants to Australia have told of terrible physical, psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of those who were supposed to be caring for them. The average age of child migrants to Australia was eight, but some children were sent away as young as two.

In the 1990s one man told a British parliamentary committee of the criminal abuse he was subjected at the hands of Catholic priests at Tardun in Western Australia.

A number of Christian brothers competed between themselves to see who could rape him 100 times first, he said.

Because the men liked his blue eyes, he would beat himself in an attempt to make them change colour.

Other children have told of having to eat flies to survive and of being forced to beat other children. When they told adults about the abuse, they were not believed.

Sandra Anker was sent to Australia in 1950 aged just six years old - or "exiled", as she described it.

"I spent years waiting for someone to realise they had made a mistake and to come and collect me," she told the BBC. "I was at a loose end for a very long time."

"It took years and years of misery of not knowing where we'd come from, who were, being denied our birthright of being British.

"It's really been horrendous. And I wouldn't wish it on anyone... We need to be welcomed back to our homeland."

Many of the children sent to Australia - predominantly from impoverished British families - were told their parents were dead, and that a better life awaited them in Australia. Their parents were given very little information about where the children were going, many didn't know they had left the country. On arrival in Australia, the young migrants were separated from their brothers and sisters and plunged into a life of hardship and brutality.

Now adults, many suffer from health problems as a result of their time in care.

In total 150,000 British children may have been shipped abroad between 1618 – when a group was sent to the Virginia Colony – and 1967, most of them from the late 19th century onwards.

A 2001 Australian report said that between 6,000 and 30,000 children from Britain and Malta, often taken from unmarried mothers or impoverished families, were sent alone to Australia as migrants during the 20th century.
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My thoughts,
A sad and tragic story which now has gone some way towards resolution thanks to this much belated apology from Kevin Rudd.
However, from the 'Mother Country', the upholder of; 'Freedoms', the nation noted for 'Righting of Wrongs' and 'Charitable Work' across this grief stricken planet. The nation now led by a party which held power post WWII, the time when many children were evicted from their homeland and sent to Australia allegedly as orphans, often with little or no effort made to find their parents. This abomination was taking place at a time when Britain took in many thousands of children from war torn Europe.

What crass devious spineless bastards politicians are!

And the apology from Britain?

Gordon Brown the unelected leader of our nation will be making an apology in the New Year..... How thoughtful.

Hopefully an aide with at least a GCE in written English will write it for him and someone who appears and sounds sincere will read it!

This was kept very quite, wasnt it.


Couldnt keep it swept under the carpet for much longer.

Did you see that poor lady on BBC Brekkie this morning, even after all they did to her in Australia, they told her that all her family was dead and even that was a lie. Thirty years later she traced two sisters in Devon! The poor woman was in floods of genuine tears on the telly, even thinking about it. I would love to get at the B*stards who did that to all those poor kids.

Each and every politician that has sat in the house must know of or at least been aware that such an abomination had taken place, yet not one of them had the balls to as much as lift a finger to put the matter right.

What chance does Madeleine have of obtaining respect and dignity when thousands of British children have been knowingly split from their parents and shipped across the world because it was to much trouble to locate, identify and return them to their rightful family.

It is not only Brown who should apologise, each and every one of the "Honourable Members" should hang their heads in shame!