Child migrants to Australia

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jennyjenny

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I've just been reading some of the stories on the BBC news web pages as told by former child migrants sent by our government to Australia. This scheme ran until 1967, although there is one man who was sent in 1970. The appalling abuse reported has brought me to tears. Basically, these poor children were slave labour and the treatment they endured was unbelievable. Most were told that their parents were dead, clearly not true, and they never saw their families again.
I don't think an apology by either governments will go anywhere near to redressing the situation.
How could this have been allowed?
 
I think they should apologise to everyone they didn't send
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, now were stuck here in the snow, on this wet over crowded Island...
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To be fair, in many cases it was done with the best of intentions and in a very different time. The reasoning - rightly or wrongly - was many of the children would have little or no opportunity for advancement here, no chance to own a house, build a business or otherwise raise themselves out of poverty. The New World offered those opportunities, although the work was still very hard and families relied on having many children to help, hence some wanting "extras". It might not be nice but the idea was both parties would benefit in the end and remember, very young children worked very hard in that time, often forgoing school very early. This would likely have been the path many of those children would have taken no matter where they lived.

Of course there were abuses. Knowing what we know now you can see the sort of people who might be attracted to a scheme like that. And there simply was not the social pressure to keep families together - look how many kids got sent into service, or workhouses, or orphanages simply because their parents could not afford them. And there are many tales of people who had exactly the experience the idealists thought - they were able to start a new life in a land that offered far more opportunity.

Heck, people send their kids to boarding schools in such countries today so they can gain residence status, often at a very young age. (I went to school with kids like that - some NEVER went home, not even in the summer holidays.)

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying it was a fantastic idea and it went very wrong in many ways. An apology is understandable, although it doesn't undo the damage done. But the idea that it was just people being horrible to kids for the heck of it is simply not true.
 
They stole children from their parents. They shipped out families of children and then separated them, never to be reunited. Children that had been left temporarily in homes or foster care were shipped out without consulting their parents. We are not talking about children being saved from the alternatives of workhouse or drudgery in service, it wasn't done in Victorian times, but started in 1922 and the last children were sent out in 1967! They didn't send children that had no alternative in life but to go, some people in authority decided they had the right to tear families apart for the "good" of the children. And when the children arrived in Australia they were sent all over the continent with no checks in place to make sure that they were being treated well.
I listened to the story of one man who had traced his mother a few years ago. She put her son into care temporarily because her husband had left her and she needed some time to sort out a home for them (remember, being a single mum wasn't so easy in the early 60's). The nuns who ran the home told the little boy that his mother had died and off he was shipped. When she arrived at the home to see him he was already gone and adopted by a couple in Australia, and she was just told that it was too late, she couldn't do anything about it. He had a terrible childhood, used like a slave by the couple who had adopted him. Luckily in recent years he realised that he might have been lied to and managed to trace her. I'm not a soft person, but I was driving along with tears running down my face listening to him tell his story.
Nothing can justify this shameful betrayal of children and their families as far as I'm concerned.
 
Yes true but look at the current failings of the social services kids being left with abusive parents to be starved and or beaten to death so terrible things still happen in this inlightend age.. not saying what was done was right but I do wonder how many ended up in a bad home and how many had a second chance and did well in a new loving family..
my guess more good than bad but then it dosent make a good story or com pun say shun...
 
Are they getting compensation then?
I don't think it's the same really. Whatever happened to them when they got to Aus, they were lied to and in many cases stolen from their real parents.
I don't think that they will be able to get statistics on how many were abused, used as slave labour etc because not all have spoken up, or are alive of course. What is known is that they were sent off into the unknown unprotected and without any proper checks or on-going support.
Maybe I'm too old... you see I was 7 years old when the last of these children were shipped off, so can relate to how things wer in the UK then. That is 1967 for goodness sake, just two years before man landed on the moon. It wasn't Australia or the workhouse was it?
 
Exactly my point thank you. I too, was a child in the sixties and find it hard to comprehend the attitude of the government of that time, that they could steal so many children and tell them that they were orphans.
Apologies now are too late!
 
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Exactly my point thank you. I too, was a child in the sixties and find it hard to comprehend the attitude of the government of that time, that they could steal so many children and tell them that they were orphans.
Apologies now are too late!

[/ QUOTE ]Yes apologies are too late. They certainly are for steve my former neighbour, Hardend criminal and drug addict, died of an overdose. We only found out at his funeral about his life in "sunny Australia.
 
I thought I might be over-reacting. That is very sad about your neighbour Mike007, he was one of many who could never recover from the damage done to them.
 
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