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Australia Royal Commission probes child abuse allegations
Press TV (Iran)
May 5, 2014
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/05/05/361367/australia-probes-child-abuse-allegations/
[with video]
The Royal Commission in Australia has begun a public hearing in the city of Perth to hear the stories of some of the victims of alleged child abuse by priests in orphanages.
The abuse allegedly occurred between 1947 and 1968 against boys, as young as seven, who were sent to Australia as child migrants. Witnesses have been recounting their stories in the hearing about the horrific abuse they were subjected to in the orphanages by the priests.
The Royal Commission will examine the four orphanages run by priests, namely the Bindoon Farm School, St Mary’s Agricultural School, St Vincent’s Orphanage Clontarf and Castledare Junior Orphanage. Priests in all the four orphanages have been accused of child sexual abuse.
In 1947, thousands of British child migrants were sent to institutions in Australia, one of Britain’s formal colonies, without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
Local authorities and charities, including Barnardo’s and the Catholic Church helped organize the immigration of the children.
The families who could not provide for their children put them into temporary care; however, when they returned for them, they were often told the children had died. The children were allegedly often subjected to physical and sexual abuse, separated from their siblings and taunted for being “illegitimate children.”
The young migrants’ documents were allegedly destroyed so that the children would never be able to find their parents names and had no way back into the lives from which they had been ripped.
In total, 130,000 children were sent from the UK to Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and Australia. Often, children were lied to about their parents being dead and many faced abuse in their new homes.
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