Migrants from UK urged to give evidence to child abuse inquiry

By Sandra Laville
Guardian
June 12, 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jun/13/migrants-from-uk-urged-to-give-evidence-to-child-abuse-inquiry

Children cheer as they leave London for Australia in 1932.

Men and women transported to Australia and Canada in the child migrant programme are being encouraged to give evidence about the sexual abuse they suffered to Britain’s public inquiry into historic and ongoing child abuse.

The Goddard inquiry, set up in 2014 to examine the abuse of children in public and private institutions, is urging those who may have been victims before and after being removed from the country to come forward as a priority.

Judge Lowell Goddard is fast-tracking her investigation into the sexual abuse of child migrants from the UK because of the advanced age and possible ill-health of those who are still alive. A preliminary hearing will take place in July.

They were part of a programme that saw up to 150,000 children aged three and over taken from their families and transported to Australia, Canada and other Commonwealth countries between 1920 and 1970. A parliamentary report in 1998 said the abuse suffered by some of those in Australia was widespread, systematic and exceptionally depraved.

Frances Swaine, a lawyer from Leigh Day, who has worked with child migrants for many years, said: “It is hugely important that the Goddard inquiry is looking at this. Thousands of child migrants suffered sexual abuse. They have never had their voices heard in a judicial setting in the UK.”

The programme involved not just the state, but voluntary church organisations and other well known charities, who removed children from their families with and without parental permission. The Presbyterian, Methodist and Catholic churches, the Church of England, Barnardo’s and the Salvation Army alone were responsible for sending 7,000 children to Australia between 1912 and 1970.

Goddard is asking migrants to apply for core participant status in the investigation by 24 June. The churches and charities are also being urged to take an active role in the inquiry.

An inquiry spokeswoman said given the advanced age of many former child migrants the investigation into what happened to them was “particularly urgent”.

Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary, worked with Gordon Brown to set up a fund for child migrants after Brown issued a public apology in 2010 when he was prime minister.

He said the Goddard inquiry and the ongoing royal commission in Australia were a chance to finally establish the full truth of perhaps the greatest scandal in recent British history.

“Many of these former child migrants are elderly, they have lived hard lives and are in poor health, so there is an urgency to this investigation,” he said.

“The sexual abuse some suffered is the source of the greatest pain for child migrants, they feel that they have not been listened or fully understood. They feel the truth is much more shocking than what has so far been heard. It was not just the state that was complicit, it was church organisations, churches themselves and well known charities, so I really welcome the fact that Judge Goddard is going to examine this and the truth is going to be told.”

Prof Gordon Lynch of Kent University said about 2,000 former child migrants were still alive, most in Australia and some in Canada.

Lynch, who curated a recent exhibition at the Museum of Childhood in London about child migrants, said the institutions involved had not acknowledged their responsibilities for the multiple traumas the children went through.

“It is about historic justice,” he said. “These people experienced the really horrendous trauma of being removed from the UK as children without proper warning, being sent to Australia and being placed in residential establishments where they experienced physical and sexual abuse. It is an emotional burden, which is still with them today. They are visibly marked by it.

“It is not good enough for organisations involved to say it was in the past and to hide behind their current good work.

“One thing I hope that Goddard inquiry could do is really nail the issues about what went wrong with the post placement supervision of children.

“Why were organisations in the UK not concerned and not checking up on what was happening to these children and what did the organisations themselves know about what was going on?”

Several former child migrants have described being abused in their new countries, but also spoken of how they were sexually abused in the UK before being picked out and shipped abroad for more abuse.

In Australia and Northern Ireland public inquiries into child sexual abuse have heard evidence from former child migrants who were sexually abused, but Goddard will specifically examine allegations from victims that they were sexually abused in the UK before being selected and taken to Australia, where the abuse continued.