NORTHERN IRELAND
Voice of Russia
A hearing into the historic transportation of children from Northern Ireland to Australia opened today, with child rights groups calling for a nationwide inquiry into what campaigners have labeled “the largest child abuse scandal in Britain’s history.”
Around 50 former residents of institutions in Northern Ireland are set to give evidence in a series of hearings in Banbridge, County Down, about the child migration programme that ran from the 1920s until the 1970s.
Documentary evidence found that around 140 young children from Northern Ireland, who were in the care of voluntary institutions, religious charities or state bodies were sent to Australia as child migrants, with many allegedly sexually abused.
The hearings form the second part of the Inquiry into Historical Institutional Abuse in Northern Ireland.
The inquiry is set to hear evidence from children who were taken away without the knowledge or consent of their parents.
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