LONDON — As many as 150,000 poor British children were shipped off to the colonies over three and a half centuries, often taken from struggling families under programs intended to provide them with a new start — and the Empire with a supply of sturdy white workers.
Forty years after the program stopped, Britain and Australia are saying sorry to the child migrants, who were promised a better life only to suffer abuse and neglect thousands of miles from home.
The British government said Sunday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown would formally apologize in 2010 for child migrant programs that sent boys and girls as young as 3 to Australia, Canada and other former colonies. Many ended up in institutions where they were physically and sexually abused, or were sent to work as farm laborers.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a historic apology today to thousands of impoverished British children shipped to Australia with the promise of a better life. But his government ruled out paying compensation for the abuse and neglect that many suffered.
At a ceremony in the Australian capital of Canberra attended by tearful former child migrants, Rudd apologized for his country’s role in the migration and extended condolences to the 7,000 survivors of the program who still live in Australia.
“We are sorry,” 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.”
The apology comes a day after the British government said Brown would apologize for child migrant programs that sent children as young as 3 to Australia, Canada and other former colonies over three and a half centuries. The first group was sent to the Virginia Colony in 1618.
Rudd also apologized to the “forgotten Australians” — children who suffered in state care during the last century. According to a 2004 Australian Senate report, more than 500,000 children were placed in foster homes, orphanages and other institutions during the 20th century. Many were emotionally, physically and sexually abused in state care.
The Australian government has ruled out compensation, saying liability lay with state governments and churches that ran the institutions.
Sandra Anker, who was 6 when she was sent to Australia in 1950, said the British government has “a lot to answer for.”
“We’ve suffered all our lives,” she told the BBC.
John Hennessey, 72, of Campbelltown, Australia, struggles to make himself understood through a stutter — a never-healing scar from a thrashing he received from an Australian orphanage headmaster 60 years ago.
Hennessey was only 6 when he was shipped from a British orphanage to an institute for boys in the country town of Bindoon in Western Australia state.
At 12, he was stripped naked and nearly beaten to death by the headmaster for eating grapes he had taken from a vineyard without permission because he was hungry.
“What terrified me most was that in my mind I thought: ‘That’s my father; what’s he doing?’ — I had nobody else and he was the one I’d looked up to,” Hennessey said. “Before that I didn’t have a stutter. I’ve sought medical advice since and they’ve said: ‘John, you’re going to take that to the grave with you.’ ”
The British government has estimated that a total of 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. Many of the children were told that they were orphans, though most had either been abandoned or taken from their families by the state.
Authorities believed they were acting in the children’s best interests, but the migration also was intended to stop them from being a burden on the British state while supplying the receiving countries with potential workers. A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry noted that “a further motive was racist: the importation of ‘good white stock’ was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies.”
Britain has been trying to make amends since the late 1990s by funding trips to reunite migrants with their families in Britain.
Brown’s office said officials would consult with representatives of the surviving children before making a formal apology next year.
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