Child migrants: abuse inquiry report out

‘The policy itself was indefensible’.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has published its report into the Child Migration Programmes case study.

Over a period of many years before and after the Second World War, successive United Kingdom governments allowed children to be removed from their families, care homes and foster care in England and Wales to be sent to institutions or families abroad, without their parents.

These child migrants – more than 130,000 children, aged between three and 14 – were sent mainly to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Post-war, around 4,000 children were sent away, mostly to Australia. The last children went off in 1967.

Many witnesses, the reports says, described ‘care’ regimes which included physical abuse, emotional abuse and neglect, as well as sexual abuse, in the various settings to which they were sent. Some described constant hunger, medical neglect and poor education, the latter of which had, in several instances, lifelong consequences. By any standards of child care, then or at the present time, all of this was wrong

Government departments, public authorities and charities participated in these child migration programmes and were responsible, to varying degrees, for what subsequently happened to the children.

This report sets out the results of the Inquiry’s investigation into the experiences of child migrants, and the extent to which institutions took sufficient care to protect these children from sexual abuse.

The investigation also examined the extent to which the institutions involved knew, or should have known, about the sexual abuse of the child migrants and how they have responded to any such knowledge.

Finally, it considered the adequacy of the support and reparations for this sexual abuse, if any, which have been provided by the institutions concerned.

And although the focus of the Inquiry is on sexual abuse, the accounts of other forms of abuse provide an essential context for understanding the experiences of child migrants.

Child migration was, the report says, badly executed by many voluntary organisations and local authorities, but it was allowed by successive British governments to remain in place, despite a catalogue of evidence which showed that children were suffering ill treatment and abuse, including sexual abuse.

Documents from the period refer to the appeal of migration being “the saving of children from undesirable parents” and securing the “rescue” of children.

The report criticises Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) for the policy of child migration and has recommended that all child migrants are financially compensated by HMG through a redress scheme.

It also recommends that the organisations involved in implementing the migration programmes offer their apologies to the child migrants if they have not yet done so.

Some organisations, the report said, responded better than others to allegations or evidence of sexual abuse when these were made known to them: for example, Barnardo’s suspended migration when evidence of sexual abuse emerged at its Picton school in Australia, whereas the Fairbridge Society failed to respond appropriately to a series of such allegations at its schools in both Canada and Australia.

HMG’s rationale for participating in and approving the child migration programmes was a combination of reasons related to the welfare of the children and a desire to populate the white British Empire.

The Catholic agencies’ rationales for involvement in the programmes included the best interests of the child, the provision of better living conditions for them, the safeguarding of their religious faith, the growth of the Catholic faith within Australia itself, financial considerations and the social imperial motivation of populating the Empire with white British stock.

But the overwhelming conclusion of the Inquiry is that the institution primarily to blame for the continued existence of the child migration programmes after the Second World War was Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) – this was a deeply flawed policy, as HMG has since accepted.

HMG ‘has accepted that there were a number of occasions during the migration period when it had knowledge of allegations or evidence of sexual abuse of child migrants’.

But the policy in itself was indefensible, the report said, and HMG could have decided to bring it to an end, or mitigated some of its effects in practice by taking action at certain key points, but it did not do so.

Of the many reports on child migration available to HMG during the 1950s, perhaps the most significant was the Ross Report (1956).

The British Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office, John Ross, visited 26 out of 39 institutions in Australia to which British child migrants were sent. The reports on many of these places were extremely critical. The conditions at several of them were judged to be so bad that they were put on a ‘blacklist’ and regarded as not fit to receive any more child migrants. Still, HMG did nothing effective to protect the children.

The Inquiry also concluded that several governments after 1970 failed to accept full responsibility for HMG’s role in child migration.

John Major, who was Prime Minister from 1990-1997, publicly stated that he “was aware that there were allegations of physical and sexual abuse of a number of child migrants some years ago, but that any such allegations would be a matter for the Australian authorities”.

This reflected a policy position that was maintained throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Finally, in 2010, Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister, publicly apologised to former child migrants on behalf of HMG and established the Family Restoration Fund with £6million, to help survivors trace lost relatives and reunite those separated for decades.

Many, but not all, of the voluntary and public institutions involved in child migration have apologised for their role in it, some more fully than others, and some for the first time in their evidence given to the Inquiry.

The report has three recommendations for any comprehensive scheme of reparations: financial redress, further institutional apologies, and the preservation of child migrants’ records – this latter as the inability to access their records in a straightforward manner, or at all, has caused some child migrants yet further distress and an ongoing lack of clarity over their identity.

The chair of the Inquiry, Professor Alexis Jay, said: “Child migration was a deeply flawed government policy that was badly implemented by numerous organisations which sent children as young as five years old abroad.

“Successive British governments failed to ensure there were sufficient measures in place to protect children from all forms of abuse, including sexual abuse.

“The policy was allowed to continue despite evidence over many years showing that children were suffering.

“We hope that this report offers acknowledgement to those who experienced abuse resulting from the child migration programmes.”

To read the full report, click here.