<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/13/i-couldnt-love-her-the-last-uk-child-migrants-to-australia-on-the-long-lonely-search-for-their-mothers>
"It wasn’t until he was 71 that Michael Lachmann found out what a different
life he might have had. He had always believed he was an orphan. But, already
an old man, he discovered he was never an orphan. He had been loved and wanted.
During the second world war his mother had left letters at a residential
nursery saying she was only placing him in care while she was working and until
“daddy gets home from Japan and we will be making a home for little Michael”.
There was no childcare then, unless you were rich.
Instead of being collected by his mother at the war’s end, at the age of five
he was shipped to Australia and placed in the Castledare Boys Home, run by the
Christian Brothers, where numerous boys were starved, beaten and subjected to
sexual abuse. He was told his mother was dead.
Between the 1910s and 1970, 7,000 children aged between three and 14 were
transported to Australia as part of Britain’s child migrant program. Promised a
better life and loving families waiting to adopt, most were instead delivered
into institutions where large numbers suffered abuse. Often their names or
birth dates were changed, erasing their links to their families of origin. Very
few were adopted or fostered.
One thousand and four hundred of those children are still looking for their
birth families. Searching for any family who remain. Now old men and women,
time is running out for these children to piece together who they are – while
they still can.
Even in their 70s and 80s all people want is to find their mother, to know who
she was."
Horriffic institutionalised abuse of both the children and the parents.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
