NORTHERN IRELAND
Irish Times
Gerry Moriarty
Wed, Sep 10, 2014
A woman who was sent to Australia from a Belfast care home when she was a child has told the North’s Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry that she suffered feelings of “abandonment and isolation” when as an adult she became engaged to be married.
The 63-year-old native of Co Tyrone who was giving evidence by video link from Australia to the inquiry in Banbridge, Co Down, today said she was transported to Australia in 1955 when she was aged four.
Prior to that she had been in care at the Nazareth House home run by the Sisters of Nazareth in Belfast. The woman, who asked to maintain her anonymity, was one of approximately 130 children who were sent to Australia as part of a child migration programme between 1922 and 1995.
Some 50 men and women have made statements to the inquiry with 11 of them providing oral evidence from Australia over the past two weeks.
While some witnesses in this module of the inquiry gave evidence of suffering sexual and physical abuse in Australia the Dungannon woman, who is the last to provide oral evidence from Australia, said she had a fortunate experience as a child in the Melbourne area.
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