National child abuse inquiry to hold first public hearings after controversy

UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian

Sandra Laville
Monday 27 February 2017

The national child abuse inquiry is to hold its first public evidence session after months of delays and controversy over the way it operates.

Its chair, Alexis Jay, will open the sessions on Monday to investigate the abuse of child migrants who were shipped to Australia and Canada by the British government between 1920 and the 1970s.

The children were part of a programme that saw up to 150,000 youngsters, aged three and over, taken from their families. A parliamentary report in 1998 on the abuse suffered by some of the children in Australia described it as widespread, systematic and exceptionally depraved.

About 2,000 former child migrants are still alive and several are giving evidence at the hearings. David Hill, who has waived his anonymity to give evidence at the London inquiry, said in his submission he was sent to Fairbridge Farm in Molong, New South Wales in 1959 with his two brothers.

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