UNITED KINGDOM
Sydney Morning Herald
Nick Miller
London: “The word is kidnapped,” Edward Delaney says, of his being sent to Australia as a seven year-old, condemned to a boyhood of horrific abuse.
On Tuesday, he told Britain’s inquiry into child sexual abuse that he recently burnt his British passport, in fury at the injustice done to him – and to his parents, who had asked for him to return, but were fobbed off with the lie that he was in a better place.
Mr Delaney, 67, from Melbourne, was born in England to a single mother and lived in an orphanage while his mother saved money for rare visits from London.
But the orphanage signed papers to send him to Australia.
“I was purely and simply kidnapped out of a country, taken from my mother,” he told the inquiry. He was one of thousands sent in the post-war period, recruited by Anglican and Catholic institutions such as the Fairbridge Society.
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