UK govt slammed over child migrant abuse

UNITED KINGDOM/AUSTRALIA
9 News

Former ABC managing director David Hill has told a UK inquiry the British government betrayed thousands of child migrants who were sexually abused, beaten and used as slave labour at Australian farm schools.

The 70-year-old told the child sexual abuse inquiry sitting in London that former prime minister John Major’s assertion that child migrants were not the British government’s responsibility once they were sent away was “disturbing”.

At age 12, Mr Hill was sent to the Fairbridge Society farm school at Molong in NSW in 1959 along with other children who had been put into care.

His 2007 book The Forgotten Children details the routine abuse suffered by children there.

In May, the inquiry heard former child migrants tell of the sexual, physical and emotional abuse they suffered at institutions run by Fairbridge, the Christian Brothers and other church and charity groups in Australia up to the 1970s.

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