Last night I watched a BBC
production called Oranges and Sunshine.
The story horrified me. From the end of the World War II to the early 1970s,
the British government forcibly relocated British children who had been placed
in a children’s home and sent them around the world to Australia, Canada, New
Zealand and the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
When the parents in England returned
to the children’s home to retrieve their youngsters, they were told that they
had been adopted by a good family in England. The children who were sent to
Australia had been told that their mother or father had died and they were
going to live the good life, filled with oranges and sunshine and a perfect
family in Australia.
Instead, some of the
children were sent to orphanages usually run by Roman Catholic brothers in
Western Australia or Queensland, where they were abused and forced to work in
the worst possible conditions.
Losing their mother and identity
had a terrible affect on the children, which they carry to this day. The most poignant
stories were about the victims seeking the love they lost and holding memories
of their mother.
In the latest news, there is
concern about the rise in child sex trafficking. Barnardo's, a child charity, said
that a quarter of the 1,452 victims it had recorded had been trafficked for sex
within the country. There is an alarming rise in the number of children being
moved around the country by abusers.
The Home Office said significant progress was being made
implementing an action plan to tackle the problem. A Home Office spokesman said: "Child
trafficking and child sexual exploitation are both abhorrent forms of child
abuse and the UK government is committed to combating this crime in all its
forms."
How can adults exploit children
this way? And how can we, as a society, eradicate the warped outlook and
tendencies in these criminals? I don't know the answer. Were the perps. born that
way or did they develop their penchant as they matured? With both the exploited
and exploiters on the increase, humanity is heading for a catastrophe.
I could cry for the children. With
these life experiences, they can't dance with joy. I dread to think how the loss of love from their mother will affect
them.
Oh how awful! It's important to shed a light on this kind of abuse and hopefully bring it to the world stage where it can be stopped! I was totally unaware of the removal of children in WWII but life was full of atrocities then and we seem to have not been able to stop them even now.
ReplyDeleteSo glad to be able to be back online and I'll be catching up on your posts!
Hugs~
Hi there Francene. I couldnt watch that movie, my friend's mother was one of those children and her stories of being used as an unpaid servant from the age of 7 to being hit and verbally abused by the children of the house where she worked to being sexually abused from the age of 14 by the local priest was enough for me to cope with. She was very explicit with what she thought the priest should have had done to him and I'm sure that even though she is over 70 years old, if she was alone in a room with him he would come out a gelding.
ReplyDeleteHere in Australia we are being granted a Royal Commission into the abuse of children by adults in the clergy, scouts, schools, etc and has been greatly welcomed by the wider community. I'm sure the scope of this perversion is massive, the first thing I would like to see is 'outing' these men to the general community so that we have some kind of protection. The second thing should be to just get rid of them. There is no cure and the jails would be full to bursting. Show them the same mercy they showed to their victims.