Former migrants say apology has come 'too late'

Former child migrants who suffered years of abuse in Australian institutions yesterday welcomed the British government's apology for shipping them abroad, but many said it was too little too late.

Hundreds of the estimated 7,000 Britons sent to Australia under the Child Migrants Programme attended official ceremonies across the country to mark Prime Minister Gordon Brown's apology, delivered in London.

British High Commissioner Valerie Amos read out Mr Brown's remarks at a reception in Sydney, telling former migrants gathered there she was sorry it had been so long coming.

Many in the crowd wept openly, recalling austere post-war childhoods as labourers on remote Outback farms where they were physically, emotionally, and sometimes sexually abused between the 1920s and 1960s.

"Girls were raped by people they entrusted to care," said Lynda Craig, who was just five when she was removed from her Liverpool family and sent to Fairbridge Farm School in 1955.

Ms Craig, like countless others, grew up falsely believing she was alone in the world after authorities lied to her about her mother dying from cancer.

Carol Walisoliso, who was also shipped to Fairbridge as a 10-year-old, said she was so badly beaten and abused she ran away.

"It is far too late. It should have been a long, long time ago," Ms Walisoliso said of Mr Brown's apology.

"They knew about (the suffering) and did nothing."

Richard Atkins said he was "told we were coming for a holiday, chained together, and hidden on a boat" for the long voyage to Australia in 1960.

"The journey for me has never ended some 50 years later. I was abused by authorities here, shunned by the establishment and forgotten by all," Mr Atkins said. "Today I feel a little bit of weight has been taken from my shoulders."

Mary Molloy, who was raised in a girls' home in Sydney, told state radio the apology was a "good step in the right direction and a long time coming, but it'll never be closure".

The Child Migrants Programme, which ended 40 years ago, shipped an estimated 150,000 destitute children to a "better life" in Commonwealth countries such as Australia and Canada but many ended up in institutions or as farm labourers.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last year offered his own apology to the thousands of British migrants who were abused or neglected in state care.