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News and Media Releases
- Victims break silence on institutional child abuse
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Contributor:
Project Worker
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Posted: 2-5-2007
KERRY O'BRIEN: For more than 30 years from the late 30s, 10,000 children from poverty-stricken British families were brought to Australia in the name of charity. On arrival, the children were sent to boarding institutions all around the country to begin a new life and one of the shining beacons of the scheme was Fairbridge Farm at Molong, 300 kilometres west of Sydney. The vision behind Fairbridge was that the boys would be become farmers, the girls farmers' wives. But a new book now starkly outlines a sordid and disturbing story.
The author is the former high profile public administrator David Hill, who until now been touted as one of the farm's greatest success stories. His research reveals a devastating picture of a school where children as young as four were molested and forced to work long hours. Despite two parliamentary inquiries in the past decade here and in Britain, only now are the victims finally breaking their silence en masse. Deborah Cornwall reports.
Website: Broadcast: 01/05/2007
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