Child Migration Programmes (Child Abuse)

John Howell Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered child abuse in the child migration programmes.

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, for allowing me to shine a spotlight on what I can only describe as a state-sponsored system of child abuse. The former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said recently that it was

“bigger in scale, bigger in geographical spread and bigger in the length of time that it went on undetected”

than possibly any other national sex abuse scandal in our history.

For five decades from the 1920s until the 1970s, more than 130,000 children were sent into care overseas in countries including Australia and what was then Southern Rhodesia. Charities, churches and the UK Government participated in the scheme, known as the child migration programmes.

Many of those children were physically and sexually abused. Children as young as 12 were subjected to backbreaking work. Many were psychologically tortured. Some of those children were as young as three years old. They were separated from parents and siblings and many were wrongly told that their families were dead. Children reported being abused in institutions in England before they were then abused again in institutions in the countries that they were migrated to. They were abused by staff, by visitors and by other children. Some were also abused in transit. I will briefly share two of their stories. It is impossible to understand the full horror of this period in our history without hearing some of what happened. I apologise in advance, because it is extremely distressing.

Marcelle O’Brien was only four years old when she was migrated to Australia by Fairbridge. She was bullied. She was locked in cupboards. She was mentally abused. She was sexually assaulted and repeatedly raped by a succession of men. Like so many others, she continued to live with the horror of what had happened until well into adulthood, suffering mental breakdown and periods of manic depression. It was only when she found the Child Migrants Trust that she felt able to talk about what had happened.

Michael O’Donoghue recounted his horrific experiences at the hands of Christian Brothers in Clontarf in Western Australia. He was beaten. He was raped. He endured electric shock treatment. Along with 15 other children, he was forced to watch their pet horse murdered in front of them on what was known as “special punishment day”—one of a series of regular collective punishment days that those children had to endure.

What has since emerged is how many warnings were overlooked, ignored and covered up. For decades, successive Governments ignored those warnings and continued to send children to harm.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is telling some very powerful stories. Has she come across the Lanzarote convention, which was produced by the Council of Europe and signed by the British Government in March, and is she aware of the work the Council of Europe has been doing to highlight the problem of child abuse among refugees? I think that would help her case enormously.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for attending this debate and for raising that point. One of the reasons why it was important for me to bring this issue to the House for the first time for a full debate is that many Members have a strong interest in this area and in pursuing justice for the affected families. It is important that those suggestions are heard, and I hope the Minister has heard them.

Like Marcelle O’Brien, many of those who survived that horrendous period are still living with the consequences. Four years ago, the Prime Minister—then the Home Secretary—commissioned an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. MPs from various parties, including me, welcomed that decision. The inquiry’s first full report is on this subject, and it is damning.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. Am I sufficiently loud for you?

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

indicated assent.

[John Howell]

Great. Let me keep it at that level and say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I wanted to pick up on my intervention, which the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) kindly took, and to raise an issue that has troubled us greatly at the Council of Europe. We are members of the Council of Europe and we shall still be so after Brexit. It is an important body. The convention that I mentioned is the convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, which is known colloquially as the Lanzarote convention.

The convention is important because the one thing that it requires above all is the criminalisation of sexual offences against children. It requires countries that have signed it to ensure that they have in law the necessary criminalisation of such sexual offences. It applies to Europe and to states beyond Europe. Its purpose is to protect child victims and to ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted. Those two things go together well. Forty-seven members of the Council of Europe have signed the convention—there are only 47 members of the Council of Europe, so all members have signed it—and 44 have ratified it. I think we ratified it in March this year.

We are very concerned about the sexual abuse of child migrants. If the hon. Lady looks at the Council of Europe website, she will see a huge raft of discussions and papers that have been produced on this subject, which will contribute strongly to her case. We have approached this from a human rights position, trying to protect the human rights of the children involved. The Council of Europe is the premier human rights organisation in Europe. What came out of the production of the convention was that this should be a political priority in every country that has signed and ratified the convention.

I leave that as an explanation of my earlier intervention on the hon. Lady and of how this may help. It is also an indication to the Minister of how we are activity pursuing a line, in association with our Council of Europe colleagues, of taking this matter further.