his public apology to former child migrants in November,2009 and Gordon Brown who delivered the UK apology in February,2010. Many of the children were subjected to the most inhumane and brutal treatment, such as at Bindoon where they built the building they eventually lived in, using their bare hands. I was living in a children’s home because my parents were dead, and was put on a boat with other children and sent to Australia. For many of them that is the reason they became priest, to hide behind doors and abuse the weak and the vulnerable.

Margaret's book Empty Cradles was written to raise funds for CMT and to increase public awareness of this dark episode in recent history. They were told that they were orphans, even as their parents were told that they'd been adopted into loving families in England, or worse, that they'd died of some childhood disease.Their parents, too, were often deceived; many believed that their children had been adopted in Britain. The work of The Child Migrants Trust is ongoing and relies on donations to support adults, who were once child migrants, in numerous ways. It was shocking to realise that Child migration was still happening when I migrated to Australia in the early 1960s and even more so when she described how some of the child migrants travelled to Australia on the same ship that I travelled on with my family albeit several years apart. For numerous children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse in institutions in Western Australia and elsewhere.

Almost all of the children, from orphanages or children’s homes, had parents who did not realise what was happening. Margaret Humphreys reveals how she gradually unravelled this shocking secret; how she became drawn into the lives of some of these innocent and unwilling exiles, how it became her mission to reunite them with their families in Britain, and how her lonely crusade led to the founding of the Child Migrants Trust.In fact for many children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse far away from everything they knew. Margaret Humphreys, a British Social worker literally fell into a hornets nest when she discovered the Child Migration Scheme. INDEPENDENT"The secrets of the lost children of Britain may never have been revealed if it had not been for [the actions of] Margaret Humphreys.

When you think of that raped child being eight years old, and then ten and fifteen and then being a young man and going to work for the first time, and finding a girlfriend and going to work for the first time; and finding a girlfriend, becoming a husband and a father – all those phases of life that we go through – and this is his baggage; this is what he takes with him through all those changes. There was lack of food, no comfort or love and horrific experiences of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. This was done without the knowledge or permission of their birth families but with the consent of the government.As I started reading, I assumed it would be a basic account of history, facts on the topic and mostly informational. Yet it offers a message of hope to all the victims of a shameful scandal that has been ignored for too long.