Yes.
Rudd says sorry to forgotten Australians
AAP
November 16, 2009 11:18am
KEVIN Rudd has apologised to forgotten Australians saying the nation is sorry for their physical suffering, emotional starvation and the cold absence of love and tenderness during their forced care.
โSorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where often you were abused,โ he said.
Hundreds of people, many of them forgotten Australians, have gathered in parliamentโs Great Hall to hear both the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull offer an apology.
They welcomed the Prime Minister with rapturous applause and hooting.
The audience included former child migrants separated from their families in Britain.
They and others were placed with foster parents or in orphanages run by the states and churches up until the late 1970s.
Many suffered ill-treatment and some sexual abuse.
Mr Rudd told those gathered that Australia was โSorry for the physical suffering, emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care.โ
He said that part of Australiaโs history was filled with shame.
โAs a nation we must now reflect on those who did not receive proper care.
โWe look back with shame that so many of you were left cold, hungry and alone and with nowhere to hide and nobody, absolutely nobody, to whom to turn.
Mr Rudd acknowledged the pain of children shipped to Australia as migrants.
โRobbed of your families, robbed of your homeland, regarded not as innocent children, but regarded instead as a source of child labour.
โTo those of you who were told you were orphans, brought here without your parentsโ knowledge or consent, we acknowledge the lies you were told, the lies told to your mothers, fathers and the pain these lies have caused for a lifetime.โ
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Thousands of British children forced to make the long sea journey to Australia in the belief that their parents had died finally received an official apology today (Mon) for the abuse they suffered in their new country.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has shown the way to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown into apologising to the abused and neglected child migrants by uttering a word the former migrants had waited years to hear:
โSorryโ.
Mr Rudd went further, to say that he was โdeeply sorryโ for the pain caused to not only the British migrants but to hundreds of thousands of Australian children who were placed into state care where they were sexually abused, beaten and humiliated.
โWe look back with shame that so many of you were left cold, hungry and alone and with nowhere to hide and nobody, absolutely nobody, to whom to turn,โ said Mr Rudd.
Mr Rudd said the nation was sorry for the physical suffering, emotional starvation and the cold absence of love and tenderness during the forced care suffered by the children who arrived on ships or who were already in Australia.
He said he was โsorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where often they were abused.โ
Hundreds of those children, now in their 50s and beyond gathered in parliamentโs Great hall in Canberra to hear the apology, not only from Labour Prime Minister Mr Rudd but from the Liberal (conservative) leader, Malcolm Turnbull.
As youngsters, they were placed with foster parents or put into orphanages in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, where they suffered ill-treatment and in some cases sexual abuse.

Child Migrants in the 1940s
Half a million Australian children and thousands more from Britain forced to make the long sea journey to Australia in the belief that their parents had died have finally received an official apology for the abuse they suffered in state โcareโ.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has shown the way to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown into apologising to the abused and neglected child migrants and โstolenโ Australian children by uttering a word they had waited more than half a century to hear: โSorryโ
http://richardshears.com/2009/11/16/abused-children-receive-official-apology-for-horror-years/