I think it's a complicated situation.
The standards of the past aren't the standards of today. However, sexual abuse has never been okay.
The question of physical abuse has varied though, in that straps and such were quite common 50 years ago. Severe bashing though is again a whole different thing.
I tend to think compensation should be paid to those who were abused, but not all of those 4000 children will have suffered abuse (I hope).
I think you have to be very careful calling this a stolen generation. I've been on Ancestry a few years & also on an English messageboard. The fact is, a lot of families popped their children into homes as a choice. The children weren't taken from them-the parents placed their children into homes.
I had terrible trouble tracing my maternal grandfather's background, searched for decades. The secret was finally unlocked for me in 2012. My grandfather was placed in a home for waifs & fatherless boys, probably at the age of about 12. None of his other siblings, older or younger were, so I suspect a clash with his new stepdad. They were a poorer family & child number10 was arriving.
One of his cousins (an illegitimate son) was also placed in a home & sent to Canada as a home child. He lived with his mother for several years till she married, then was placed in the home.
I've been in contact with English descendants of this family & the tradition continued. My second cousin's father was also put in a home at one stage & that would have been a good 25 or 30 years later and so were some other cousins placed in homes for a while.
What English boardies have told me is times were tough, we have no idea, & many families did this.
So much so, that homes in Britain were crowded and some had a tradition that once children reached 14, they could no longer stay at the home, they were expected to get work & be independent. Hard for us to imagine now, I know. But many were sent overseas in the hope it would give them a better chance in life.
I'm not supporting the actions, don't get me wrong. But I'm a bit wary of calling them all a stolen generation. My grandfather changed his surname, had no contact with his family, my mother sensed he was bitter or had had a fight with them. She had no idea he had ever been in a home. But I suspect he blamed his family, not the government. Of course his case was much earlier than 1945 but the years leading up to 1945 would have been tough ones, with a World depression & war, and the mental attitude back in those times seems to have been that a home was a good option.
