Oranges and Sunshine (Aka Empty Cradles)

Note: about 11 pages have a line or two marked by highlighter

In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British Government. At first incredulous, Margaret discovered that this was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Up to 150 000 children had been deported from Britain and shipped off to a `new life' in distant parts of the Empire, the last as recently as 1967. Many of the children were told that their parents were dead. Their parents, too, were often deceived: many believed that their children had been adopted in Britain. The reality was very different: for numerous children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse in institutions in Western Australia and elsewhere. Humphries 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...