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cbabe

(6,470 posts)
4. True story of stolen children for starters
Sat Feb 14, 2026, 04:17 PM
Saturday
https://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141415270/oranges-and-sunshine-but-both-of-them-lies

'Oranges And Sunshine,' But Both Of Them Lies
OCTOBER 20, 20116:06 PM ET
By
Jeannette Catsoulis

If anyone could be expected to stake out the angels' side of a social issue, it would be a son of Ken Loach, so it's no surprise that Jim Loach's first feature tackles one of the biggest social scandals of the past century. Oranges and Sunshine, based on the 1994 book Empty Cradles by Nottingham social worker Margaret Humphreys, deals with the fallout from the forced — and largely secret — migration of English children to Australia beginning in the 17th century and lasting, astonishingly, until the 1970s.

All in all, a staggering 130,000 children were shipped to the back of beyond, most of them working-class kids whose young, single mothers were told that they had been adopted by "better" families. (The children, many as young as 4, were told they were orphans.) But instead of the oranges and sunshine they were promised, many encountered horrific abuse and deprivation, mostly at the hands of youth-oriented Catholic ministries like the Christian Brothers.



"We built stations of the cross," says one traumatized survivor. "But who was crucified?" We'd all like to know the answer to that one.

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