Back in England, before we came out to Australia in 2008, there had been various documentaries on what was being called the stolen generation. It was a generation of children who, after the second world war, were taken and shipped off as orphans, by the government, to Australia.
Australia wanted to expand its population, preferably with Brits as they were English speaking and of the same ancestry as most current Australians. Having children they could exclusively raise to their form of the ideal Australian citizen was also more desirable than bringing in adults.
The children were shipped over in their 1000s. They were children who had been sent away from the cities to the country to keep them safe from the war. Some were orphaned when their families died in the cities, but many were not. Those children were told that their parents had died and their parents believed them to be in care, but when they went to claim them, they were told they'd been adopted. Many of those children didn't discover the lie until they were much older and by the time they located their family back in England some truly were orphans.
When these children arrived in Australia many were pretty much raised in work houses for places like Barnardos, the Salvation Army and churches. This article back in 1993 was one of the first publications about it and gives an idea of how well it was kept under wraps. Some children were physically, verbally and sexually abused in the care system.
Shortly after we arrived in Australia someone was telling us about the apologies being made to the stolen generation. Some confusion ensued because I thought she was talking about the British children, but it turned out she was talking about aboriginal children. I'm still not sure if she actually believed me at the time when I told her the same had happened in Britain, but some months later that too came out and the Prime Minister was offering more apologies.
For many years both countries managed to keep this quiet and even keep it from their people. In fact it was over 60 years before it was publicly apologised for in Australia. Do we believe that this sort of thing wouldn't happen any more? That our governments wouldn't hide these sorts of things any more? These stories only come out into the open when we are committed to making sure that they are heard. 
To be continued with the story of the stolen generation of aboriginal children...