David Hill’s mother made the ‘ultimate sacrifice’ when they sent him to New South Wales. Now he wants a UK inquiry to hear the stories of those abused as children

David Hill was 12, “so bloody poor” and living in England with his single mother and three brothers when they were given a brochure for Fairbridge Farm school in New South Wales, Australia, and the promise of a better life.

“The brochure was promoting a scheme where you take waif kids and kids of the pauper class and the slums before they could be corrupted by the poverty and crime of England and send them to Australia for education and opportunity in schools like Fairbridge, where we would become strong and long-limbed by working the farms,” Hill says.

“Parents were told, ‘If you really love your kids, you’ll make the ultimate sacrifice and send them away for opportunity and education.’ My brothers and I were old enough to be part of the decision and we all agreed it sounded like a fantastic idea.”

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It was 1959. Hill and two of his brothers went to Australia, along with thousands of other children whose parents were persuaded to send them away to commonwealth countries to get a better education. The British government supported the scheme, known as the child migrant program, viewing it as a way to address poverty while populating the colony.

But when Hill, originally from Eastbourne in Sussex, arrived at Fairbridge, near Molong in the state’s central west, the reality was very different. The education was poor and many children, including him, were forced to leave school by the age of 15 to labour on the farm in brutal conditions. Food was poor quality and scarce. For many children, emotional, physical, psychological and sexual abuse was a frequent occurrence inside Fairbridge and other educational institutions for migrants run by the Australian government, the states, religious institutions and charities.

Now, a wide-ranging UK inquiry into child sexual abuse across many walks of life and over several decades is set to hear their stories. Dame Lowell Goddard QC, who is heading the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse, this week encouraged those sent to Australian institutions as children and who were abused before and after their journey to give evidence, fast-tracking her investigation because of the age and poor health of survivors.

Hill, who rose to become chairman and managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has approached the Goddard inquiry to give evidence. But he believes he was one of the more fortunate ones.

“I was illegally treated and subject to public floggings,” he says. “But I wasn’t sexually abused like so many others were. That abuse was terrible and it would break your heart. Little girls and boys as young as five and six being abused regularly, and they are irreparably damaged.”

Some were abused before being brought to Australia, chosen for the program because of their vulnerability.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Hill says his experience as a child migrant was by no means the worst. Photograph: Random House/AAP/Random House

Hill tracked many of these people down and interviewed them for his 2007 book about the experience of children at Fairbridge Farm, The Forgotten Children.

“I went and interviewed all the former kids I could find and, for a lot of them, it was cathartic and it was the first time they had offloaded to anyone,” Hill says.

“Some were too traumatised to speak. But what was extraordinary was that although many of these kids hadn’t seen each other since they left the farm, all of their stories matched up. I was hearing the names of the same perpetrators and the same patterns of abuse again and again.”

Since writing about the survivors, Hill has served as their advocate, working with the law firm Slater and Gordon to help 150 claimants secure a landmark $24m settlement last year in a case against Fairbridge, the Australian federal government and the NSW state government.

The class action began in 2009, the same year the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, apologised in parliament to the “forgotten Australians”, including an estimated 10,000 former British child migrants.

“I was not a claimant and I didn’t receive any of the funds because I feel I was more fortunate than the other kids,” Hill says. “It would have looked crook if I’d been standing in a queue with my hand out for some money.”

But he is not done fighting. The Goddard inquiry is important, he says, because the class action was not able to hold the British government to account for allowing children to be sent to Australia in the first place. He says children continued to be sent to Australia long after allegations of abuse were first raised with British authorities.

I want an acknowledgement from the British government that they committed a great wrong David Hill, abuse survivor

“What I’ll put in my submission is evidence I came across while writing my book that in 1956, the British government was so concerned about these schemes they sent a government fact-finding mission to Australia,” he says.

“As a result of what was reported back the British government drew up a blacklist of institutions unfit for children. Fairbridge was one of them and they blacklisted 10 out of 26 institutions. I want an acknowledgment from the British government that they committed a great wrong and that they knew.”

The University of New South Wales is leading the first independent, Australian university-led study into the experiences of children in care and after they left that care. The study launched last year and its principal investigator, Prof Elizabeth Fernandez, says the initial data is devastating and revealing.

While the result are still preliminary, she says of about 700 people surveyed and interviewed, 79% said they had been physical abused and 56% had been sexually abused. She says 86% experienced emotional abuse. Many more witnessed others being abused, she says.

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“Many of them were subject to harsh physical punishment, emotional and psychological abuse, neglect of their education, sexual abuse and oppressive work practises,” Fernandez says.

“When they left care they brought with them this history of trauma and maltreatment and alienation from their families, mental and [physical health difficulties and this often has very serious intergenerational effects. The purpose of this study is to look at all of the types of maltreatment they experienced and the impact on their lives as adults, so everything from their financial situation to employment and housing.”

Fernandez says the research, the Long-term Outcomes of Forgotten Australians study, would also aim to help the 43,000 children throughout Australia still in care.

“We hope that the findings from a study like this will help to inform contemporary out-of-home care policy and practice because we do know from research about young adult care leavers that they do still experience a number of negative outcomes to do with education, work, health and housing,” she says.

Children were sent to Fairbridge as part of the scheme Hill was under between 1938 and 1974. But he says children continued to be sent to Australian institutions into the early 1980s, though their parents were by that time able to follow them. Hill’s own mother followed him and his brothers to Australia after concerns about the program were raised in England, but she could not afford to immediately remove them from Fairbridge.

“What’s not widely appreciated in Britain or Australia is how big the child migration schemes were and how relatively recently the schemes ended,” Hill says.

“When my mum came to Australia and visited us, she was devastated. She kept on mumbling ‘Oliver Twist’ and she had to console us and herself because she couldn’t take us out. She was an unskilled migrant with no money and we had to stay.”

Do you know more? melissa.davey@theguardian.com