Painful memories surface during apology http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/16/2744456.htm It's a sorry state of affairs when forgiveness is not the main objective http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/its-a-sorry-state-of-affairs-when-forgiveness-is-not-the-main-objective-20091115-igav.html House of Commons: The Welfare of Former British Child Migrants http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmhealth/755/75504.htm Alliance for Forgotten Australians [pdf] http://www.forgottenaustralians.org.au/index.html Home of the Forgotten Australians http://www.forgottenaustralians.com.au/ Almost 40 years ago, a child migrant program that sent children from Britain to Canada, Australia, and other parts of the British Commonwealth ended. The program caused great heartache for many of these young people, and they became known in Australia as the Lost Innocents. On Monday, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology for that country's role in the program, remarking, "We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter of our nation's history." During this rather unusual policy initiative, the British government sent almost 150,000 children from single mothers and poor families in the hope that they would have a better life. Many of these young people suffered through difficult upbringings, and some of them reported horrendous physical and emotional abuse. Some within the Lost Innocents advocacy community continue the call for retroactive compensation, but the Commonwealth has ruled this out as a viable option. The first link will lead visitors to an article from this Monday's New York Times about the formal apology issued by the Australian government. The second link whisks users away to another article about the apology from ABC News in Australia. Moving along, the third link leads to a trenchant editorial from the Sydney Morning Herald, written by Hugh Mackay who suggests that an apology is "an appeal to the injured party to forgive us for what we did to them." The fourth link leads to the formal report on the Lost Innocents from the British Parliament. The fifth link features the homepage of the Alliance for Forgotten Australians, which is an advocacy group designed to promote the needs of these individuals through various publications and other works. Finally, the last link will take visitors to the site for another advocacy group, the Forgotten Australians.