The Rolls Royce Sicko: Britain’s ‘Greatest War Hero’ who sexually abused migrant children at Fairbridge Farm Schools in Australia and got away with it…
Field Marshal William Joseph Slim, 1st Viscount Slim, (‘Sir William Slim’) was a revered British military commander and war hero who served heroically in both the First and Second World Wars. He also led the 14th Army, “Forgotten Army” during the Burma Campaign of (1942–1945), against Imperial Japan, Thailand and India. Furthermore, Sir William Slim was the 13th Governor-General of Australia from 1953 until 1960. British Lieutenant General Sir John Panton Kiszely, once touted ‘Uncle Bill’ (Slim’s military nickname), as the quintessential self-deprecating military man and “the greatest military commander of the 20th century.” A remarkable human being on many levels it would appear.
The plot thickens, however.
What lies beneath Slim’s military achievements and accolades is something far more sinister.
Beneath his highly decorated military facade, Sir William Slim was also an alleged sexual predator. Most recently, he has been accused of sexually molesting child migrants he visited at Fairbridge Farm Schools, throughout his royally-appointed role as Governor-General of Australia. The alleged abuse is said to have taken place in his Rolls Royce while serving as the Queen’s representative during the 1950’s and 1960's.
Sir William Slim, was the patron of Fairbridge Farm Schools in Australia at the time. These so-called ‘Farm Schools’ were a product of The Fairbridge Society, based in the United Kingdom (‘UK’), originally founded by Kingsley Fairbridge (1886–1924) in 1909. This elite charity organisation supported child migration schemes to send thousands of underprivileged, illegitimate and orphaned British children to Australia to populate the colony abroad and to be educated and cared for at Fairbridge Farm Schools, under the pretext of experiencing a so-called ‘better life.’ Many of these migrant children were the tragic victims of circumstance. They envisioned a life of oranges, happiness and eternal sunshine once they got to Australia. Sadly, this was not the case
Beyond the facade of Fairbridge Farm Schools, lay a horrific and clandestine reality. The truth being these Australian Farm Schools were facilitating and perpetuating rampant physical and sexual abuse of countless British migrant children. Government-supported institutions that were meant to protect, educate and adequately care for migrant children who had been taken away from their families and shipped off to a country a million miles away from everything they had ever known.
Between 1913-1982, Fairbridge Farm School located in Pinjarra, Western Australia (‘Fairbridge Pinjarra’), assisted roughly 4,000 British children. Supposedly, playing a pivotal role in the expansion of the British Empire abroad and facilitating the development of Western Australia’s migration history. Albeit, through a multitude of vacuous child, single parent and family migration schemes. Likewise, Fairbridge Farm School located in Molong, New South Wales (‘Fairbridge Molong)’, operated from 1937-1973 facilitating mass emigration of underprivileged children throughout the UK. The British Government naively thought Fairbridge Farm Schools, would provide child migrants with appropriate care and education required. Indeed, Fairbridge Pinjarra and Fairbridge Molong were subsequently supported by The Fairbridge Society, which was financially bankrolled by the British elite and British royalty of that time.
Once they got to Australia, child migrants became the prime responsibility of dysfunctional adjudicators running the Farm Schools and the Australian Government to a far lesser extent. Suffice to say, the supervisors of Fairbridge Farm Schools were grossly inadequate. Migrant children were frequently abused by violent and alcoholic ‘cottage-mothers’ who had been brought up in fear-based rampantly abusive institutions themselves. Cottage-mothers had no idea how to properly care for children and often took their bitterness and frustrations out on them. Migrant children also encountered sadistic male and female supervisors who sought to fulfil their sick and twisted paedophilic fantasies.
For many decades, UK children were shipped across the globe in their hordes and dumped at the doorsteps of Fairbridge Farm Schools. Endlessly beaten and abused. The tragic and frustrating thing in all of this is, the British and Australian Government’s knew what was happening to migrant children, yet they chose to turn a blind eye to their suffering. The child migrant scandal has destroyed thousands of lives. Childhoods damaged. Lost forever.
Ultimately, the purpose of child migration schemes was twofold. Firstly, to ease the massive burden of overpopulated orphanages in the UK and secondly, to accelerate the population of colonies abroad, like Australia. The Australian Royal Commission into Institutionalised Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–2017) in 2015, encountered many devastating stories of thousands of former child migrants who experienced illiteracy due to poor education, forced labour, physical beatings and emotional, psychological and sexual abuse on a regular basis.
Many of these former migrants were brainwashed into believing their parents were dead. Told on a daily basis they were nothing more than “little guttersnipes.” Unwanted and unloved. The idea was to erode their identities. Kill their spirits. Stop them from ever maintaining a relationship with their families back in the UK. The British Inquiry has established the decision to send thousands of British children to Australia, under dubious migration programs should have been eradicated as far back as 1956. In 1956, three British Officials were sent to Australia, on a fact-finding mission to inspect and assess the quality of care in twenty-six institutions housing child migrants. What they found was truly shocking.
The report identified a gross lack of expertise in childcare, education and hygiene at Fairbridge Farm Schools. Furthermore, highly critical of the fact migrant children were living in isolated rural areas. The British Government expected child migrants to have been better assimilated and to be living in urban areas. The idea was that these children would eventually be adopted by urban Australian’s. Notwithstanding, The UK Home Office, viewed the report extensively and proceeded to add a select number of institutions to its “infamous blacklist.” Demonstrating those institutions that had been blacklisted, should not be receiving any more children due to unsatisfactory conditions. Fairbridge Pinjarra and Fairbridge Molong were subsequently blacklisted.
However, the report failed to go so far as to explicitly mention the prevalence of child sexual abuse taking place at Fairbridge Farm Schools. British and Australian Officials kept their mouths firmly closed on the delicate issue of child abuse. British migrant children had no one to turn to for help. Forced to keep their mouths shut about the untold pain and abuse they were suffering.
An alleged cover-up between two countries began once the 1956 report found its way back to the UK. The Overseas Migration Board informed British Officials in 1957 that the child migrant program was an abysmal failure. It should never have gone ahead. Unsurprisingly, findings from the report were whitewashed in the British Parliament. The intention was to dissuade British Parliament from making any public statements about what was happening at Fairbridge Farm Schools in Australia. If the British Government had faced up to the fact it had supported ‘questionable’ child migration programs that engendered child sex abuse it would have caused a public outcry. Potentially irreversible political fallout outweighed political transparency.
The Fairbridge Society had its reputation to uphold. Its illustrious President was Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. The Queen’s uncle for god sake! If it had been exposed, British royalty was complicit in condoning entrenched child sexual abuse of British children at Fairbridge Farm Schools, established by the very foundation it was ‘bankrolling’ it would have been a royal scandal. A media feeding frenzy. Damaging to the reputation and perhaps future of the British Monarchy. It was, therefore, decided the report would not be made public for fear of the controversy it would cause and public scrutiny it would garner. Moreover, the fact upper echelons of British society were inextricably linked. So British children continued to be shipped out to Fairbridge Farm Schools in Australia. Irrespective of, child sex abuse that was knowingly happening. Two Countries. Two Governments. One despicable quest to hide the truth. Thousands of lives irreparably destroyed in the process. People in high places knew the truth. People in high places did nothing about it.
The sheer isolation and brutality of these Farm Schools in Australia and being forcibly severed from their families in the UK demonstrated the extent to which migrant children were destined for misery. Kingsley Fairbridge’s vision for a purposeful, communal work-driven ethos at Fairbridge Farm Schools was nothing more than an idealistic pipedream. Journalist Janet Wainright maintains;
“In retrospect, Kingsley Fairbridge’s philanthropic dream to give the British children a better life was no more successful than Australia’s separating of Aboriginal children from their parents.”
Both the British and Australian Government’s have since apologised to countless victims of these failed child migrant programs who were instead, recklessly abused and starved of love and affection at Australian-based Farm Schools. Ironically, in an Australian Senate Inquiry back in 2001, Fairbridge Foundation audaciously feigned;
“[We] [were] unaware of any unsafe, improper or unlawful treatment.”
Alternatively, the vast majority of child migrants weren’t orphans. They had families back in the UK who cared about their wellbeing. Many were never properly informed about what had happened to their beloved children. Mothers were told their children had either been adopted out or had died. Let alone shipped off to Australia for a life of never-ending misery and abuse. For countless other mothers, sending their children to Australia was a temporary solution to financial hardships. They intended to join their children in Australia. Eventually. The reality was many mothers lost their children forever.
An insidious policy of concealing the truth and a child’s history became a convenient way for authorities to cover their tracks. Some organisations went as far as tampering with children’s birth names, birth dates and birth certificates so they would never know their true identities or be able to trace their families. A horrendous cover-up involving the British elite, the British Monarchy, two countries and a plethora of powerful backers pumping money into a seemingly, traitorous foundation.
The British royal family’s archives department informed the British Inquiry, it had no relevant documents detailing any sexual abuse of British migrant children in Australia. It also denied withholding relevant documentation on Sir William Slim, accused of sexually abusing migrant children he visited at Fairbridge Farm Schools throughout the 1950’s. There’s also apparently no relevant information on the Queen’s cousin, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. The patron of Fairbridge Society at the time. And the royal connection to the child migrant scandal. A conspiracy theory it would seem.
Bob Stevens, one of Sir William Slim’s alleged victims, recently filed a lawsuit against Fairbridge Molong. Stevens claimed, Slim would arrive at the school decked out in his Rolls Royce; and;
“[T]he next minute [I] [was] sitting on his knee and he’s got his hands up my trouser’s.”
Mr Stevens informed the Australian Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse via a private statement where he detailed the alleged abuse he suffered at the hands of Slim. Mr Stevens was sent to Fairbridge Farm School in Molong, NSW, Australia at age 8. He had spent his earlier years in orphanages in the UK. Mr Stevens has also applied to the Royal Commission, to have Sir William Slim stripped of his peerage. The sexual abuse of Mr Stevens took place in Slim’s government-appointed Rolls Royce. Mr Stevens has categorised the abuse he endured from Sir William Slim;
“[It] has never left me and it can’t leave me. I don’t care how brilliant a man he might have been [military] [speaking] if he abused children the way I was abused and others, I don’t think people like that have the right to continue… In terms of peerage that goes on from family to family to family. I think that it’s outrageous.”
Mr Stevens says he knows of at least four other Fairbridge Molong boys who were sexually abused by Sir William Slim during the 1950’s, who later became the head of Fairbridge Society. Regardless of repugnant allegations against Sir William Slim, a statue of the former British military commander and war hero still firmly stands in Whitehall, London.
Sir William Slim who died in 1970 at the age of 79, conveniently died before having to be made accountable for abhorrent sexual crimes against innocent, vulnerable and defenceless migrant children. The children of Fairbridge Farm Schools had already endured enough. Let alone having to endure the sexually perverted antics of a supposed pillar of British society. If there’s a hell, I trust Sir William Slim and the other monsters of Fairbridge Farm Schools have slowly rotted in it. Piece by piece.
