On Monday, Rudd delivered a public apology to tens of thousands of orphans and other impoverished children who were sent to Australia from Britain, often without the knowledge of their parents. Instead of going on to the better life they had been promised, many faced neglect and abuse in institutions or were put to work as forced laborers on farms.

In a highly emotional ceremony in Canberra attended by some 900 former child migrants, the Australian prime minister apologized for the years of abuse and suffering, and for the "absolute tragedy of a childhood lost."

Brown set to give apology, too

Meanwhile, the British government on Monday said Prime Minister Gordon Brown is set to formally apologize to the children as well.

He plans to make the apology in the New Year, after he confers with advocacy groups representing former child migrants and their families on the exact content of the speech, a government spokesperson said.

"The time is now right for an apology," Brown wrote in a letter to a Labour member of parliament who has campaigned on the issue.

The old Child Migrants Programme ran between 1927 and 1967. It shipped off an estimated 150,000 children - known as the Lost Innocents - who were under the care of orphanages or other charitable agencies to commonwealth countries, mainly Canada and Australia.

"Ugly chapter" in history

As a result of the program, children as young as three years old were forcibly separated from their parents and families. Some were told they were orphans when they weren't. The families had been told the children were going on to start a better life.

"We come together today to deal with an ugly chapter of our nation's history and we come together today to offer our nation's apology," Mr. Rudd said.

He said Australia was "sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love and tenderness of care."

In a 1998 report, the British Parliament said the Child Migrants Programme had a twofold aim: to help lighten the financial load on Britain's social service agencies and to import "good white stock" into Australia and "maintain the racial unity of the empire."

Rudd also offered a wider apology to the estimated 500,000 "Forgotten Australians": children who suffered in state care in Australia between 1930 and 1970.

The speech followed an event last year, where Rudd apologized to the "stolen generations" of aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their parents in a strategy of white assimilation that was not abandoned until 1970.

jen/dpa/AP/Reuters

Editor: Kyle James