ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the use of ideology, related to the Lost Children in the perpetrators. In the Christian tradition there is the theme of being loved by God, not by parents, of being adopted into the Christian church by baptism. Stealing children was not new, and the powerful have always taken what they wanted from the weak. Child abuse is always a three-person affair: an abuser, a victim, and someone who is a bystander and turns a blind eye. Rob Riley's is a tragic story, about just one of the 30,000 children who were taken away from their parents. Children were taught to honour their parents, but nowhere were parents told how they should treat their children. As many as 150,000 British children were shipped to a new life in distant parts of the Empire from children's homes. The history of ownership and misuse of children is universal and ancient.