France's Stolen Children Our World

from Reunion Island

in the Indian Ocean to repopulate

rural areas of France.

They were taken from their island

home as children and moved thousands

of kilometres to France.

Now, France is facing up

to a scandal that robbed more

than 2000 children of

everything they knew.

Our story starts in central France,

just outside the city of Limoges.

Marlene Morin moved to the area more

than 50 years ago as an orphan

from the tiny island of Reunion

in the Indian Ocean,

after French Social

Services sold her a lie.

Did you ever see your sister again?

Unlike Marlene, Marise was too young

to choose her new French life.

Her biological mother had

put her into care in Reunion

when she was just a month old.

Marise was resettled by social

services to mainland

France aged six.

Maryse is one of the newest members

of a group that has been battling

for years to find out why 2150

children were uprooted

from their island

and moved to France.

In a vicarage near Toulouse,

they're accounting their stories.

Not everyone had a bad experience,

but many suffered terribly.

There was racism, sexual abuse

and violence, as well as loss

of their culture and identity.

Marlene is here, too.

Both she and Maryse will soon travel

back to Reunion for the first time

courtesy of the French state,

which is perhaps finally listening.

For two years, a government

appointed commission has been

investigating what happened

to these men and women

at the hands of France.

Many here have shocking

stories to tell.

Once a French colony,

Reunion became one of the country's

overseas departments in 1946.

By the 1960s, with an exploding

birth rate, this desperately poor

island found its orphanages

filling up with children,

many of whom weren't orphans at all.

Their families simply

couldn't provide for them.

The island's French MP,

Michel Debre, introduced a policy

he thought would solve the problem.

From 1963 until 1982,

Social Services oversaw

the resettlement of children

to rural parts of mainland France,

where populations were in decline.

Some were adopted, others put

into children's homes

and religious institutions.

Amongst the footage from the time,

in TV reports that portray

the children of Reunion as lucky

to have been given a new life

in a better place,

Marlene's 19-year-old self.

When she'd first arrived

four years before,

she was given minimal schooling.

Instead, she says, she worked

the land in a rural convent.

In the end, the education Marlene

was promised amounted

to an agricultural diploma.

She ended up working

as a supermarket cashier

and on a production line.

She'd already done

that in the convent.

The nuns had had her

glueing boxes for factory

produced sugared almonds.

Was it racist?

Was it well-meaning,

but with dire consequences?

Through the modern lens, uprooting

children from their culture

and whatever family ties they might

have, leaving them thousands

of miles across the world and then

not fulfilling your promises,

it looks, at best, ill-judged,

and at worst, wrong and cruel.

And it went on into the 1980s.

Jesse and her younger brother

and sister were in the first

resettled group from Reunion

to arrive at this children's home

in south-western France in 1967.

Jessie has spent years trying

to discover the background

to her family story.

But her care files from this

children's home have disappeared.

Do you think you can judge

what happened back then

through modern eyes?

I came to Paris to find out how

the French Government views

the scandal now.

In 2014, the Parliament

accepted the state's moral

responsibility for it.

Those who were exiled hope

President Macron will apologise

for what happened once

the investigating commission

delivers its report.

It's a big moment.

Marlene's first visit

to her island in 52 years.

She's brought her daughter,

Aurore, for support.

The scandal of Reunion's exiled

children has become a story across

France.

The government's now paying airfares

and some expenses so

exiles can revisit their island

every three years if they wish to.

And some of Marise's

sisters are at the airport

to meet her for the first time.

But there is no one

to greet Marlene.

Five decades have meant huge

change on an island that

is culturally Creole

and very French.

Once uninhabited, Reunion now has

a population of nearly

865,000.

It is still much poorer

here than mainland France.

The economy is underpinned

by French aid.

In an attempt to help exiles find

out about their past, the

French government has

demanded any documents

the authorities hold

are

handed over to the

individuals involved.

Next, it's Marlene's turn.

Marise's biological

father died in 2006.

Before they had a chance to meet.

His daughters are the living link

in her search for an identity.

But their first meeting didn't

deliver the resemblance for which

she yearned.

It's a big step so soon

after meeting sisters with whom she

clearly already has a bond.

What will happen if the DNA test

is negative and you're not related?

Marlene's come to pay her respects

to Giselle, the sister who tried

to persuade her not

to go to France.

Though she's been dead for years,

there is only a bare plaque.

But Marlene knows she has

another sister, Marianique.

She's desperate to find her,

but she's not sure

whether she is alive or dead.

We went to the town

hall looking for clues.

So you have an address

for your sister.

Two hours later came the phone

call Marlene had only

dared to dream of.

From Marianique herself.

So what is it like to see her now?

With their suffering now starting

to be acknowledged and the French

government paying their airfares, 11

exiles returned to Reunion in 2017.

Another 30 are already

planning trips this year.

For many of them, the experience

will be bittersweet.