Marie-Charlette Labeaume, a retired healthcare assistant from the hospital in Mende who has lived in Lozère for over fifty years, returns this Sunday, 15 November, to the island of her birth for a week of commemorative ceremonies. Born in Réunion on 22 September 1952, she is one of more than 2,000 children from the island whose promised better future in mainland France became a lifetime of exile, unanswered questions and, for some, profound suffering. Her story sheds light on a chapter of public policy that the French state has only now formally recognised.
Between 1962 and 1984, the Bureau pour le développement des migrations dans les départements d’outre-mer (Bumidom) carried out a policy of transferring Réunionnais children, orphans or not, taken into care by the child welfare services, to mainland France, according to the text explaining the context of the law of 29 June, published on the government site vie-publique.fr and based on the 2018 Vitale report. Most of these minors were sent to the Creuse department, which lacked “arms” for agricultural work, but others were dispersed across 83 departments, Lozère among them. The law of 29 June 2026, passed on the initiative of the Réunion deputy Karine Lebon, recognises the harm suffered by these people and provides for reparation. It also establishes a day of commemoration on 18 February, the date in 2014 when a founding text recognising the harm caused by these forced transfers was voted in the Assemblée nationale.
Labeaume attended the debates last summer in the Assemblée nationale and the Sénat, and she describes the weight of what she heard there. “With those who lived through worse than me, who were raped, interned in psychiatry, I even learned that some had committed suicide,” she says. Gérard Larcher, the president of the Sénat, addressed the victims directly: “Je vous remercie d’être là.” For her, the recognition matters, and she is relieved that the law acknowledges the prejudice she endured.
Her own journey began with tragedy. Her father was a farmer, her mother did not work. When Marie-Charlette was 10 years old, an accident killed her father and her mother suffered a stroke, striking a family of ten children. Everything remained vague, because “on ne parlait pas aux enfants”. The children did not attend the funerals. The five youngest were sent to the orphanage in Saint-Denis, then placed with a foster family. A social worker came to see Marie-Charlette and told her she was going to “study in France” and would “see her little brothers again in August”. Nothing was quite true. She was not even able to say goodbye to the youngest.
She has forgotten no detail of the journey that followed: the little black dress, the poplin and the ballerinas bought rue des Bons-Enfants before her departure, the fuselage of the Boeing 707 that took her to the mainland, the first-class flight, the other child, perhaps 2 years old, who travelled with them, the tarmac at Roland-Garros airport in Sainte-Marie in Réunion, then Marignane, the train, the thirst, the hunger, the names and faces of the adults who succeeded one another to accompany her, the first snowdrifts she mistook for sugar, and “l’impression d’être seule au monde”. On arrival in Lozère, her last escort told her: “Ma pauvre enfant, qu’est-ce que tu viens faire ici dans ce pays ?” At the DDASS, as she still calls the social services, she was taken to Mende, then to Serverette, in the north of the department. She entered a convent and felt as if she were entering a penal colony. Even her name was changed, by error, to Marie-Charlotte; she recovered her “e” only three years ago. Through “haine, et de vigueur”, she left the convent for a foster family that treated her as their “vraie fille”, and she went on to lycée.
Meanwhile, the return this week, initiated by the FEDD, the fédération des déracinés des départements et régions d’outre-mer, is substantial in scale: 102 people, including 45 victims, will arrive on the island accompanied by their children, spouses and supporters. For some, the trip will allow them to renew precious ties; for three of them, it will be the first time they set foot on their native soil since their exile. The programme includes interventions in secondary schools, the inauguration of a commemorative plaque at the airport, cultural events such as concerts and theatre, and tourism. Meetings are planned in Saint-Paul, Saint-Louis and Saint-Denis, and Labeaume is eager to speak with the schoolchildren of Réunion, because it is necessary, she says, to “faire connaître cette histoire”. A fuller account of her return and the commemorations can be found here: https://www.midilibre.fr/2026/11/15/jai-ete-une-enfant-volee-une-lozerienne-de-retour-a-la-reunion-pour-commemorer-le-drame-des-enfants-de-la-creuse-apres-un-demi-siecle-dexil-force-13649726.php
“Ça va être dur, c’est une page de notre vie qui se tourne, et on s’est battu pour en arriver là. On a beaucoup souffert, et on n’oubliera pas,” she says. At the evocation of Michel Debré, the Réunion deputy and former Prime Minister who initiated the programme, she breathes: “Quelle erreur…” She has spent years working with a psychologist, and a career spent with children in difficulty and premature babies, but the past is not repaired. She has forgiven, yet still seeks answers: “Pourquoi moi ? Qui a organisé mon départ ? Qui a signé les documents ? Pourquoi mes frères aînés n’ont rien fait quand ils se sont rendu compte que je n’étais plus là ? Pourquoi m’a-t-on oubliée ?” It was when she reconnected with her history through the FEDD that she understood: “j’étais une enfant qu’on avait volée”. “Dans mon malheur, j’ai eu un peu de bonheur aussi,” confides the septuagenarian, who speaks fluent Creole and has returned several times to “her” island without ever untangling a family history that remains complicated. It is, above all, a matter for the state.