Responding to the Report; What Next

The experiences of survivors of State and faith-based care were shocking to hear as they gave evidence at the Royal Commission. Their testimonies and those of many others who spoke privately to the Commission are equally distressing to read in the report. This happened in my lifetime, when my own children were young – how did I not know? How could we have let it happen and go on happening?

Whanaketia is unequivocal:

Instead of receiving care and support, children, young people and adults in care were exposed to unimaginable physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse, severe exploitation and neglect. Abuse and neglect were widespread throughout the inquiry period in State and faith-based institutions.[1]

The inquiry period was 1950-1999. Is this all just past history? That’s what State and faith-based officials want us to believe. Thus absolving themselves from any possible responsibility, any accountability.

Restricting the inquiry period highlights one of the most disturbing aspects of the experiences of those abused. State agencies and faith-based organisations have over decades gone to inordinate lengths to deny the reality of the abuse. Throughout the 2000s senior government officials denigrated survivors, treated them as if they were criminals, organised for some to be under surveillance to undermine their evidence in Court, claimed they, and one very courageous lawyer, were simply out to make money, denied them information that was rightly theirs and strategised across the public sector to prevent any claims being successful.  As New Zealand’s Chief Human Rights Commissioner at the time, I witnessed some of that first-hand and experienced heavy pressure from the Ministries of Social Development and Health and by Crown Law to ignore it.

The abuse and neglect so many had suffered as children and vulnerable adults caused life-long trauma. It undermined their physical and mental health, their education, their capacity for loving and being loved, the ability to develop healthy family relationships, to earn and support themselves. That trauma impacted across the generations. Whanaketia documents mistreatment so severe that at least some of it has now been acknowledged as torture. Torture occurred in faith-based services as well as those that were State run.

Māori children were disproportionately taken into state care. They were often denied contact with or knowledge of whānau, hapū and iwi. Once in care, the Royal Commission found that Māori “experienced harsher treatment across many care settings, being degraded because of their ethnicity and skin colour”. Pacific children, young people and adults in care also experienced racial abuse and cultural neglect.[2] Disabled survivors, including those who experienced mental distress, amongst other terrible abuse “were denied personhood and were often stripped of their dignity and autonomy”.[3] Despite all this many survivors managed to build a decent life for themselves, their tamariki and future generations. And they found the courage to confront what had been done to them and those who had done it because they wanted to be sure that what had happened to them could never happen to another child, young person or vulnerable adult.

Yet when giving evidence at the Royal Commission many spoke of being severely re-traumatised by the actions of the government agencies and faith-based institutions when they courageously sought acknowledgement of their abuse.

Whanaketia records:

For decades, survivors repeatedly called for justice but were unheard, disbelieved, ignored and silenced … Political and public service leaders spent time, energy and taxpayer resources to hide, cover up and then legally fight survivors to protect the potential perceived costs to the Crown, and their own reputations.  

Faith leaders similarly fought to cover up abuse by moving abusers to other locations and denying culpability.[4]

Regrettably the Courts showed they were equally incapable of dispensing justice for survivors, demonstrating in a compelling test case an eagerness to affirm the Crown’s denigration of the claimants.

With the evidence now documented in the Royal Commission’s report, can survivors and their whānau, expect at last recognition, justice and fair compensation?

The Prime Minister has announced an apology will be given in Parliament on 12 November. It is being developed in consultation with some survivors. Hon Erica Stanford, the Lead Coordination Minister for the Government's Response to the Royal Commission, has been meeting regularly with survivors. She has called for senior public service officials to be held accountable for mistreatment of abuse claimants. She authorised urgent payments to Lake Alice survivors with less than six months to live. These are positive signs.

Yet the public service officials’ old behaviours are still in play. There is limited space for survivors to attend the apology in Parliament or at one of the events being held at the time in the main cities. The urgent payments covered ten people and the process for applying is laborious. Worst of all they amount to a paltry $20,000. The senior public servants who orchestrated the strategy to deny abuse survivors justice remain in high office or are allowed to retire without any accountability.

In 2021, in its first report, He Purapura Ora, the Royal Commission recommended urgent action to establish an independent compensation process. In three years it is still not beyond the design stage. It is unclear whether it will include survivors of faith-based institutions as recommended.  

Other coalition government initiatives effectively repudiate findings of the Royal Commission, specifically the removal from Oranga Tamariki legislation of Section 7AA’s commitment to the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the re-establishment of bootcamps or the Military-Style Academy Pilot as it’s officially known.

We all have a responsibility to the wellbeing of all the children, young people and vulnerable adults of Aotearoa. We cannot look away, we can no longer be ignorant of what is done in our name.    

I urge all people to read the full report or at least the summary of survivors’ stories. The report makes for grim reading and a compelling case for restitution for survivors.

Visit:  https://www.abuseincare.org.nz/reports/

[1] Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry, Whanaketia. Wellington 2024. p.31 para. 2.

[2] Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry, Whanaketia. Wellington 2024. p.32 paras 10,11.

[3] For the Royal Commission’s summary of the pervasive abuse and neglect and its impact see pages 32-40.

[4] Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry, Whanaketia. Wellington 2024. p.40, paras 54-56.