About 200,000 children, young people and vulnerable adults in New Zealand have been abused while receiving state and faith-based care over the past 70 years, a landmark investigation has found.
This means that from 1950 to 2019, almost a third of carers experienced some form of abuse, including rape, electric shock and forced labour, according to the Royal Commission into Care Abuse.
The commission released its final report after a six-year investigation into the experiences of nearly 3,000 people.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon apologized for the findings, calling it “a dark and sad day in New Zealand’s social history”.
It is New Zealand’s largest and most expensive investigation to date, costing around NZ$170 million ($101 million; £78 million).
Many victims of abuse come from disadvantaged or marginalized communities, including Māori and Pasifika people and people with disabilities.
More than 2,300 survivors were surveyed, which found that in most cases, “the abuse and neglect almost always begins on day one.”
One survivor, Anna Thompson, told the committee how she suffered physical and verbal abuse at a faith-based orphanage.
“At night, the nuns would take off my clothes, tie me face down on the bed, and beat me with a belt with a buckle. The belt dug into my skin until I bled, and I couldn’t sit down for weeks. .
Jesse Kett spoke of being beaten and raped by staff at an Auckland boarding school when he was eight, and told in his testimony that other staff sometimes witnessed the abuse taking place.
Moeapulu Frances Tagaloa was abused by a priest for two years from the age of five in the 1970s.
“He was a popular, famous teacher,” she said.
“But he was also a pedophile and, unfortunately, he also abused other little girls.”
Ms Tagaloa is now working to help other survivors and has called for the implementation of all 138 recommendations contained in the report.
that report Māori and Pasifika survivors suffered higher levels of physical abuse and were often “stigmatized because of their race and colour”, the study found.
The survey also found that children and foster children experienced the highest levels of sexual abuse in various social care settings.
“It is a national disgrace that hundreds of thousands of children, young people and adults are being abused and neglected in the care of state and religious institutions,” the report said.
“Many survivors die while in care or commit suicide after care. For others, the effects of abuse persist and intensify, making daily activities and choices challenging,” it added.
Mr Luxon said: “We should do better and I am determined we will.
“I am grateful to everyone involved for your extraordinary strength, incredible courage and honesty. Because of you, we know the truth about the abuse and trauma you have suffered,” he said. It’s scary and harrowing.
“I can’t take away your pain, but I can tell you: your voice is heard and you are believed.”
He added that it was too early to reveal how much compensation the government expected to pay to victims. He said he would formally apologize on November 12.
According to the report, the economic cost of this abuse and neglect is estimated to be NZ$96 billion to NZ$217 billion, taking into account negative consequences such as increased mental and physical healthcare costs, homelessness and crime.
Dozens of care abuse survivors took part in a march to Parliament on Wednesday ahead of the inquiry’s findings.
One survivor called the report “historic”.
“They’ve been telling us for decades that we made it up,” Tony Jarvis told Reuters. “So today is historic, it’s recognition. It recognizes all the survivors who have had the courage to share their stories.”
Academic Dr Rawiri Varrettini-Carreina, who was a witness at the inquest, had earlier spoken of the “pipeline from state care to prisons”.
“When I first walked into the prison yard as a teenager, I had never been there before – I already knew 80 per cent of the people there. We had grown up together in state care for the past 11 years,” he wrote in an opinion piece for Radio New Zealand.
“That’s when I knew there was a pipeline to prison; a pipeline that had spent decades moving Māori children from state care to prison.”
Dr Valrettini-Carreina added that the royal commission report recognized that “while we are responsible for our own actions, we are not responsible for the hidden mechanisms that operate in the environment into which we are born to benefit another faction.” Granting privileges to a faction for a price”.
