The New Zealand Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care (the Royal Commission) has published its final report. The report entitled Whanaketia – through pain and trauma, from darkness to light found that abuse was deeply rooted and enabled across all levels of the systems responsible for providing care. The Royal Commission found that State and faith-based institutions who were entrusted to care for many thousands of children, young people and adults between 1950-1999 (the Inquiry period), failed in their duty to nurture and protect the people and also failed in their duty to hold abusers to account
The Royal Commission noted that 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 care institutions. Abuse and neglect almost always started the first day a person was placed in care. It often continued the entire time a person was in care. Tamariki, rangatahi and pakeke Māori were often targeted because of their ethnicity, and this was often overlaid with racism. The Royal Commission found that the abuse and neglect, let alone the prevalence of it, could not be justified by the standards of the day and certainly cannot be justified now.
Interestingly, the Royal Commission noted that Society’s discriminatory attitudes towards difference, including racism, ableism, disablism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and punitive attitudes towards whānau and individuals who needed support, all had one thing in common: they devalued and dehumanised children, young people and adults in care and this made it more likely for people in care to be abused and neglected and for that treatment to be justified by abusers, bystanders and leaders of institutions. It also made it too easy for people in care to be ignored and forgotten by the rest of Aotearoa New Zealand.
Of the estimated 655,000 children, young people and adults in care during the Inquiry period it is estimated that 200,000 were abused and even more were neglected. The Royal Commission in launching the final report noted that the true number will never be fully known as records of the most vulnerable people in Aotearoa New Zealand were never created or were lost and, in some cases, destroyed.
Another interesting statistic from the report is that research commissioned by the Royal Commission noted that the average lifetime cost to a survivor of abuse and neglect in care was estimated in 2020 to be approximately NZ$857,000. The estimated total economic cost of this abuse and neglect during the Inquiry period is around NZ $200 billion.
There are three key themes to the final report’s recommendations and they can be summarised as follows: -
1. Righting the wrongs of the past through:
a. the State and faith leaders making public apologies and taking accountability for the harm caused to survivors
b. making the justice system safer and more accessible for survivors
c. urging the State and faiths to implement the puretumu torowhānui system and scheme (redress) without further delay
2. Making care safe through:
a. creating a new independent safeguarding agency and a new safeguarding law
b. ensuring that faiths and their leaders will have to abide by the same laws, rules and accountabilities as everyone else
c. having consistent and comprehensive rules and standards to keep people in care safe
d. having real sanctions and penalties in law to hold people and organisations to account
e. having a safe and well-trained workforce
3. Entrusting and empowering communities through:
a. shifting from State care to local communities caring for each other
b. giving everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand the knowledge and tools to contribute to preventing abuse and neglect
c. upholding people’s rights
The New Zealand Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, has apologised, and an official state apology will follow in November this year. The report called for public apologies from New Zealand's government, the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the heads of the Catholic and Anglican churches.
Mr Luxon said he believed that the total compensation due to survivors could run into billions of dollars, stating that the government are “…opening up the redress conversations and we're going through that work with survivor groups."
Another unique feature of the report by the Royal Commission is that it has also recommended payments to families who have been cared for by survivors of abuse due to the intergenerational trauma they suffered.
In total, there are 138 recommendations made by the Royal Commission's final reports.
unknownx500
