New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon expressed regret on Wednesday (24) after a public inquiry found that around 200,000 children, young people and vulnerable adults had been abused in state and religious care over the past 70 years.
Almost one in three children and vulnerable adults in care between 1950 and 2019 suffered some form of abuse, the report found, a finding that could see the government face billions of dollars in new compensation claims.
“This is a dark and sad day in New Zealand’s history as a society and as a state, we should have done better and I am determined that we will,” Luxon told a news conference.
An official apology will take place on November 12, he added.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry report spoke to more than 2,300 survivors of abuse in New Zealand, which has a population of 5.3 million. The inquiry detailed a range of abuses in state and religious care, including rape, sterilisation and electric shocks, which peaked in the 1970s.
Members of the indigenous Maori community were especially vulnerable to abuse, the report found, as were those with mental or physical disabilities.
Civil and religious leaders scrambled to cover up the abuse, moving abusers to other locations and denying culpability, with many victims dying before seeing justice, the report adds.
“It is a national shame that hundreds of thousands of children, young people and adults have been abused and neglected in the care of state and religious institutions,” the report states.
The document makes 138 recommendations, including public apologies that would be made by the New Zealand government as well as the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, heads of the Catholic and Anglican churches respectively, who have both condemned child abuse.
The report also called on the government to create the Care Safe Agency, which would be responsible for overseeing the care industry, as well as new legislation providing for mandatory reporting of suspected abuse, including reports made during religious confession.
The report estimated that the average lifetime cost for a survivor of abuse, which is what New Zealanders would consider normal day-to-day activities, was estimated in 2020 to be approximately $511,000 per person, although the report did not make clear the amount of compensation available to survivors.
Luxon said he believed the total compensation owed to survivors could run into the billions of dollars.
“We are starting conversations about reparations and doing that work with survivor groups,” he said.
The inquiry also recommended payments to families who were cared for by abuse survivors because of the intergenerational trauma they suffered, as well as a review of compensation paid in previous child abuse cases, including at the state-run Lake Alice juvenile facility.
“The most important element is acknowledging and recognizing survivors for the reality and truth of their lives,” said Tracey McIntosh, a sociologist at the University of Auckland.
Source: CNN Brasil
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