Survivors of abuse in care are being offered a new pathway forward in their decades’ long fight for justice, as the Government signals its plans to set up a new independent redress scheme.
It follows the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry report tabled in Parliament today. Its key recommendation is to establish a new redress scheme, in partnership with Māori and survivors.
Chair of the inquiry Coral Shaw says the scheme must bring change to existing services, laws and policies “to ensure fair, effective and accessible puretumu torowhānui (redress)”.
A Royal Commission report into abuse in care was tabled in Parliament today. (Source: 1News)
The inquiry established in 2018 has been looking at what happened to children, young people, and vulnerable adults who were in the care of the state or faith-based institutions.
To date, the inquiry, which is due to release its final report in 2023, has heard the accounts of more than 1500 people, held more than 80 hearings and analysed more than 150,000 documents.
A new redress scheme for survivors of abuse in care was announced today as a major report was tabled in Parliament. (Source: 1News)
Shaw says the Royal Commission will continue to listen to survivors in the years ahead.
“We can make further recommendations on puretumu torowhānui… survivors should not have to wait for the horrors they suffered”.
Minister of Internal Affairs Jan Tinetti says it’s time to address the harm they suffered. “The report tells us what happened, now comes the work of addressing many years of avoidable harm.”
Minister for Public Service, Chris Hipkins, says even though the inquiry is still ongoing it is important to act now.
“We want to minimise delays for survivors who are waiting for their claims to be resolved,” he says. “We are conscious of the age and ill-health of many of the survivors who suffered abuse at a time when care was heavily institutionalised.”
He says work on the redress scheme will begin next year, between relevant parties, with a target to have it fully established by mid-2023.
The report titled He Purapura Ora, he Mara Tipu: From Redress to Puretumu Torowhanui, describes how at the heart of its 95 recommendations is a desire to put survivors first.
“A process by which survivors can address the tukino, or abuse, harm and trauma that has occurred to them, restore their mana and heal”.
The report, which delivers a damning condemnation of the Crown, government agencies and faith-based institutions’ treatment of survivors, says till now the system has worked against those who tried to speak out.
“For many survivors their experiences were downplayed, disbelieved or dismissed,” it read. “The Crown’s goal was not only to win these individual cases, but also to discourage other claimants and limit its liability for abuse in care.
“It lost sight of the people behind the claims who had been abused while in the state’s care. Even when it knew the substance of a claim to be true it used aggressive tactics or hid behind technical defences.”
This year, the Crown admitted for the first time its failure, as part of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the abuse that happened at Lake Alice’s Child and Adolescent Unit in the 1970s.
Solicitor-General Una Jagose accepting, on behalf of the Crown Law office, it had failed in its legal and moral duty to ensure all children in state-run institutions were safe.
And it was only last week that criminal charges were finally laid against an 89-year-old man, and former staffer at the unit.
The lead psychiatrist at the time, and man at the centre of many of the abuse allegations, Dr Selwyn Leeks, is at 93 deemed unfit for trial.
Leoni McInroe is one of those who was abused at the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit in the 1970s.
She told 1News last week, the delay has robbed her, and the other children of Lake Alice of justice.
“Justice would have been Dr Leeks facing charges, and that has been stolen. That has been stolen from the children of Lake Alice. If this was done correctly, and not obstructed 20 years ago, there would have been many people in court, including Dr Leeks.”
Adopted shortly after birth, Leoni’s adoptive parents died before she turned four. She was placed in foster care where she was abused. At 14 she was admitted to the unit, twice, for a total of 18 months. While there she was heavily sedated, subjected to electro-convulsive therapy without anaesthetic, and put in seclusion for long periods of time.
They spoke to 1News as charges were finally laid against one former staffer at the Lake Alice child and adolescent unit. (Source: 1News)
In 1994, aged 33, she filed her claim in the High Court - the first Lake Alice survivor to make a claim against the Crown.
“Instead of compassion, justice, validation, and an apology, I received nine gruelling years of emotional battering and bullying from the Crown,” she told the Royal Commission. “There was not one point in the entire process the Crown acted with any genuine care, or respect to the actual harm, I had suffered in Lake Alice.”
Shaw says the costs of this have been too high. “Historically, state and faith organisations were not willing to accept the widespread abuse that could have easily been uncovered… they convinced themselves there wasn’t a systemic, wide-spread problem”.
Estimates suggest up to 250,000 children, young people and at-risk adults were abused in these institutions between 1950 to 2019.
In the report, the Royal Commission is also critical of the “completely inadequate” redress process across a number of key agencies including, the Ministry of Social Development, Oranga Tamariki, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Anglican Church, Catholic Church and The Salvation Army.
Key criticisms include how the organisations have failed to take into account the te Tiriti o Waitangi principles; their processes prioritised the institutions over survivors’ voices and how they overlooked issues of systemic abuse.
“It is incomprehensible that human beings could behave like this towards one another. What is just as baffling is how those in authority failed in their responses to survivors’ request for redress.
“It was clear survivors had been deeply harmed by their time in the institutions that were entrusted to care for them. How in the face of this, could anyone not be shocked and stirred into action?”
The report outlines 95 recommendations, that include that future redress takes into account the treaty principles, is independent of the institutions where the abuse took place and for there to be a safe space for survivors.
“There is still much more to be done by our inquiry, but in presenting these recommendations at this stage in our work, we make the following point: survivors continue to suffer as they wait for puretumu, and many have died in the meantime.
“They should wait no more, the time for action is now.”
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