The shocking scale of violence and harassment: More than 250,000 people have been harmed by the state message children and other vulnerable people



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According to data from the Royal Investigation Commission, which carried out a study of historical significance, with the knowledge of the state, 256 thousand people were used in care institutions in the country from 1950 to 2019. people. Based on available statistics, this is almost 40 percent. out of a total of 655 thousand. under the care of the people of New Zealand during that period.

“That cruelty and rage that has plagued New Zealand’s history is not and cannot be justified,” said Chris Hipkins, the country’s public services minister, who admitted that it had been “very difficult” for him to read the report.

“All children in state care should feel safe, but all these testimonies unfortunately paint a completely different picture,” laments the minister.

The report emphasizes that most of the victims are in the age group of five to 17 years. However, the victims include nine-month-old babies and twenty-year-olds. Many of them were tortured for five to ten years.

According to the researchers, there is talk not only of physical violence but also of sexual abuse: for example, the staff of psychiatric institutions forced patients to rape patients and monitored the process. The report’s authors cite the misuse of medical procedures such as electric shocks to the genitals and legs, unwarranted body-hole examinations, psychological violence and harassment.

“Sometimes they gave me an electric shock twice a day. The records say I was temporarily blinded, so I was shocked again that night,” testifies Anne, who was in a psychiatric hospital in 1979 at the age of seventeen. .

Chris hipkins

Chris hipkins

The dark chapter of history

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the establishment of the Royal Commission of Inquiry in 2018, saying the country needed to join forces and continue to open that dark chapter in the country’s history. The study was later expanded to include churches and other religious institutions.

The report indicates that the probability that children and young people have experienced one form or another of abuse in religious institutions of care ranges between 21% and 42%.

“In any case, this is a very serious and long-standing social problem that urgently needs to be addressed,” the report said, adding that it had evidence that such crimes continue to this day.

The report is the result of a series of interviews with victims, both private and public, who provided detailed information about the physical and sexual abuse they experienced.

A Maori victim, Peter, confessed to investigators after deliberately driving a car off a cliff, believing that suicide would help him escape a life of nightmare.

“It just came to our notice then. I drove off the cliff, hitting my head. Again, if someone had stopped and wondered why I did this, they would have understood something, but it just didn’t show up,” says Peter, telling the story.

Jacinda ardern

Jacinda ardern

Representatives of the Aotearoa Catholic Church in New Zealand say the Church will read the report and then seek ways to better respond to complaints and prevent inappropriate behavior.

The report of the investigation results is based on testimonies from both public and private victims. There were people who were not afraid to tell the trials boldly and in detail, and their stories were commented on by experts, lawyers and government officials.

Keith Wiffin, who is in the care of the state at the age of ten, says the New Zealand Herald was shocked by the figures in the study report:

“I am appalled at the magnitude of the problem, I think the whole country will be dismayed,” Wiffin said.

The authors of the study report acknowledge that indigenous Maori children suffered the most, up to 81 percent. of all affected minors – Maori. Children of this gender make up 69 percent in total. all in state custody. The findings also emphasize that, in the practice of physical and sexual abuse, some religious institutions sought to “cleanse” the cultural identity of the Maori who came to them.

Thousands of Maori protested in New Zealand last year, urging an immediate end to the practice of depriving families of children and placing them in the care of the state. Critics of this practice argue that the process is directed exclusively against the Maori people and is nothing more than a legacy from the era of colonization.

Neighboring Australia issued a public apology in 2017 after a five-year investigation into child sexual abuse (which revealed several thousand cases of sexual exploitation in religious and state institutions).

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