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The Telegraph
More than 250,000 children and adults have been abused in New Zealand state care, according to research
Up to a quarter of a million children, youth and vulnerable adults have been abused in New Zealand’s religious and state care institutions in the past seven decades, a public inquiry revealed on Wednesday. An interim report by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the historical abuse of children in state care estimated that up to 253,000 people were abused between 1950 and 2019. This represents almost 40 percent of the 655,000 people in care during that period. The report also found that the number of people passing through care institutions was six times what the government had previously estimated. The lack of research in New Zealand meant that neglect was excluded as a form of abuse, but if it had been included, the numbers would be “significantly higher,” according to the report. “Unfortunately, even in the most conservative estimates, there has been more abuse of care than previously thought,” Coral Shaw, chair of the Royal Commission, told Reuters. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the Royal Commission in 2018 saying the country needed to face “a dark chapter” in its history, and then expanded it to include churches and other religious institutions. The report said that the probability of children and youth being abused in religious or faith-based homes ranges from 21% to 42%. that needs to be addressed, “the report said. The government admitted that the scale of child abuse was enormous. damage, but as testimony too often states the opposite was true, “said Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins. The interim report comes after public and private reparations hearings in which survivors bravely recounted distress reports. of abuse, while experts, lawyers and state officials described their experiences. Keith Wiffin, a survivor who was sent to state care when he was 10, told the New Zealand Herald that the number of abused cited in the report was “A truly mind-boggling number, especially when you consider for much of that period the country’s population did not exceed three million.” “I’m shocked by it and I think the nation will be, too,” Wiffin said. The report acknowledges that the Indigenous Maori children are likely to suffer the most, as 81 percent of abused children in care are Maori, while the 69 percent of the children in care are Maori. Thousands of Maori protested across New Zealand last year calling for an end to the practice of removing at-risk children from their families and placing them in the care of the state. Critics of the practice have said the process is racially biased against Maori and is a legacy of colonization.
