An interim report by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Historical Historical Abuse of Children in State Care estimates that 256,000 people were abused between 1950 and 2019. This is about 40% of the 655,000 people cared for during this period.
“The hurt and grief that has arisen in New Zealand’s history is unforgivable,” said Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins, who called the report a difficult read.
“All children in state care should be protected from harm, but the testimony was often the opposite of what was true.”
The report said most of the survivors were between the ages of 5 and 17, but some were 9 months and 20 years younger. Most were abused over a period of five to 10 years.
The abuse included physical assault and sexual abuse, with employees in some psychiatric institutions forcing male patients to rape female patients. These include electric shocks on the genitals and legs, improper bandage detection and vaginal examinations, and improper use of medical procedures, including verbal abuse and racial slurs.
“Sometimes I would have trauma treatment twice a day,” said NA, who was admitted to a psychiatric institution in 1979.
“Records (said) I was blind, then they shocked me again that night,” he said in an interrogation.
Prime Minister Jacinda Arder announced to the Royal Commission in 2018 that the country needed to tackle the “dark chapter” in its history, and it was later expanded to include churches and other faith-based institutions.
The report states that children and young people have a 21% to 42% chance of being abused in faith-based or religious homes.
It found that the number of people passing through care institutions was six times higher than previously estimated.
“This is a serious and long-standing social problem on any assessment that needs to be addressed,” the report said, adding that evidence was found that abuse continues today.
The report comes after a private and public prevention hearing where survivors described horrific accounts of physical and sexual abuse.
A Mઓori named Peter said in an interrogation that he drove a car off a cliff in an attempt to commit suicide to avoid abuse.
“I didn’t want to live anymore. I went to a cliff and banged my head in a bank. Again, if someone stopped and saw why, they would have pulled something out, but they didn’t,” he said. .
The Ottoroa Catholic Church in New Zealand said it would study the report to learn how to deal with complaints and prevent abuse.
The report acknowledged that Indigenous Mરીori children were probably the worst victims, as 1% of the children cared for were Mઓori, while care %% of the children were Mરીori.
It said some faith-based organizations seek to be “purified” by sexual and physical abuse, and by the cultural identity of the Mori people in care.
Last year, thousands of Mમાંori people in New Zealand protested, calling for an end to the practice of removing dangerous children from their families and keeping them in state care.
Critics of the practice have said the process is ethnic as opposed to M માori and is a legacy of colonization.
Neighboring Australia granted a national amnesty in 2017, after a five-year investigation into child sexual abuse, revealing thousands of cases of sexual abuse committed in large numbers in religious and state-run institutions.
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