Govt takes blame, will apologise to children abused and tortured in state care

Warning: this story contains details about sexual and physical abuse, including of children
After decades of abuse and cover-ups the Government has formally acknowledged children were tortured at the hands of the state.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care has found that over the course of five decades, children, young people and vulnerable adults were subjected to “unimaginable physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse, severe exploitation and neglect” at the hands of the state and faith-based institutions.
When these vulnerable New Zealanders were supposed to be receiving care and support, they instead suffered severe physical, sexual and medical abuse, neglect, humiliation, and loss of dignity, mana, culture and human rights.
In the case of Lake Alice, what children were subjected to was torture. This was acknowledged by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.
“Today, I humbly stand before you in this House to offer a long overdue apology to the survivors of Lake Alice. I am sorry that it has taken so long for this acknowledgement of torture,” Luxon said to Parliament on Wednesday.
Now, as the Government gears up to deliver a formal apology in November, it could also be staring down the barrel of paying out redress to the tune of $217 billion, according to estimations in the commission’s report.
Then there’s the potential for a swathe of civil proceedings and further damages to be awarded through the courts, with cases expected to be taken against individuals, including former ministers and senior public servants.
The commission clearly lays fault at the feet of the state, singling out successive ministers and heads of what is now Oranga Tamariki (formerly the Child Welfare Division), ministers and heads of education, ministers and heads of social development, ministers and directors general of health and mental health, police commissioners and public service commissioners.
Meanwhile, the commission found the state and faith-based institutions have covered up the systemic abuse and neglect across decades and successive governments.
These specific findings of fault open up a pathway for survivors to bring legal cases against former and current senior politicians and public servants, as well as government departments.
And among the inquiry’s 138 recommendations are calls to prioritise civil proceedings through the courts, and remove barriers to these cases being heard, including statutes of limitations and former settlements.
The commission, which was set up under Jacindas Ardern’s coalition government in 2018 and launched in 2019, has taken five years to report back and cost $150 million. 
The commission heard from 2300 survivors, who shared harrowing and explicit testimonies of sexual abuse by adults in positions of power, peers and groups of people including examples of trafficking and organised abuse; extreme physical abuse including beatings and electric shocks; psychological abuse; neglect such as being tied up for days, and being left without food and bedding, and no emotional support.
Ms MC – a Māori woman who was first put into foster care when she was a toddler – told the commission about a lifetime of sexual and physical abuse, and neglect.
“I was only about 12 or 13 years old. I gave birth on their bed, on a big plastic sheet so I wouldn’t make a mess. After it arrived, they took it away … I think I’ve been pregnant 12 to 15 times. Once a baby came out, another one came in. It felt like there were no breaks in between,” she said.
“I don’t know what happened to the babies. I think they either kept them or gave them away … I know some of the babies weren’t born ‘normal’. Those ones, I’d hate to think what they did to them, knowing what they did to me.”
The commission found when people acted out (ran away, broke rules, stole, drank alcohol) in response to the abuse and neglect they faced, they were met with more abuse and neglect. This often led to people being moved between institutions, and some of those who had been abused went on to abuse others. 
The commission concluded that in many cases, state care became a pathway into gangs and into prison.
Survivor and academic Dr Rawiri Waretini-Karena told the commission: “I was 18 when I walked into the yard – never been to prison before. I walked out into the yard and there were 50 men there. I knew 45 of them, that’s because they were beside me in the social welfare homes, the family homes and the boys’ homes. So that’s when I realised there was a pipeline to prison process.”
Wiremu Waikari (Ngāti Porou) told the commission he had minimal education while at Kohitere Boys’ Training Centre, but was exposed to and learnt about criminal conduct and activities from other residents on a daily basis.
“It was the links I made in Hokio and Kohitere that led me to joining the Mongrel Mob when I was 16 years old. I loved it because I already knew them – I felt more at home with Mob members than I did with my own family.”
Waikari said the boys’ homes fed gangs “disenfranchised young people who were not nurtured by Māori or the state” throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
“That is definitely where my time in state care pushed me, and hundreds of other unhappy Māori kids, who weren’t sure of themselves in any world.”
Waikari left the Mob while in prison and became a social worker, and now works in education and coaching people who are facing trauma.
On Wednesday, Luxon stood by his Government’s gang policies.
“We are determined that gangs cannot peddle harm and suffering on their fellow citizens. We will continue to work with them to make sure they have an opportunity to turn their lives around.”
The report has been made public in the same week the Government launched its young offender boot camp pilot.
One of the case studies in the report focused on the harm done by boot camps and military-style punishments, with specific focus on the boot camp on Aotea Great Barrier Island, Whakapakiri. The chapter is called: “A case study of state‐funded violence and abuse of children and young people needing care and protection.”
While Children’s Minister Karen Chhour said the new military-style youth academy was “nothing like a boot camp”, the rebranding has only happened in recent months as opposition from experts and the public has mounted.
Those who were exposed to the abuse detailed in the report – and their whānau – have suffered lifelong harm. In some cases, this included physical medical issues, mental health issues and suicidal ideation, shame and humiliation, issues with trust and intimacy, and a disconnection from culture and language.
“I witnessed other boys at Kohitere harming themselves. There wasn’t anywhere for them to get help,” Waikari said.
“Suicide became something that was normalised for me – it happened so often that I just began to accept it when people would disappear.”
The commission’s report covered the extent and the nature of the abuse and neglect, as well as the factors that led to people being placed in care.
A common question from survivors is: What did I do to deserve this?
The commission found racism, ableism and disablism, societal attitudes towards deaf and disabled people, moral panic regarding so-called delinquency and mental health, and major societal shifts such as welfare reform, urbanisation and rising poverty rates were all key factors in going into care – either through compulsion by the state or voluntarily.
On Wednesday, Luxon and Erica Stanford – the minister leading the Government response – unreservedly apologised for the harm done to survivors, and said they now planned to attempt to do right by them through redress and carefully considering the commission’s recommendations.
Luxon thanked survivors for their bravery and honesty.
“I cannot take away your pain but I can tell you this: Today you are heard and you are believed. The state was supposed to care for you, to protect you, but instead it subjected you to unimaginable physical, emotional, mental and sexual abuse. 
“A number of faith-based schools, institutions and people in positions of authority, who you should have been able to trust, failed you in the worst possible way. This is a dark and sorrowful day in New Zealand’s history. And as a society and as a state we should have done better and I am determined that we will do.”
Stanford said survivors’ stories were now etched in the pages of history and officially corrected the record.
“The stories contained in this report serve as a jolt of reality. The kinds of unimaginable, despicable horrors and abuse and neglect and fear that we always believed happened in other countries, happen here. They happened at scale, and they destroyed lives.”
Stanford said she had read all of the stories. When talking about the experiences of unwed mothers whose babies were taken from them when they were drugged, she became emotional. “That is confronting,” Stanford said.
Ahead of the public release of the final report, the commission delivered five interim reports, including specific findings on the torture that happened at the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit, which the Government has now accepted.
On Wednesday afternoon, Luxon told the House: “It is my heavy duty to say that today, the Government is formally acknowledging that the experiences of some children and young people at Lake Alice Hospital did amount to torture.”
Patients at Lake Alice were given electric shocks without anaesthetic, as well as painful and immobilising paraldehyde injections.
These so-called treatments were not administered for medical reasons. They were used for punishment and emotional control.
“These experiences were nothing short of horrific and they happened in the New Zealand health system within living memory,” the Prime Minister said.
“To the survivors of Lake Alice – some of whom are here today – thank you for your determination to ensure what you suffered was brought to light. 
“What happened was wrong. You knew then it was wrong, and all these years later, the state also acknowledges it was wrong.
“Today, I humbly stand before you in this house to offer a long overdue apology to the survivors of Lake Alice. I am sorry that it has taken so long for this acknowledgement of torture.”
In 2021, the commission released a report into how to design a redress system that acknowledged what survivors and their whānau had experienced, and offered fair compensation.
The report looks at the current, piecemeal, and inconsistent redress schemes in play. 
The commission’s first recommendation is to implement all 59 recommendations of the 2021 redress report.
In response, a Cabinet paper showed Stanford had established a ministerial group to work with the redress design group that was led by survivors.
Stanford said she would be prioritising redress in terms of the Government’s response, especially for Lake Alice survivors and victims, many of whom were elderly and unwell.
“We know that time is of the essence.”
The commission’s final report said that based on the estimated number of people abused and neglected in care between 1950 and 2019, the total cost was between $96b and $217 billion. 
The average lifetime cost to the survivor of things that New Zealanders considered normal, day-to-day activities was estimated in 2020 to be approximately $857,000 per person.
Luxon would not comment on the potential total cost of redress, saying the monetary value wasn’t a factor in his thinking.
“When you read those accounts, and you read these reports, it’s important we do the right thing.”
Between 1950 and 2019, 655,000 children, young people and adults were placed into the care of the state. The peak was in the 1970s with about 56,000 children being put into the state system. Of this group, an estimated 200,000 were abused and even more were neglected.
The inquiry said the true number would never be fully known as records of the most vulnerable people were never created or were lost and, in some cases, destroyed.
While other countries, including Australia and Canada, have held similar inquiries, New Zealand’s numbers put them to shame. During a 100-year period, 150,000 kids went through indigenous residential schools in Canada. While it’s estimated that 50,000 children were separated from their families in Australia between 1800 and 2000.
The inquiry said it was “a national disgrace” that hundreds of thousands of children, young people and adults were abused and neglected in the care of the state and faith-based institutions. 
“These gross violations occurred at the same time as Aotearoa New Zealand was promoting itself, internationally and domestically, as a bastion of human rights and as a safe, fair country in which to grow up as a child in a loving family,” it said.
“If this injustice is not addressed, it will remain as a stain on our national character forever.”
Of those placed in care, as many as 80 percent were Māori, across the inquiry period. In the 2022/2023 financial year, that number remained high at 69 percent. Pacific people were also over-represented.
While the inquiry focused on historical harm, abuse and neglect in state care settings continues. In the 2022-2023 year, Oranga Tamariki reported that 519 children were harmed while in care, and some more than once, with 895 total incidents reported.
It’s clear some of the issues that led to abuse and neglect continue.
The inquiry technically covered the period from 1950 to 1999, but it had the ability to look outside of that timeframe to better understand the systems still in play today. Among the recommendations are calls to overhaul the oversight of the current care system, improve education and vetting, and close care and protection residences that continue to perpetuate the institutional environments and practices that led to historic abuse and neglect in care.
The report – which has been more than five years in the making and spans 16 volumes, covering almost 3000 pages – said survivors were right to call for an inquiry.
“There has been widespread abuse and neglect in state and faith-based care which has had a devastating personal and multigenerational impact on survivors, their whānau and society as a whole. 
“It has been minimised and covered up by the institutions responsible. Significant resources have been used to deny survivors their voice and to defend the indefensible. This must stop.”
The report not only found widespread, systemic abuse and neglect at state and faith-based institutions – including boarding schools, borstals, boot camps, psychiatric institutions, and foster homes – it also found the state had attempted to cover up the abuse for the subsequent decades.
“Political and public service leaders spent time, energy and taxpayer resources to hide, cover up and then legally fight survivors to protect the potential perceived costs to the Crown, and their own reputations.”
Faith leaders similarly fought to cover up abuse by moving abusers to other locations and denying culpability.
The report said despite decades of calls for investigations, inquiries and redress, survivors had been “unheard, disbelieved, ignored and silenced”. 
Their experiences had been minimised or dismissed, and they were told by those in power that the abuse and neglect was not systemic.
Any recognition to date had been “piecemeal” and “insincere”, took years to to extract from the state and faith-based institutions and “fell far short of any notions of fair redress”. 
The Government apology – led by the Prime Minister – will be delivered in November. This is the second recommendation of the commission’s report, following calls to adopt the new redress scheme.
How and where that apology is delivered is being developed in collaboration with survivors.
Following on from an apology from the Prime Minister, the commission recommends all faith-based leaders offer a public apology, including the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the President Elect of the Methodist Church, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand and the head of each individual Presbyterian Support Organisation, the General of the Salvation Army, the Overseeing Shepherd of Gloriavale, and the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The commission has also called for public apologies from public sector leaders, including the Public Service Commissioner, Solicitor‐General, Commissioner of NZ Police and the chief executives of Oranga Tamariki, the Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Education.
“Survivors are united in calling for state and faith leaders to make public apologies and take accountability for the harm caused to children, young people and adults,” the commission said.
“This includes the Prime Minister and faith leaders, but it goes much deeper. All public sector leaders, leaders of relevant professional bodies, leaders of care providers and leaders of faith-based institutions need to apologise to survivors publicly.”
Among the recommendations was a call for a standalone and independent Care Safe Agency, to oversee the care sector, set professional standards, accreditation, vetting and administer a new Care Safety Act.
The new agency should be required to report publicly to Parliament, and face scrutiny from a select committee, every year. And a full review of the agency, regulations, and relevant legislation should be reviewed after nine years.
Stanford said some of the more complex recommendations would take more time to consider and respond to, particularly those involving legislative and major organisational change.
Stanford said the Government would provide an update on progress in November, but expected the work would continue in 2025.
The commission also recommended the establishment of a separate police investigation unit to pursue historical and current cases of abuse.
Among the recommendations were calls for faith-based institutions to bring in better vetting, background checks and oversight.
One of the top recommendations was for the Catholic Church in New Zealand to write to the Pope and other church leaders to express concern about accused and convicted abusers having been sent to Papua New Guinea, where little is known about their whereabouts or  the nature and extent of abuse and neglect there.
One of the 16 volumes is a case study on abuse and neglect perpetrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses in New Zealand. The case study showed there were risk factors in how the church operated, including a lack of oversight, survivors being forced to give evidence without parents present, and a fear of being shunned by the community or excommunicated.
The church denied responsibility throughout the inquiry, saying these children were never technically in their care.
And this week, the Jehovah’s Witnesses failed in an eleventh hour legal attempt to block this part of the report.
The commission set up a separate inquiry into allegations of child sexual abuse by a “paedophile ring” of former central government politicians in the 1980s.
The commission began a confidential investigation into the allegations because of a concern that survivors and witnesses may not come forward to the Inquiry out of fear of retribution, or that there would be a ‘cover-up’ if alleged abusers became aware of the investigation.
The scope of the investigation later broadened to include all allegations of organised abuse of children and young people in state care by people in public positions of power and influence.
This included situations where children in care were taken out of facilities, and Catholic clergy were able to choose which boys to abuse. This was investigated by the Catholic Church but it was unclear what happened as a result.
In regards to the alleged paedophile ring, the commission did not gather enough evidence to substantiate the claims.
The inquiry did receive direct information from two survivors who alleged they had been sexually abused by different individual former central government politicians. 
One of the allegations was referred to police in June 2023. In November, police said progress has been hindered by challenges in locating evidence.
“While the evidence that the Inquiry received is deeply suspicious, the Inquiry is unable to make a finding that organised abuse of children and young people in state care occurred by groups of people in public positions of influence.”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told Parliament the tabling of the report was of historical significance. 
“It is the result of the largest and most complex public inquiry ever held on our shores. Because of this, the content needs to be considered with respect and with care.  
“It cannot be rushed. The findings in this report need to be widely understood.” 
He said the Government must be accountable for what happened.  
“It is important that, as a country, we bring to the surface and understand the hard truths of what happened so we can try and move forward together. 
“I say to the survivors: the burden is no longer yours to carry alone. The state is now standing here beside you, accountable and ready to take action.” 
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said he was committed to working on a bipartisan solution for redress. 
“The abuse in care has happened over generations, it’s happened over successive governments of all different persuasions. It’s vitally important that Parliament comes together, that we rise above politics, that we focus on properly addressing the underlying causes of abuse in state care and that we put things right. 
“It’s going to take some time, it’s going to be hard work and next steps of this process are going to span over multiple governments as well. This must not be about politics in any way, this must be about doing the right thing.”
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the apology could not be taken seriously while the Government made plans to introduce legislation to “tackle gangs” and reinstate military youth academies. 
The links of state care and abuse to gangs, and the impact of ‘boot camps’ was a recurring theme from survivors.  
“We’ve got a Government who didn’t read all the [previous] reports … so do we think the apology will be authentic? Will the apology and the adopting recommendations give absolute assurance to us as a nation that there will be no repeat of it? That is where we have really grave concerns.”
Co-leader Rawiri Waititi said the current policy agenda was “history repeating itself”.
“The apology is one thing, but stopping harmful legislation would be the biggest thing this Government can do; but at this particular time they’re making it worse.”