Decades of horror! New Zealand joins global list of countries inquiring institutional abuse

New Zealand has become the latest nation to confront its troubled past of systemic and widespread abuse of children and vulnerable adults in state and faith-based institutions.
On Wednesday, a six-year independent inquiry was presented to Parliament, which also examined the mistreatment of children in foster care and vulnerable adults.

According to the authors, this inquiry is the most comprehensive investigation into abuse and neglect in care settings ever undertaken globally. They condemned the extensive abuse and neglect of hundreds of thousands of individuals in care from 1950 to 1999 as a “national disgrace” and proposed 138 recommendations for action.

Previous New Zealand governments had resisted holding such an inquiry. Other countries have conducted similar investigations over the past two decades. Among them:

— Australia held two recent inquiries into the abuse of children and disabled people. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ran from 2012-2017 and scrutinized public, church and private institutions — including child care, cultural, educational, religious, sporting and other organizations. Then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison made an emotional public apology in 2018 for the systemic sexual abuse of children in Australia. A second Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability operated from 2019-2023, examining mistreatment of disabled people in all areas of society.

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— Two decades earlier, Australia investigated its systematic removal of Indigenous children from their families in the report “Bringing Them Home,” which followed a national inquiry from 1995-1997 into the so-called Stolen Generations of young Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders taken by the state between 1910 and 1970 — thought to be between 10% and 30% of all such children. Then-Prime Minister John Howard rejected the report’s call for a national apology, but a later Australian leader, Kevin Rudd, gave one in 2008.

— Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission extended from 2007-2015 and examined individual and collective harms perpetrated against Aboriginal people between 1883 and 1996 in government-funded, church-run residential schools, where 150,000 children were placed. Sexual abuse and religious indoctrination were rife. Pope Francis in 2022 apologized for the Catholic Church’s involvement with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, one of several he has made for the church’s transgressions against children in care settings around the world.

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— In 2022, the United States Interior Department released a first-of-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools that for over a century sought to assimilate Indigenous children into white society and undercut their cultural and tribal ties. It identified more than 500 student deaths at more than 400 schools that were established or supported by the U.S. government. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary, acknowledged the boarding school era perpetuated poverty, mental health disorders, substance abuse and premature deaths in Indigenous communities.

— In England and Wales, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse ranged from 2015-2022, examining abuse and exploitation in state institutions — including police, government departments, schools, health services and custodial institutions — and non-state institutions, including religious organizations and private schools. It covered abuse that happened “in living memory.”

— The Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry covered the physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect of children between 1922 and 1995. It ran 2013-2017 and examined abuse in state and non-state residential institutions, including religious institutions and excluding schools.

— Ireland’s Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse ranged from 2000 until 2009, and initially scrutinized physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect of children that happened between 1940 and 1999 — before it was extended to reach back as far as 1914. It covered a comprehensive list of state and religious-run institutions, although it excluded the notorious Magdalene Laundries, where 10,000 so-called fallen women were consigned and forced to undertake menial labor. A government apology to the women was made in 2013. Pope Francis apologized to the tens of thousands of women and children abused in the Catholic Church’s care in 2018.

— The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry began in 2015 and is ongoing. It covers abuse in living memory that happened in a wide-ranging list of state or non-state institutions, including faith-based groups.