By Praveen Menon and Renju Jose
(Reuters) – New Zealand on Tuesday offered a rare national apology to victims and families of hundreds of thousands of young people and vulnerable adults who were subjected to institutional physical and sexual abuse over the last 70 years.
The apology followed a report by a public inquiry in July that found some 200,000 children and vulnerable adults in state and faith-based care experienced some form of abuse from 1950 to 2019.
“It was horrific. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told survivors and their families at parliament in Wellington.
“Today I am apologising on behalf of the government to everyone who suffered abuse, harm and neglect while in care. I make this apology to all survivors on behalf of my own and previous governments.”
The government had completed or started work on 28 recommendations from the inquiry, the prime minister said, and will provide its full response early next year.
A bill to include a range of measures to improve safety in state care will have its first reading in parliament on Tuesday, Luxon said.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry spoke to more than 2,300 survivors of abuse in New Zealand, which has a population of 5.3 million. The inquiry detailed a litany of abuses in state and faith-based care, including rape, sterilisation and electric shocks, which peaked in the 1970s.
Those from the Indigenous Maori community were especially vulnerable to abuse, the report found, as well as those with mental or physical disabilities.
It made 138 recommendations, including calling for public apologies from New Zealand’s government, as well as the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, heads of the Catholic and Anglican churches respectively, who have previously condemned child abuse.
It also called for new legislation including mandatory reporting of suspected abuse, including admissions made during religious confession.
The report estimated the average lifetime cost to an abuse survivor, was estimated in 2020 to be approximately NZ$857,000 ($511,115) per person, though the report did not make clear the amount of compensation recommended for survivors.
Luxon said he believed the total compensation due to survivors could run into billions of dollars.
($1 = 1.6767 New Zealand dollars)
(Reporting by Renju Jose and Praveen Menon; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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