Abuse in care: The long road to facing up to country's dark past

This week the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care released a damning report outlining how generations of children suffered extreme abuse. Daisy Hudson takes a look at how we got to this point, and what comes next.

They were our most vulnerable.

Children, many from marginalised or disadvantaged backgrounds, disproportionately Maori and Pasifika, taken into what can now only ironically be called "care".

As wards of the State, or under the care of faith-based institutions, potentially hundreds of thousands of young New Zealanders were horrifically abused for decades in ways too awful to describe in print.

The sexual, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse has impacted generations of Kiwis, and caused untold harm for survivors and their whanau.

The South was one of the epicentres of that harm, with systemic abuse reported at boys' homes, schools and psychiatric facilities around the region.

Judge Coral Shaw is the chairwoman of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. Photo / Otago Daily Times

Survivors' trauma was compounded by a system that protected abusers, was sceptical of survivors, and did little to prevent further abuse from occurring.

After years of hard work and advocacy from survivors, in 2018 the Government announced a royal commission of inquiry.

But it too has had its issues, with survivors critical of delays and the centralising of public hearings.

After more than three years, the commission this week publicly released He Purapura Ora, he Mara Tipu — From Redress to Puretumu.

It provides a guide for a new redress system that would put the wellbeing of survivors front and centre.

It makes for harrowing reading. But to truly understand the recommendations and what comes next, it is important to understand how we got here.

How did the inquiry come to be?

In February 2018, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stood at a podium in the Beehive and uttered the words many survivors were desperate to hear.

An abuse survivor ponders St Joseph's Cathedral in Dunedin. Photo / Otago Daily Times

There would be a royal commission into abuse in state care between 1950 and 1999.

Later that year, after much lobbying, its scope was expanded to include faith-based institutions.

There were some notorious facilities that had entered the country's collective consciousness.

Lake Alice, Epuni, Seacliff.

But the full scope, scale, and systemic nature of the abuse was not widely appreciated.

In 2017, the United Nations recommended that New Zealand hold an independent inquiry into the systemic abuse of children and disabled adults. A petition calling for the same garnered almost 12,000 signatures.

Former Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand was initially appointed to chair the royal commission but later left for another role, and was replaced by retired Judge Coral Shaw.