Democracy Briefing: Holding state agencies to account for Abuse in care

New Zealand is not the only country that has experienced shocking abuse inside its schools, hospitals, social welfare and child protection systems. In 2013 Australia convened its own Royal Commission on abuse in care. The report was released in 2017 and came to similar conclusions to the New Zealand inquiry’s. Both found evidence of pervasive physical and sexual abuse of children combined with acute neglect across state and faith-based institutions, concealed behind cover-ups by church and state officials. There have been similar findings in Ireland, the UK, France, Germany and the US. 

New Zealand’s report was a pre-election commitment from Jacinda Ardern when she was opposition spokesperson for children’s issues. The Commission was convened in 2018 and published its final report in July of 2024. It’s the longest government enquiry ever undertaken in New Zealand, taking testimony from 2,400 survivors of abuse.

The findings consist of sixteen volumes, documenting both the systemic mistreatment of children and the extensive cover-up by state officials to conceal that mistreatment, protect the perpetrators and minimise the Crown’s legal and fiscal liability. The terms of reference set by the commission limited the scope of enquiry to the second half of the 20th century: 1950 to 1999, but the cover-up extended into the 21st century, and the officials and organisations associated with it have become the focus of anger for many survivors.  

A number of prominent officials were called out for direct criticism. The current Solicitor General Una Jagose led the Crown Law process responding to legal claims around state abuse. In its civil cases the crown suggested to complainants that they had consented to being sexually abused as children, and there’s currently a complaint before the Law Commission alleging that Jagose withheld evidence from the police into allegations of torture at Lake Alice. Attorney-General Judith Collins has publicly backed Jagose. 

Supreme Court Justice Forrest Miller presided over a civil case in which survivors sought compensation and ruled that the sexual abuse they’d suffered as children at the Hokio school near Levin – one of the worst institutions studied in the report – had “not made a material contribution to his difficulties,” concluding “It is embarrassing for him, but not traumatic.”

Former Public Service Commissioner Peter Hughes was Chief Executive at the Ministry of Social Development during the period in which documents relevant to litigation were destroyed, and the department hired private investigators to attempt to discredit survivors. Former Secretary of Education Iona Holstead was Deputy Chief Executive at MSD and was singled out for criticism in the Commission’s redress report for attempting to minimise the financial impact of survivor’s claims and for suggesting that lawyers representing complainants were drumming up “false or exaggerated claims”. The Law Society president Frazer Barton advised a religious group it could destroy the records of the children it cared for. 

The criticisms raise questions about the culture of the wider public service. With many thousands of diligent lawyers and conscientious managers throughout the sector and its many agencies, why were these the people who rose to the most senior leadership positions?

It also raises doubts about the state’s ability to hold its agencies to account. The Royal Commission is an unprecedented investigation into the conduct of New Zealand’s public agencies, which normally conceal their activities by withholding information and investigate themselves when any breaches occur. Some of the Commission’s recommendations are around record-keeping and transparency, but since organisations have been found to breach numerous existing regulations and laws with no consequences this is unlikely to drive behaviour change. 

There have also been suggestions that both senior officials and senior politicians were directly implicated in the abuse of children. It is worth quoting the allegations from the report in full. They investigated claims regarding: 

• The transportation of children and young people from social welfare residences and institutions and other State care residences and institutions in the Horowhenua area to private locations in the Horowhenua and Te Whanganui-ā-Tara Wellington regions. It is alleged at the private locations they were sexually abused by former central government politicians and prominent public servants

• Missing children and young people from social welfare residences and institutions in the Horowhenua region had been buried under trees or dumped in a lake

• Groups of men being brought into the Kimberley Centre (a psychopaedic hospital near Taitoko Levin) to sexually abuse non-speaking girls in care

• Abuse of children and young people in care by former central government politicians in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

• Abuse of children and young people in care at a Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland brothel

• Abuse of young people in care working as underage sex workers in Te Whanganui-ā-Tara Wellington and Ōtepoti Dunedin by prominent public servants, and

• An allegation that police officers had abused girls who had run away from their care placement before returning them to care. 

The Inquiry located one witness with first-hand direct evidence of such organised abuse of children and young people in social welfare care settings. Most witnesses spoke to the Inquiry of hearing about organised abuse from others, which was sometimes second or third-hand information. Attempts to corroborate the information from people named to the Inquiry as being survivors of such abuse were unsuccessful. Many of the leads that were followed up did not result in evidence of organised abuse. Several people named by others as survivors or as having relevant information had died or were too unwell to speak to the Inquiry, and some were unable to be located. In other instances, the information provided indicated that organised abuse may have occurred, but no survivors could be identified… 

Another key difficulty was that some people who may have held relevant information did not want to provide a witness statement or survivor account to the Inquiry because they were fearful of repercussions due to the powerful position formerly or still held by their alleged abuser. This included beliefs that NZ Police were aware of the paedophile rings at the time and had not investigated them.  It was clear that some people did not trust the Inquiry’s processes, including its ability to protect the confidentiality and safety of individuals who shared information. The Inquiry acknowledges that there were and will continue to be many barriers for survivors to disclose abuse. Those barriers can be exacerbated where the abuser has an actual or perceived position of power over the victim. 

Ultimately none of the allegations of organised group abuse in State care settings described above were able to be substantiated by direct evidence. 

Shortly after the report was published the former health and immigration minister Anthony “Aussie” Malcolm died at the age of 83. Police then announced that Malcolm had been under investigation for the sexual abuse of children as a result of allegations raised by the Abuse in State Care enquiry. Three historical complaints had been laid during the 1990s and 2010s but police had decided not to prosecute. It’s clear that much of the cover-up was motivated by fear of financial and reputational damage to state and faith-based agencies but these revelations suggest that protecting individual politicians and officials from investigation and prosecution may have been a factor. 

In the aftermath of the government’s apology attention now turns to the question of redress. This is expected to be announced early next year and delivered in the 2025 budget. Because of the scale of offending and the government’s tight operational allowances it is hard to see how adequate recompense can be made without tax cuts, spending cuts or borrowing. Labour have indicated they will not criticise the government for higher debt incurred through borrowing for redress. Next November 12th will mark a nationwide day of acknowledgement, and the government will “begin work on removing memorials (including street names, public amenities, and public honours) of proven perpetrators, and honouring unmarked graves located on psychiatric and other sites that were places of care in New Zealand.”

The apology was overshadowed by the lack of accountability, but also the vexed problem of Oranga Tamariki. The promise that the abuse will not happen again is fatally undermined by the many reports detailing ongoing abuse of children in Oranga Tamariki’s care, and recent findings that its systems are worse than ever.

This raises a larger question about the capacity of the modern welfare state to care for troubled or vulnerable children. This role was once delivered by faith-based organisations where abuse has been shown to be systemic. As state institutions took up this task they continued the abuse at a much greater scale. Many survivors are calling for Oranga Tamariki to be closed down. There’s no doubt the organisation is a failure and that we’ve seen similar failures across other OECD nations but there are few suggestions about what might replace it.

Dr Bryce Edwards

Political Analyst in Residence, Director of the Democracy Project, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

Key Sources

Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry: Whanaketia – Through pain and trauma, from darkness to light

Journalist Aaron Smale has covered this issue extensively for Newsroom. He recently published a five part series on the legal strategies adopted by the crown. Part 1 – When the state turned on its victims, Part 2 – Legal trickery, Part 3 – Full disclosure, Part 4 – ‘Embarrassing, not traumatic’, Part 5 – Limiting liability

Elizabeth Stanley observed the testimonies of officials to the Commission and documented the obfuscatory tactics they employed