A responsibility to remember
The Government’s recently announced Royal Commission into the abuse of children in state care was signalled during the 2017 election campaign, when Labour promised it in its 100 day plan. Like other items on the 100 day list, such as a Pike River Recovery Agency and a child poverty reduction target, which have already been announced, it gave an impression of an opposition willing to tackle problems the National-led Government had shrugged off. The previous government refused to set up an inquiry into abuse of children in state care. Former Prime Minister John Key seemed to opt for a position closer to historical amnesia when he said in 2016 that no inquiry could ever right the wrongs for children who grew up in state care between the 1940s and the 1990s.
It is hard to comprehend the thinking behind a stance like that, or former Social Development Minister Anne Tolley’s refusal to formally apologise to generations of children brutalised in state care, other than a blithe unwillingness to face the darkness of the past or concerns about cost. But a petition of 15,000 signatures backed by the Human Rights Commission might have modified its position over time.
The Royal Commission will be headed by former Governor General Sir Anand Satyanand with a remit to cover physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect across the entire second half of the 20th century. While the terms of the inquiry have not been finalised there will be a particular interest in the impact on Ma¯ ori and a hope that lessons drawn from history will be relevant now.
Satyanand’s experience as the chair of the Confidential Forum for Former In-Patients of Psychiatric Hospitals, which reported on the experience of nearly 500 people in 2007, makes him particularly qualified for the task ahead, which will undoubtedly be larger in scope and even more harrowing. For example, Australia’s recent Royal Commission of inquiry into institutional responses to child sexual abuse took five years to report back.
The previous Government’s watered-down version of this inquiry, produced by the Confidential Listening and Assistance Service (CLAS) in 2015, heard from more than 1100 people. CLAS documented stories about physical and sexual violence inflicted on boys and girls in roughly even numbers by foster parents, teachers, social workers, cooks, clergy and other patients and children. ‘‘Lack of affection was almost standard,’’ the report found. Contrary to Key’s view of history, the hundreds who came forward sought an apology and accountability.
Some apologies and accountability followed the CLAS report, but not enough. While historical claims for compensation made under the CLAS process will continue, the Royal Commission will send, as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says, the ‘‘strongest possible signal’’ about how seriously the Government takes the issue of historical abuse and its role as the parent of around 5000 children who are in state care at any one time. There is a responsibility to remember.