‘New Zealand at its absolute worst’
Abuse in Care inquiry: Treatment of young people ‘cruel, inhumane and degrading’
A young boy who had experienced ‘‘extreme’’ psychological and physical abuse drove a car off a cliff, smashing headon into a bank, in an attempt to take his own life.
No one at the New Zealand state boys’ home he had run away from cared or even recognised his call for help.
Instead, as punishment for the act, he was bashed and beaten with a strap, forced to do thousands of press-ups and run around holding a 44-gallon drum.
The violence inside boys’ homes and psychiatric institutions was handed out by both staff and residents.
Physical abuse typically included ‘‘welcoming parties’’; which saw boys beaten up on their first night, followed by regular and continuing physical and sometimes sexual abuse. Staff would encourage the behaviour and delegate authority to senior boys.
Similar accounts have been heard from hundreds of the 1900 survivors and 350 witnesses who have registered with the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care. The claims of abuse in state and faith-based institutions have been labelled ‘‘cruel, inhumane and degrading’’ by the commission.
Young people were forced to undergo electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) without anaesthesia, face lengthy, unjustified stints in solitary confinement, be trapped in physical restraints and were subjected to sexual assault, rape, improper strip searches and vaginal examinations, verbal abuse and racial slurs.
A gay woman told the commission she was taken to a psychiatric institution in 1979, when she was 17, for ‘‘treatment’’.
There, she endured ECT until she was temporarily blinded. Once her sight returned, she was shocked again.
Inside similar institutions young people were forced to take tablets, held down and given injections and the ECT without any general anaesthesia – all of which was also associated with physical and sexual abuse.
After regaining consciousness survivors would wake to find people sexually assaulting them.
Female patients were regularly brought to male areas of an institution, where they were restrained and/or drugged and raped by male staff. Sometimes male patients were encouraged or forced to rape them as well. The drugging and extensive use of ECT made it difficult for anyone to report the abuse because it left their minds ‘‘groggy’’ or ‘‘destroyed’’.
Survivors distressed by watching the abuse and who tried to intervene were punished. ‘‘You were given a swift kick in the backside and told to sit down or have a piece of string tied around your private parts and tied to a chair so you couldn’t move,’’ said one survivor of a psychiatric hospital, Brian.
Since February 2018, survivors have shared their experiences with the commission. In an interim report of the findings released yesterday, as part of the five-year inquiry, more horrifying details were made public of the ‘‘wide and disturbing’’ range of abuses experienced by children under state care, primarily between 1950 and 1999.
Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins said the abuse was inexcusable.
This included girls’ and boys’ homes, youth justice residences, foster care, psychiatric and disability care, and different types of schools.
The report was released in two volumes, with the second analysing the experiences of 50 survivors who shared
their accounts of abuse in private sessions with commissioners.
Keith Wiffin, now in his 60s, was made a ward of the state at the age of 11. He was subjected to violence and sexual abuse while at the Epuni Boys’ Home in the 1970s. He said volume two, which was ‘‘totally dedicated to survivors’ voices’’ gave a lot more weight to the report.
‘‘It gives a strong indicator of the scale and magnitude of the tragedy which has unfolded ... The authorities need to take responsibility.’’
Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins said the abuse was inexcusable, and showed ‘‘New Zealand at its absolute worst’’.
‘‘We should never underestimate just how traumatic the experience will have been for the victims. And we should never underestimate what a long legacy that abuse has left.
Physical and sexual abuse were the most-common types of abuse reported to commissioners.
However, psychological and emotional abuse was also a significant component, , which involved instilling fear in survivors and asserting power and control over them.
One survivor recounted an experience in a boys’ home where staff would take the children to view the dead bodies of other residents who had killed themselves.
‘‘The staff used to take you along and show you the body and tell you this is what happens to the weak.’’
Ma¯ori and Pacific survivors frequently described abuse because of their ethnicity or cultural identity.
Key insights from the report revealed the peak of the abuse reported occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, with most survivors being abused between the ages of five and 17, although the range was from nine months to age 20. Most were abused over a period of five to 10 years. The impact on survivors was identified as wide-ranging, from drug and alcohol addiction to crime.
Another report looking into the economic impact of the abuse attempted to calculate the average lifetime cost for an individual abused in care and came up with a figure of $673,000-$857,000 in pain and suffering and premature death and $184,000 in healthcare, state costs and productivity losses.
A statistical report estimated that 655,000 children went through state welfare, psychiatric and disability institutions, church schools and care homes between 1950 and 2019. Between 17 and 39 per cent of them – asmany as a quarter of amillion children – are likely to have been abused.