New Zealand is the most recent country to wrestle with its history of the cruel, systemic and commonplace abuse of kids and vulnerable adults within the care of state and faith-based institutions.
Its six-year independent inquiry, presented to Parliament on Wednesday, also considered mistreatment of kids in foster care and vulnerable adults. The authors said it’s the widest-ranging exploration of abuse and neglect of individuals in care ever conducted worldwide. They decried the widespread abuse and neglect of lots of of hundreds of individuals in care between 1950 and 1999 as a “national disgrace” and made 138 recommendations.
Previous New Zealand governments had resisted holding such an inquiry.
Other countries have conducted similar investigations over the past twenty years. Among them:
— Australia held two recent inquiries into the abuse of kids and disabled people. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse ran from 2012-2017 and scrutinized public, church and personal institutions — including child care, cultural, educational, religious, sporting and other organizations. Then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison made an emotional public apology in 2018 for the systemic sexual abuse of kids in Australia. A second Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability operated from 2019-2023, examining mistreatment of disabled people in all areas of society.
— Two many years earlier, Australia investigated its systematic removal of Indigenous children from their families within the report “Bringing Them Home,” which followed a national inquiry from 1995-1997 into the so-called Stolen Generations of young Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders taken by the state between 1910 and 1970 — considered between 10% and 30% of all such children. Then-Prime Minister John Howard rejected the report’s call for a national apology, but a later Australian leader, Kevin Rudd, gave one in 2008.
— Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission prolonged from 2007-2015 and examined individual and collective harms perpetrated against Aboriginal people between 1883 and 1996 in government-funded, church-run residential schools, where 150,000 children were placed. Sexual abuse and spiritual indoctrination were rife. Pope Francis in 2022 apologized for the Catholic Church’s involvement with Canada’s “catastrophic” policy of Indigenous residential schools, considered one of several he has made for the church’s transgressions against children in care settings around the globe.
— In 2022, the United States Interior Department released a first-of-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools that for over a century sought to assimilate Indigenous children into white society and undercut their cultural and tribal ties. It identified greater than 500 student deaths at greater than 400 schools that were established or supported by the U.S. government. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the primary Native American cabinet secretary, acknowledged the boarding school era perpetuated poverty, mental health disorders, substance abuse and premature deaths in Indigenous communities.
— In England and Wales, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse ranged from 2015-2022, examining abuse and exploitation in state institutions — including police, government departments, schools, health services and custodial institutions — and non-state institutions, including religious organizations and personal schools. It covered abuse that happened “in living memory.”
— The Northern Ireland Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry covered the physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect of kids between 1922 and 1995. It ran 2013-2017 and examined abuse in state and non-state residential institutions, including religious institutions and excluding schools.
— Ireland’s Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse ranged from 2000 until 2009, and initially scrutinized physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect of kids that happened between 1940 and 1999 — before it was prolonged to achieve back so far as 1914. It covered a comprehensive list of state and religious-run institutions, even though it excluded the notorious Magdalene Laundries, where 10,000 so-called fallen women were consigned and compelled to undertake menial labor. A government apology to the ladies was made in 2013. Pope Francis apologized to the tens of hundreds of ladies and youngsters abused within the Catholic Church’s care in 2018.
— The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry began in 2015 and is ongoing. It covers abuse in living memory that happened in a wide-ranging list of state or non-state institutions, including faith-based groups.
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