Aaron Smale: An apology both sincere and hollow
A leading investigative journalist reflects on a day that victims of state and church abuse have fought for their whole lives.
The sexual harm helpline can be accessed free, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by phone, text, website, online chat and email.
A leading investigative journalist reflects on a day that victims of state and church abuse have fought for their whole lives.
It “is a significant, sorrowful but important day” for the country, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said in his formal apology to abuse victims at Parliament. Survivors around the country…
Survivors of abuse in care arrived at Parliament today to hear the formal apology from the state which oversaw and inflicted harm on children.
Tomorrow, the prime minister will deliver a national apology for abuse that occurred in state and faith-based care. But for survivors, redress and accountability still look to be a long…
Investigative journalist Aaron Smale, who helped expose the horrors of abuse in state care and ongoing legal torment, reflects on the Government apology to victims that will be delivered tomorrow.
Una Jagose was involved in throwing everything at efforts to stop victims of state abuse winning their cases. Now those victims don’t trust her to lead the government’s legal response.
A collection of legislative changes to improve the state care system for future generations will accompany the Government’s apology to those who suffered abuse and torture as children.
Despite growing pressure from state abuse survivors, Judith Collins expresses confidence in Una Jagose.
A man who survived torture as a teenager at the notorious Lake Alice psychiatric facility in the 1970s and had to go to the UN in his efforts to gain…
When Helen Clark came into power in 1999, the system under her government continued to minimise the Crown’s liability for the state’s torture and abuse of children, which had breached…
Even with the UN and a Royal Commission of Inquiry breathing down its neck, Crown Law was still not disclosing information to police or the UN’s Committee Against Torture. Aaron Smale…
He was put through the legal meat grinder so the Crown could escape liability for thousands of victims. But that victory has now been exposed as cynical and brutal. Aaron…
The Royal Commission has revealed systemic abuse of hundreds of thousands of children in the custody of the state. But it has also uncovered what it calls a cover-up. At…
The Catholic Church has apologised again to survivors of abuse in its care, accepting most of the Royal Commission’s findings but not fully accepting several others.
Some senior public servants implicated in the state abuse cover-up remain in positions of power – including Solicitor-General Una Jagose and Education Secretary Iona Holsted. Now the minister leading the…
Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions.
Despite the many, many recommendations in today’s final inquiry report, there are still some glaring omissions, writes Steve Goodlass.
The 112 politicians and senior public servants who oversaw decades of harm and neglect, plus those who have been asked to apologise.
The Royal Commission on Abuse in Care has just delivered its much-delayed final report. But an earlier report, filed in December 2021, said abuse survivors needed an independent payment scheme…
The Jehovah’s Witness church has been fighting scrutiny from a national inquiry into the historical abuse of children for three years, court documents show.
At Marylands School, sexual and physical abuse by Catholic brothers was brutal, prevalent and normalised. Survivors were so traumatised that, after they left, they found it difficult to understand the…
Abuse allegations were levelled at nearly one in five Dunedin Catholic priests since 1950, the church has revealed. New research has been published by Te Ropu Tautoko, the group that…
ANALYSIS: A Royal Commission report into the sexual abuse horrors at the Marylands school in Christchurch took the headlines last week. But, writes National Correspondent Steve Kilgallon, it was an…
The value of the Report is that it finally gives validation to the horrendous abuse suffered by survivors at Marylands and the Hebron Trust. It was horrific and irreversibly changed…