Commissioners of Abuse in Care Royal Commission reflect on the landmark inquiry.
Ahead of next month’s national apology for abuse in care victims, some advocates say survivors have been “ghosted” or drawn to unrealistic payout expectations.
“All of my survivors are so hypervigilant, they are so anxious, the Royal Commission stuff just keeps on dragging on. Everybody’s just on tenterhooks,” survivoradvocate Ruth Money told the Herald.
Erica Stanford, the minister leading the government response to the inquiry, has said Parliament would apologise on November 12 for the State’s failures across successive governments.
Some government agency chief executives are expected to apologise on that day.
Money said some lawyers had been hyping up expectations of big payouts.
And in some survivor circles individual payouts as high as $3.6 million had been breathlessly discussed, she said.
“You literally spend hundreds of hours explaining to survivors, in very long, distressed phone calls, that our system is very different and there’s no way our survivor in New Zealand is going to get anywhere near that amount of money.”
Ruth Money, survivor advocate, says some victims have been given unrealistic expectations about what kind of redress they'll receive. Photo / Alex Burton
She said many survivors were still in fragile mental states.
“It’s easier for us to see, from the outside looking in. It’s not our lived experience. We don’t have the PTSD triggers,” Money added.
The Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry findings were made public on July 24, more than five years after its first public session.
The inquiry found evidence of abuse and failures of responsibility at welfare institutions, churches, other religious organisations, some schools, the police and in successive governments.
Survivor Mike Ledingham said he did not see the point of the apology without meaningful change.
“Why are they apologising when they’ve done nothing?”
Ledingham told the Herald he did not trust leaders of many religious or state institutions to fairly address abuse allegations even today.
But he said at least the Royal Commission helped expose wrongdoing, and now more people knew how rampant child abuse had been in New Zealand.
Mike Ledingham, far right, at an event for White Ribbon, which works to end misogynist violence. Photo / Supplied
He said that was a big change from a generation ago, or even from five years ago.
He and his brother, Chris, went public and later wrote a book called The Catholic Boys about abuse by Father Francis “Frank” Green at Our Lady of the Assumption in Auckland’s Onehunga.
“When we went public in 2002 we got abused. There was even a threat - I don’t know if it was serious - that the Church would pay the Mafia to kill me.”
Ledingham said when the Royal Commission started, he was still receiving verbal abuse or threats but now there were virtually none.
Murray Heasley of the Network for Survivors of Abuse in Faith-Based Institutions attended some of the inquiry’s earliest hearings.
“The Royal Commission, which promised so much and which we encouraged people to engage with ... has failed to deliver,” he said.
He has argued the inquiry became increasingly unsafe for survivors, awash with bureaucracy and identity politics.
“The majority of our survivors feel they’ve been ghosted,” Heasley told the Herald.
“They’re extremely anxious, they feel betrayed.”
Murray Heasley and abuse survivor Darryl Smith at an earlier trip to Rome when they tried to raise concerns at the Vatican about abuse. Photo / Analyn Heasley
He said most survivors he spoke to recently had low expectations but some still had hope.
“There is a hope that historic survivors will get some redress and the Government will acknowledge that it’s urgent.”
He said redress was about more than financial compensation.
“It’s about a whole panoply of support - medical, psychiatric ... all kinds of things.”
The network earlier this year said despite the Royal Commission’s work, abuse in many settings including church-affiliated schools was still a risk.
Asked if he had anything positive to say about the Royal Commission, Heasley said: “It’s over.”
John Weekes was previously a Herald on Sunday court and consumer affairs reporter, Dominion Post crime and justice reporter, News Corp Australia court reporter, and has been writing about survivors for more than five years.
