Abuse in care report: I went to represent myself and my two late brothers - Bernie O’Donnell

THREE KEY FACTS:

• The report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care says of the roughly 655,000 children, young people and adults in care during 1950 to 2019, around 200,000 were abused and even more were neglected.
• The inquiry found evidence of abuse and failures of responsibility “everywhere we looked”, including welfare institutions, churches and other religious organisations, some schools, the police and in successive governments.
• Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has established a task force to manage the report’s 138 recommendations.

Former Manukau Urban Māori Authority chairman and opinion writer on kaupapa Māori issues for the Herald, Bernie O’Donnell is also a survivor of being abused by the state while in care. He was at Parliament to witness the 3000-page report being handed to the Government this week.

OPINION

Growing up as a survivor of state ward abuse means that throughout our lives we haven’t really had too much to celebrate, especially in our formative years.

Key dates we are supposed to celebrate can be triggering for us; birthdays, Christmas holidays, school holidays. Abuse and beatings didn’t stop on your birthday, often birthdays meant increasing attention was focused on you, which made you even more visible to the abusers.

Bernie O'Donnell at Parliament.

Most of the time, survivors tried to make themselves invisible, and in doing so, and in their minds, made themselves less vulnerable.

Christmas and school holidays meant you were no longer in the sanctity of the classroom, safe from the abuser(s), but that you were with them constantly.

The point I’m trying to make here is that significant days we should all be able to enjoy, mark and celebrate were few and far between.

However, much like the birth dates of my wife and tamariki, July 24, 2024, is now etched indelibly in my mind.

On this day the tabling of Whanaketia, the report into Abuse in Care, to Parliament was so significant because, as survivors, the Crown finally heard us, saw us, and believed us, unconditionally.

I think about my late brothers, who died a few years ago and therefore missed this day. Until recently I had thought the trauma and abuse under state care had only affected my adopted brother, I was devastated to discover that my brother through whakapapa, whom I didn’t grow up, with also suffered abuse at the hands of the state. On Wednesday, I was there for them too.

The tabling of the report isn’t an end point, in fact it’s where we can restart. For me, redress is the next phase of our journey. Where that goes is still to be determined, one thing I’m sure of is that redress needs to be survivor-lead.

Bernie O'Donnell with Prime Minister Christoper Luxon.

The final question which is often put to me is why are there so many Māori featuring in the state care system.

Why are we so dominant in the numbers of our people in prisons, in state institutions, under the domain of Oranga Tamariki. The reason, I believe, is colonisation.

Through that process we lost everything that made us Māori. We lost our language, our culture, our identity. Through assimilation we were expected to be Kiwis. English is our first language and we exist within a system that isn’t ours. A system that didn’t recognise our Māori intelligence, our social structures, our values and our spirituality.

The challenge for us is to reclaim all of those things which were lost to us but at the same time bring everyone (including non–Māori) along with us. Many of us now talk about the concept of he waka eke noa, that for me means that nobody gets left behind.