Episode 14 : Murray Heasley, 5 years on, did the Abuse in Care Inquiry Deliver?

The New Zealand Royal Commission into Abuse in Care Final Report.

When this final report was tabled, all 14 kilos of it, six years of labour and $500 million of tax
payer money spent, I searched in vain for any real recognition of the many New Zealanders
our Network represented and whose suffering we had hoped would be acknowledged, only
to be left with a shattering realisation that New Zealand society has been diminished not
enhanced by its outcome.

Initially, in February 2018, Faith-based victim/ survivors were excluded from this Royal
Commission. Prime Minister Ardern described the possible inclusion of faith-based
victim/survivors as a dilution and the first Chair, Sir Anand Satyanand described us as the
hinterland. After consultations and over 400 submissions, our Network’s being the most
extensive, Faith-based was included in November 2018.

Once Faith-based was included, our Network fought tooth and nail to ensure that the
majority of victim/survivors would actually be in scope, those predated upon in multiple
pastoral care settings such as private homes, presbyteries, private motor vehicles, in
sporting facility showers and music rooms, on sand dunes and hedge rows, holiday homes,
etc etc and not just bricks and mortar institutions.

Why was this so important? The great majority of sexually abused victim/survivors were
abused in these multiple pastoral care settings. More than 60% of victim/survivors suffered
their attacks in these informal settings by privileged predators empowered to turn grooming
into molestation and rape and to exclude such victim/survivors from this Royal Commission
would be to exclude the majority of abused children and make the Royal Commission
intrinsically unjust and invalid. It would be a fundamental denial of natural justice. In our
Network, the figure was closer to 80%, the context of their attacks only limited by the
imagination of the predator.

This was entirely sexual abuse, the most horrific of abuse and inflicted on children
regardless of their gender or ethnicity, opportunistic, vicious and cynical attacks by
empowered individuals who had trusted access to their victims in multiple out- of- home
settings by virtue of their religious status as priests, consecrated Brothers, nuns or laity
given such power.

When were assured, over and over by Royal Commission functionaries that these abused
children were definitely in scope, our Network put in countless hours of pro bono work to
educate Royal Commission staff including the Commissioners themselves, Senior Counsels
Assisting and other staff about faith-based issues and to encourage potential
victim/survivors to engage with the Royal Commission Private Sessions and submissions and
testimony.

We insisted that the entire process be inclusive, non-discriminatory, open, transparent and
centred on truth, justice, healing and effective, meaningful redress free of siloing and
division.

On this understanding, we spoke at the Faith-based Hearing Phase 1 in November 2020
where many of our Network victim/survivors gave testimony at great personal risk to
themselves as they relived unspeakable horrors, We spoke at the Phase 2 Faith-based
Hearing in March 2021 and encouraged Dr Tom Doyle to give his expert testimony there.
We spoke at the Maryland’s Hearing in March 2022. We advocated for involvement with
this Royal Commission in this podcast, The Reckoning. Just listen to the many episodes. I
was personally thanked by Coral Shaw in an email praising the podcast. I was naïve and now
regret the faith I then had. Those incredibly brave survivors had their courage rewarded by
betrayal of this trust and were retraumatised to be used like rags after an oil spill, to be
discarded, ignored and air-brushed out of consideration.

As the Royal Commission continued, it became painfully obvious that there was a clear
conscious decision to silo and divide, the most obvious being the myth of a Māori State
versus Faith-based abuse divide.

The role of State and Faith based institutions are inextricably entwined like two eggs
whisked for an omelette.

To attempt to impose a State-based/Faith-based division in considering abuse in care
inflicted on Māori children is absurd and unsupportable on historical, legal, cultural and
spiritual grounds. It is making a mockery of the Treaty of Waitangi. The abuse, wherever it
occurred, at its core is a spiritual abuse, an assault on wairua and mauri, on mana, on
whanau, a denial of the basic four pillars: manaakitangi, (support) kaitiakitanga
(guardianship) , mātauranga (wisdom) and māramatanga (insight).

Whether a Māori child was abused in a State care facility like Kohitere, Fielding or a faith-
based facility like Marist Primary School, Invercargill, a Māori child was abused and his or
her life sabotaged and upended in an appalling and horrendous manner by institutions
which should have protected them.

To artificially and arbitrarily distinguish between this abuse is a basic denial of natural justice
and of reality itself.

Having said this, we must not lose sight of the deeper truth of the majority non- Māori
group ghosted from this Royal Commission debacle. One startling example of this was a
planned supposed Dunedin Hearing to address the deep and systemic abuse of Catholic,
Presbyterian, Anglican and other faith-based abuse on non- Māori victim/survivors. The
Christian Brothers was just one group with offenders as numerous as the St John of God
paedophiles and pederasts whose crimes had been exposed in a series of articles by the
journalist, Chris Morris. The Royal Commission failed to honour its commitment to
investigate, leaving many victims gutted and betrayed.

By siloing and separating victim/survivors on grounds of ethnicity, this Royal Commission
has not advanced Māori rights and enlarged our collective view of our humanity as New
Zealanders but diminished and distorted it, tragically missed the moment and further
alienated the many Māori children abused in those multiple pastoral care settings of the

majority non- Māori victim/survivors who have their own English, Irish, Scottish, Asian,
Pasifika whakapapa no less important or sacred than any other cultural inheritance.
The final report was entitled Whanaketia – Through pain and trauma, from darkness to
light/ Whakairihia ki te tihi o Maungārongo. None of this is true in either language. The
Māori means lifted to the summit of peace but the pain and trauma did not lift the darkness
but reimposed even more darkness, more trauma, more pain. The only appropriate Māori
word is pōuri: darkness, sorrow, sadness, gloom, despondency, desolation, dejection.
The legal profession rode this gravy train for six years while victim/survivors are left with an
occasional droplet of gruel spilled from this fabulous table to make do as redress.
The comparison of this Royal Commission with the Australian Royal Commission makes this
darkness deeper.

The New Zealand Royal Commission Into Abuse In Care output (2018 to 2024) has been
pathetic and miniscule compared to the gold standard Australian Royal Commission Into
Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse (2012 to 2017) which held 7 fully inclusive round
tables and published 5 consultation papers, 11 issues papers, 57 case studies and 61
research papers, all in less time and less taxpayer money spent. Justice McClellan, the Chair,
also presented the findings at 23 conferences to relay the findings to the broader
community and judiciary.

Given the stated concern for a victim- centred Royal Commission it is astonishing there were
no case studies on the most invasive and harmful institutional predatory groups like the
Society of Mary priests, The FMS Marist Brothers and the Christian Brothers, just three jaw-
dropping failures of this Royal Commission that defy logic, rationality or basic common
sense.

What should have been a defining moment in New Zealand history, enriching and enlarging
a more mature, inclusive, just and compassionate understanding of our collective multi-
ethnic country and a clear path into the future, aware and informed about past injustice and
how better to protect our children and vulnerable adults, has been lost.
This is the real tragedy here.

What should have been a road map to a brighter future, the Pleiades or Matariki in our
night sky, is now New Zealand’s most expensive 14 kilogram door stop.

If this podcast has raised issues for you and you need help, then click on the button below for a list of support services.

Are you a victim of abuse?

If you’d like assistance with

• Finding support
• Reporting your abuse to Police

Then we may be able to provide help. Members of our Network have lived experience in all of these areas and by sharing their experiences and knowledge they can make the road a little easier to navigate. Contact us in confidence.