New Zealand Royal Commission into child abuse to include churches: victory or lame albatross?
Dr Murray Heasley, PhD (Otago University), is the spokesperson for the Network of Survivors in Faith-based Institutions and Their Supporters in New Zealand. The New Zealand Royal Commission into Historical Abuse of Children in State Care was announced in February 2018 and extended in November 2018 to include abuse within faith-based care institutions. Will this expansion be reason for celebration or will it be the most pyrrhic of victories?[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level2)]
The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse had been in progress for 4 years before moves to have the New Zealand Government establish a similar inquiry became public. In February 2017 an open letter from the NZ Human Rights Commission calling for an inquiry and a public apology to those abused was published in the New Zealand Herald; five months later a similar request was made by then-Opposition Leader Jacinda Ardern to Prime Minister Bill English; and in August another call came from the United Nations.
In November 2017, two months after winning the general election, the new Labour-led coalition government promised to set up an inquiry within 100 days and, on 1 February 2018, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, with Internal Affairs Minister Tracey Martin, officially announced a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care. Submissions were then invited from the public on the Inquiry’s terms of reference.
From the outset the government wanted a restricted inquiry, looking only into the abuse that had occurred in State care, namely, orphanages and residential homes run by government agencies. Suggestions that it examine abuse in faith-based care would, according to Prime Minister Ardern, have a “diluting” effect, and Minister Martin rejected such a proposal as a “witch-hunt”. Even the newly appointed chair of the Royal Commission, Sir Anand Satyanand, a Catholic of Indo-Fijian heritage and former Governor-General, opined that faith-based abuse was a mere “hinterland” of interest.
However, two months later, to the government’s chagrin, Sir Anand recommended to Minister Martin that the Inquiry’s terms of reference be expanded to include child sexual abuse in faith-based care, even though it would add two more years of investigation to the 2-year time frame initially envisaged. It was not the recommendation the government was seeking or expecting.
What scuttled the original draft terms of reference and made them untenable was the avalanche of 401 submissions sent to the Commission in April 2018: 129 called for an expanded inquiry to include abuse in faith-based care (only 5 opposed), and 93 called for the original limited time frame of 1950-1999 to be extended into the 21st century (just 6 opposed). Even the NZ Catholic Bishops’ Conference said it was willing to participate in an expanded inquiry.
With notions of dilution, witch hunts and hinterland crushed by the weight of public opinion, Sir Anand had no option but to recommend an expanded inquiry, and the government, faced with massive public outrage if it did not comply, backed down after 6 months deliberation and announced the expanded inquiry in November 2018.
The Royal Commission’s new terms of reference are expected to cost $78.85 million over a four-year period, with a two-part sequential inquiry planned: the first examining abuse in State care only with an interim report in 2020; and the second focusing on abuse in faith-based care, including care provided by Catholic institutions. The Commission will begin hearing evidence early in 2019 and is scheduled to present its final report in January 2023.
The 5 Commissioners, including Sir Anand, are Justice Carol Shaw, an expert in restorative justice and human rights, Ali’imuamua Sandra Alofivae, a Samoan-New Zealand barrister and children’s rights advocate, Paul Gibson, the former Disability Rights Commissioner, and Dr Anaru Erueti, an Auckland Law Department academic of Maori heritage.
After the initial flush of excitement, members of the Network of Survivors of Abuse in Faith Based Institutions and Their Supporters realised that it was not at all clear whether the inquiry could look beyond abuse in orphanages and children’s homes. The majority of the victims/survivors the Network represented had been abused by Catholic priests and religious brothers in schools, churches and presbyteries, not in institutional care settings, and the terms of reference were so vague that large numbers of survivors could potentially be excluded from the Inquiry.
The Network immediately sought a categorical assurance from the Executive Director of the Royal Commission that all those who had been abused by Catholic priests and religious in non-care Catholic Church settings would be included in the Inquiry, but so far that assurance has not been given.
It was a bleak Christmas/New Year for those victims/survivors left twisting in the wind. The familiar chaffing of the rope around their throats continues to choke their decades-long hope for healing and redress.
But even if they are eventually included in the inquiry, what will it actually mean? Will they be able to give testimony in a protected and supported manner? Will their testimony be used by Counsel Assisting to forensically investigate those institutions whose officials sexually assaulted them and stole their childhoods? Will it be just another CLAS (Confidential Listening and Assistance Service) with no consequences for the offending institutions? Will there be just redress and compensation?
It has been interesting to watch the reaction of the Catholic bishops to the extension of the inquiry to include the Catholic Church. The April 2018 Bishops’ Conference submission to the Royal Commission was a flaccid document, expressing no more than a ‘willingness’ to be involved. It made no proposal on which church settings should be included in the inquiry, no call for an extended time frame, and no advocacy for a just redress scheme. Yet, the bishops were only too happy to bathe in the after-glow of public and media approval of their willingness to be part of the inquiry, an approval that was ill-deserved.
In August 2018 the Network had asked the Catholic bishops to issue a far more powerful statement, insisting on the Catholic Church being investigated, asking for the time frame to be extended beyond the 1999, and for adequate redress and financial compensation. It was advised that such a statement would be forthcoming, but it never appeared.
With abuse in Catholic institutional care now included in the inquiry, the Catholic bishops have set up a new 7-person body called the Organising Group (Te Rōpū Tautoko) to interface with the Commission. Its members are Catherine Fyfe (Chair), a lay women with expertise in human resources management, Bishop Charles Drennan of Palmerston North, Marist Fathers Provincial Fr David Kennerley, Marist Brothers Director Br David McDonald, Marist Sister Jane O’Carroll, Mercy Sister Katrina Fabish, and Deacon Danny Karatea-Goddard of the Bishops’ Conference Secretariat.
Bishop Drennan, Fr Kennerley and Br McDonald are well known to the Network and their positions are not reassuring. Bishop Drennan has been extremely critical of the Australian Bishops Conference’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council and its CEO, Francis Sullivan, saying that this lay-dominated Council had been a hindrance to episcopal authority. Fr Kennerley, when asked to meet with a survivor, referred him back to the very people he had complained about. Brother McDonald, a Māori, when asked by an Otago Daily Times journalist on 12 December 2018 about the brutal serial rape of a twelve-year old Māori boy by a fellow Marist Brother, replied, “No comment.”
The Catholic Church’s recent practice of dignifying bodies like the Organising Group with Māori titles does not change its essential nature. A more appropriate title would be Te Rōpū Whakatuapeka – the Concealment Group, for this is what it is. Sir Humphrey Appleby leapt from fiction into the corporeal world: Minister: But surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to know? Sir Humphrey Appleby: No. They have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge only means complicity in guilt; ignorance has a certain dignity.
Rather than the Royal Commission inspiring a new openness and transparency, the Catholic bishops have now weaponised it to justify silence. They have pulled up the drawbridge, filled the moat and disappeared behind the castle walls, refusing to speak except through PR spin doctors and apologists.
Nor has the Royal Commission fared much better. On 14 December 2018, Radio NZ reported on a breach of privacy when the Commission confused a member of the Network, Grant West, with Grant Mahy, and sent the details to the wrong Grant. Commission staff had apparently assumed there was only one man called Grant living in Australia, and when Radio NZ reporter Phil Pennington pursued the story in an interview agreed to by Mary- Jane Rendle, the Commission’s communication person, she hung up on him mid-interview.
The feathers of the Toroa, the Royal Southern Albatross, are the motif of the Royal Commission. It is a bird that symbolises strength, endurance, and a return to roots. Its feathers provide refuge from the elements, but also the lifting of a burden, the incredible lightness of being. The circle form of the Toroa motif signifies life – the fusion of past, present and future.
Unless great care is taken, the albatross might end up as it did in Coleridge’s poem, with all hope dashed.
And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work ‘em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow! [/s2If]
