Erica Stanford: Minister-in-charge of the Government's response to abuse in care facilities shares 'harrowing' report details

Survivors of harrowing abuse in New Zealand's care system have gathered in Parliament for the tabling of a report on their experiences.

A Royal Commission of Inquiry has found about 200,000 people suffered in state and faith based institutions from 1950 to 2019.

It recommends urgent redress, payment to whanau of survivors to recognise generational harm - and police investigation of the claims.

The Prime Minister has confirmed its recommendations will be considered in coming months, and a formal apology will be made in November.

Minister-in-charge Erica Stanford says stark accounts from the inquiry are mirrored in reports still heard today.

"The young people in Oranga Tamariki care who are being encouraged to fight have been filmed by the staff - and the staff are untrained."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Royal Commission into Abuse in State and Faith based
Care dropped an hour ago, and as you know, it
is grim. It estimates two hundred thousand key we kids
and young people and adults were abused in care between
nineteen fifty and twenty nineteen. That's almost one in three
who were in this care. The Commission found they were
exposed to unimaginable and widespread abuse physical, emotional, mental, and sexual.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Erica Stanford is the minister responsible for the government's response. Higherica, Hello,
how are you? I'm good? Thank you? Have you read
the report?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I have read the report. I've read all of the
stories and they are harrowing the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Did you read all three thousand pages? I have.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
It's what k I'm the lead minister and that's my job,
and I know that my colleagues are making their way
through the report as well.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Yeah, how tough did you find reading this stuff?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh? Look, it's incredibly harrowing. But you know, as I'm
reading it, I think to myself, I only have to
read this and do my job and making sure that
we usher this through the process. These people actually went
through it. You know, it's hard to imagine the horrors
that they encountered.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Do you agree with Chris Luxe and this looks like torture.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
There are some things that Christoph lux And will say
about torture, and I'll leave that to him.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Is this stuff still happening at the most extreme level?
I mean, the most extreme stuff that we've read about
in the report is sex trafficking, letting members of the
public come in and pay money and abuse the kids, torture,
you know, unnecessary injections. Is that kind of stuff still
going on.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
One of the things when you read the report that
is quite dark is some of the things you read
you realize are mirrored and reports that you read today.
So if you think about the young people and Tambaikikia
who are being encouraged to fight and being filmed by
the staff, and the staff are untrained, that is a
story you could read in the report from you forty

(01:52):
years ago. It's still happening today in some pockets. And
so while we have come a long way, there is
a lot more that we can do. We must do better.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
As hard as we may try, can we ever really
stop the stuff happening to kids? Because ultimately, it doesn't
matter whether these people are their parents, foster parents working
in state care. As long as you've got bad adults,
this will happen. Can you really ever stop it?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
We can do our very best to make sure that
the systems and processes that are in place are as
strong as they possibly can be, and that the oversight
and accountability is there. That is our job. But you
are right, there are individuals in this story as well,
and actually it's on all of us, just a state,
but all of us to make sure that we all
do better.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
So what do we do.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well? My job, as I says, to lead that the
other nine ministers who are involved. The first thing we
have to do is get the redress part underway and
complete it as quickly as we can. The Crown response
so the Commission report has said that we need to
prioritize redress and that is what we were doing. We're
taking a number of cabinet papers and we have decisions

(02:59):
by the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
I mean, are you considering direct payments to people as
compensation for what they've been through.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
There's a lot of things that we're considering. The Design
Redress Group, who are made up of survivors, have given
us one hundred and thirty page report with another ninety
seven I think recommendations that are very innovative, and you
know that they are very unique and it's going to
take us a long time to work our way through those,

(03:26):
but they are survivor led and will take those into consideration.
There's a lot of different things from services to payments
and all sorts.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Could cost us a lot of money.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Ah well, as a Prime minister said today, we're not
thinking about that. First principles, what's the right thing to do,
what are the right systems and process to set up
to get there, and then we will think about that later.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I know that you kind of limited what you can
say about redress and acting on recommendations because that's a
process you have to go through now that you've got
the report. But are you considering shutting ot down?

Speaker 2 (03:57):
That is, as you know, my portfolio, and something you'll
need to speak to other ministers about. And it's not
something that we've.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Discussed because we're already shutting it down, aren't we. I
mean we're giving fifty percent of its funding a way
to community based organizations and treaty partners, we found out yesterday,
so there's already a path.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
There There's lots of different ways of making sure that
kids are getting the support and care that they need,
and we'll well look at all of those, but also
for those who are currently or an automody you care,
we need to make sure we're strengthening accountability and report
trapping and care of those kids now are the most
vulnerable kids in our way.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Totally, Erica, thank you very much for your time. ID appreciate.
Is Erica Stanford, the minister responsible for the government's response.
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