New Zealand\u2019s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon made a \u201cformal and unreserved\u201d apology in Parliament on Tuesday for the widespread abuse, torture and neglect of hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable adults in care, many of them Indigenous. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was horrific. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened,\u201d Luxon said, as he spoke to lawmakers and a public gallery packed with survivors of the abuse. <\/p>\n
An estimated 200,000 people in state, foster and faith-based care suffered \u201cunimaginable\u201d abuse over a period of seven decades, a blistering report released in July said at the end of the largest inquiry ever undertaken in New Zealand. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor many of you it changed the course of your life, and for that, the government must take responsibility,\u201d Luxon said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWords do matter and I say these words with sincerity: I have read your stories, and I believe you,\u201d he added. The Prime Minister was apologizing on behalf of previous governments too, he said. <\/p>\n
The results were a \u201cnational disgrace,\u201d the inquiry\u2019s report said, after a six-year investigation believed to be the widest-ranging of comparable probes worldwide. Of 650,000 children and vulnerable adults in state, foster, and church care between 1950 and 2019 \u2014 in a country that today has a population of 5 million \u2014 nearly a third endured physical, sexual, verbal or psychological abuse. Many more were exploited or neglected. <\/p>\n
They were disproportionately Maori, New Zealand\u2019s Indigenous people. <\/p>\n
In response to the findings, New Zealand\u2019s government agreed for the first time that historical treatment of some children in a notorious state-run hospital amounted to torture, and pledged an apology to all those abused in state, foster and religious care since 1950. <\/p>\n
Luxon\u2019s government was decried by some survivors and advocates earlier Tuesday ahead of the apology for not yet having divulged plans for the financial compensation of those abused. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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New Zealand\u2019s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon made a \u201cformal and unreserved\u201d apology in Parliament on Tuesday for the widespread abuse, torture and neglect of hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable adults in care, many of them Indigenous. \u201cIt was horrific. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened,\u201d Luxon said, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9758,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}