OPINIONPoliticsJuly 25, 2024

The shadow of a boot camp hangs over parliament

Wellington editor

The prime minister promised the government would listen and change in response to abuse in care. But the loudest words were the ones he wouldn’t say.

Prime minister Chris Luxon was pitch perfect as he received and acknowledged the final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care in parliament on Wednesday. He said all the rights things with all the right expressions on his face, maintaining a sensitive, remorseful tone of voice. He was a prime minister rising to the occasion, bearing the weight of history, shouldering a sacred responsibility that is bigger than any one person.

“I cannot take away your pain, but I can tell you this: you are heard, and you are believed,” he said, acknowledging the state’s dark, bloodstained history of harm. “I say to the survivors, the burden is no longer yours to carry alone. The state is now standing here beside you, accountable and ready to take action.”

But the loudest words were those not said. The promises not made. The decisions punted for another day. In every speech, every comment, every emotion-laden moment, there was a herd of elephants in the room, an inescapable shadow over the entire proceedings – the government’s own rhetoric, policies and campaign promises.

There was a deep sense of respect from government ministers, who knew Wednesday was not about them, it was about the survivors. Every political leader who spoke in parliament on Wednesday had been personally affected by reading the report. They showed on their faces and in their croaking voices that they had seen, heard and understood the horrific stories in the 3,000-page document.

Erica Stanford, the minister in charge of the government response, spoke of the unwed mothers who were deliberately underfed so they would have small babies and easy births. “They drugged them up and they took their babies without giving them a chance to hold them. That is confronting.” New Zealand First’s Jenny Marcroft revealed she is the daughter of a survivor. “My mother was strapped to electrodes and delivered electric shock therapy as a young university student. She was locked up, without her consent or consent of her parents, and subjected to inhumane, barbaric treatment in the late 1950s. One of thousands of stories just like yours.” Fellow NZ First MP Casey Costello recalled meeting young victims when she was a police officer. “The experiences have never left me. I can still see the pattern of a pair of pyjamas. I can still see the colour of their eyes that had lost the ability to shed tears.”

The survivors and whānau in parliament’s public gallery applauded every time an MP acknowledged that abuse was still continuing to this day. Labour leader Chris Hipkins cited a few changes his previous government made, but admitted they fell short. “Prime minister, we didn’t do enough and the ball now falls to you and your government,” he said.

The audience also made it known when they weren’t impressed. And there were two words that stung more than any other: boot camps.

A 110-page section of the report is dedicated to a case study of Te Whakapakari, a boot camp on Aotea, Great Barrier Island, where young offenders were subjected to extreme psychological, physical and sexual abuse – including being made to dig their own graves while being held at gunpoint.

It’s an uncomfortable parallel for a government which just four days prior had launched its pilot of a military-style academy for young offenders at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North. Some survivors think it is effectively impossible to run this kind of boot camp without relying on abusive tactics to scare young offenders and keep them in line.

Luxon was asked about the risks of boot camps becoming abusive at the post-cabinet press conference on Monday. He weakly insisted it would be different this time. There will be safeguards and protections in place. There will be community groups involved, he promised. It wasn’t particularly convincing.

When minister for children Karen Chhour spoke in the house, she promised to be “a strong advocate and a leader of change”. She was interrupted by a survivor yelling “No boot camps”. Other people in the crowd repeated the line.

Stanford was heckled too. “The Crown owed you all a duty of care and protection and we have utterly failed you,” she said. An audience member interjected “still failing”. Someone else echoed the same words, “still failing”. Then, a third voice: “No boot camps.”

At Whakapakari young offenders were subject to extreme abuse (Image: Archi Banal)

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer picked up the theme in her speech. “The government is saying how sorry it is, but it continues to create mega-prisons… and experiment with our rangatahi in boot camps.”

Chlöe Swarbrick, in the most forceful speech of the day, also hit on boot camps. “This apology must transcend into ensuring that no people are ever subjected to this at the hand of the state ever again. To get really real and frank, what that means, and what survivors this morning told us, is NO MILITARY-STYLE BOOT CAMPS.” That line earned a standing ovation from the survivors, several of whom held their fists in the air.

Act leader David Seymour chided Swarbrick and Ngarewa-Packer for trying to bring politics into a day that was meant to be about something bigger. But the complaint fell slightly flat, given it was the survivors themselves who were making most of the noise.

Many of the survivors at parliament on Wednesday were patched gang members. It was an unavoidable reality. There was no violence, or even any sense of aggression. Stanford had lengthy one-on-ones with Black Power members on the parliament forecourt.

Erica Stanford speaking with a gang member outside parliament (Photo: Joel MacManus)

The Royal Commission report found that abusive state care institutions had effectively acted as a pipeline for gangs. The state’s actions actively drove young people towards gangs, where they found love and support for the first time in their lives. It was another uncomfortable reality for Luxon, who has (successfully) made a lot of political hay with his tough-on-gangs rhetoric. He’s referred to gang members as “thugs”. Seymour has called them “scum”. The government has introduced policies to make gang membership an aggravating factor for sentencing – without acknowledging the state’s role in that membership.

In a press conference ahead of the release of the report in parliament, Luxon was challenged on whether the report would cause him to rethink his policies and rhetoric towards gangs. He grew defensive and cut the press conference short. “Well look, I understand many gang members come from very dysfunctional upbringings, and I get that, but also we can’t have gang members causing pain and suffering,” he said. But was he at least willing to admit that he made judgments about gang members without knowing their full history, and understanding how the state’s abuse had affected them? “No, I disagree. I understand what drives gang membership, I understand that well.”

Throughout the day, government ministers pledged to change, to listen, and to respond to what survivors were telling them. But there were repeated moments when they exposed themselves as out of touch. Without even realising it, they were still instinctively speaking to the middle-class Pākehā watching at home, rather than the actual survivors in the room.

David Seymour: “All of us have to look at the country that we thought was above these bad things, that it could never happen on such a scale, so grotesquely, that we were good people and bad things happened elsewhere. Actually, it did happen here.”

Erica Stanford: “I think we believed that these sorts of unimaginable horrors and atrocities never happened here, but they happened in other places, to other people.”

Christopher Luxon: “We like to think that abuse like this doesn’t happen here in Aotearoa New Zealand, but it did.”

None of those lines seemed to connect with the survivors in the audience. Ta Pāti Māori’s Mariameno Kapa-Kingi picked up on it. “When I hear comments like, ‘We thought this was a great country. We never could possibly do that’, it’s such a privileged statement. Māori, for way too long, have absolutely felt the despise, the distaste, and the horror of what Pākehā systemic racism hands to us. It is not a shock to us. It is not a surprise to Māori at all that these things occurred then and that they occur right now as I’m standing here giving this speech.”

The last time a government received a royal commission report was in December 2020, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Terrorist Attack on Christchurch masjidain. Then prime minister Jacinda Ardern immediately agreed, in principle, to implement all 44 of the royal commission’s recommendations. Not so much this time. The official government line on Wednesday, repeated with slight variation by several ministers, was “the content needs to be considered with respect and care and cannot be rushed”.

There is a good reason for that. The royal commission report has 138 recommendations (plus 95 recommendations from an interim report in 2021), some of which are immensely complex and financially significant. The government says it will prioritise redress for the Lake Alice victims, because many are older and dying. It won’t announce its response until the official national apology on November 12.

The recommendations are not the only way the government can respond. There are other, simpler, things it can do to show it is listening to survivors. In the context of the entire government work programme, the military-style boot camp is a relatively minor policy. It’s really just red meat for the base, performative rather than reforming. The survivors at parliament on Wednesday made it clear they saw the boot camps as a continuation of the abuse they faced. Government ministers repeatedly praised the survivors for their courage and bravery – but are they in turn brave enough to listen to the survivors and change their actions, even if it means abandoning a campaign promise?

Some survivors are hopeful for change. Most are resigned to cynicism. As much as they celebrated the acknowledgement on Wednesday, they’re hardened by a belief that the government will never truly listen to them.

As David Seymour spoke, there was a moment which demonstrated that attitude perfectly. “It is on all of us,” he said, “to be more caring, to listen to people when we think that they’re being ignored.” There was another disruption from the public gallery. A loud, blatant, faux-sneeze, as a survivor spluttered into their hands: “Bullshit.”

Keep going!

From Whanaketia, the final report on the abuse and neglect of children, young people and adults in the care of the State and faith-based institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand between 1950 and 1999.

PoliticsJuly 25, 2024

These are the stories the Jehovah’s Witnesses went to court to stop you reading

Toby Manhire

Editor-at-large

From Whanaketia, the final report on the abuse and neglect of children, young people and adults in the care of the State and faith-based institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand between 1950 and 1999.

The inquiry expressed ‘concern about the faith’s overall approach to the safety of children and young people in its care’.

The stories below include accounts of sexual abuse.

It was the early 1980s and Ms SC, then 15, was a member of the New Zealand Jehovah’s Witness community. Elders in the church – a fundamentalist Christian group, which adopts a literal interpretation of its bible and believes Armageddon is imminent – were concerned about her behaviour. She was required to attend an Elder’s home for extra religious study, led by his wife.

“I would often be at their place after school or to go on outings. In addition to one-on-one bible studies with the Elder’s wife, I would join their family regularly for their family bible study,” she recalled.

When the tuition was over, the Elder “would drive me home”, said Ms SC. Except that, “instead of going home, he took me to another area nearby where there were no houses or anything at that time. This was when the abuse took place. It happened many times over a period of four to five months. At first he touched my genitals, then he digitally penetrated me, then he had full sexual intercourse with me.”

Ms SC’s story appears as part of a 64-page case study focused on Jehovah’s Witnesses in New Zealand, part of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care, tabled yesterday in parliament. The church unsuccessfully applied to the Court of Appeal at the 11th hour to halt publication of the case study pending an application to the Supreme Court to appeal an earlier ruling. The application was denied.

Statements to the Royal Commission included descriptions of an arcane investigation process followed by the church. “Jasmine Grew told the inquiry that she had disclosed abuse [by a family member] to her mother in 1989, when she was 12 years old. Her mother told the Elders of her congregation ‘as she was expected’ to do. Soon after at a faith meeting, an Elder came up to Jasmine and said ‘we’d like to speak to you in the back room’.”

Grew said: “I went back into the back room and the elders [both male] were there. I had no support, no friend, no mother, nothing. My mother did not know, at the time, what was happening.”

She continued: “The elders interrogated me. They were asking the worst questions you can imagine, for someone who was just 12 years old. They asked me, ‘Was it hard,’ referring to my abuser physically. They wanted to know everything. Their questions were inappropriate. At that age it was a terrifying experience for me. It seemed as abusive as the sexual abuse itself … I was honest, and I told them everything because I had to be honest. I was fearful of the consequences of Armageddon. The two words that come to me still now are humiliation and embarrassment … [The Elders] were very intimidating. They made no attempt to support or comfort me in this process.”

Another who gave testimony was Debbie Oakley, who previously told her story as part of a Spinoff investigation in 2018. She told the inquiry how, aged 16, she and her sister had met with three church Elders to report abuse by her stepfather. Her abuser had been “disfellowshipped” after admitting to abusing a seven-year-old girl before Debbie but, the inquiry found, “had been allowed back into the faith and appointed as a ministerial servant”.

The meeting took place in a car, with a pair of Elders in the front seats and Debbie, her sister and the third Elder in the back. According to the inquiry, “the Elders did not report the abuse to secular authorities or do anything else to protect Debbie from further abuse by her stepfather.”

The inquiry found there was “credible evidence that the practice of questioning children or young people, particularly those who were victims of sexual abuse, during such investigations and judicial committee processes was inappropriate and emotionally or psychologically abusive. The evidence showed the severe impact that such practices had on the individuals concerned.”

It concluded there was credible evidence that “sexual abuse occurred in the care of the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith” and that the church “took inadequate steps to prevent and respond to abuse in care”. It found that “the practice of Elders questioning children or young people who were victims of sexual abuse during investigations and judicial committee processes was inappropriate and emotionally or psychologically abusive”.

The risks were exacerbated owing to “high barriers to the disclosure of abuse, making it more difficult for individuals to disclose any abuse either to others within the faith or to secular authorities. These barriers included the inferior position of women within the faith, rigid disclosure processes, the fear of being shunned and the relative disconnection from non-Jehovah’s Witnesses, all of which likely prevented or delayed victims from disclosing abuse.” There was also a “lack of vetting and training of Elders in child protection and abuse prevention”.

Survivors told the Royal Commission that they were afraid to report abuse to the church because of the consequences of being excommunicated or “disfellowshipped”. Elise Neame put it this way: ““I wanted to avoid being disfellowshipped because I knew the serious repercussions, which would include losing my family. This was a fear that stayed with me for a long time … [The Jehovah’s Witnesses] torture members with fear of the end of the world and the fear of what will happen if you break their rules – the fear of being disfellowshipped and losing family and friends.”

After being confronted when she was 17 for having a boyfriend and “drinking and partying a little”, Elise was disfellowshipped.

“I would be at the supermarket and see my auntie or a long-time childhood friend and they would see me, only to completely ignore me or walk the other way,” she said. “I … saw my mother doing street preaching and she looked the other way. Family would have gatherings, wedding events, and celebrations, and completely shun me. I would find out about new additions to the family through others … I went four years without seeing or speaking to my mother or any of my [Jehovah’s Witness] family. I spent four years in a deep depression; I was suicidal, and completely lost. I have seen many therapists and counsellors, and no one can ever understand the terrible damage that this religion’s shunning of people causes.”

She said: “I now have nothing to lose. There is nothing more that the Jehovah’s Witnesses can take away from me. This religion has destroyed my life… I often daydream of what it is like to be part of a normal family, what it is like to have a support system.”

Documents shared with the inquiry painted a picture of their own. For example: “In one matter where an Elder had sexual intercourse with a 15-year-old girl, the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ summary notes read ‘the Elders all felt great shock at the seriousness of the sin, the repercussions to the congregation should the girl become pregnant and the sin thus become known’.”

The report also noted: “The inquiry has not seen any evidence of the Jehovah’s Witnesses referring sexual abuse allegations to police during the inquiry period in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is consistent with inquiry findings in Australia and the United Kingdom.”

The Jehovah’s Witness church has been fighting for years to avoid the scrutiny of the inquiry, arguing that it did not have children or young people under its “care”, and therefore should be excluded. The remit of the inquiry was extended shortly after its commissioning to cover faith-based institutions. Jehovah’s Witness was the only such institution to launch a legal challenge, in keeping with the approach it has adopted to similar inquiries in Australia and the UK.

The church made a similar objection to the categorisation of the account by Ms SC as taking place in its care. Its position, according to the case study, “is that it has never assumed responsibility for the care of children in their homes nor condoned or had any policy to support an Elder being alone in a child’s home … the faith had not assumed responsibility for Ms SC when the abuse occurred.”

For its part, the Royal Commission, “finds that Ms SC was in the care of the faith at the time of the abuse. The faith conferred power and authority on the Elder. He assumed responsibility for Ms SC through an informal pastoral care relationship, related to the faith’s work, namely Bible studies and caring for ‘fatherless children’ within the congregation. The faith’s assumption of responsibility for Ms SC flowed from it conferring authority and trusted status on the Elder, and the actions of the Elder in taking Ms SC into his care, unsupervised.”

In its report, the inquiry further observed, “the faith’s approach to this inquiry was premised on the basis that no children or young people were ever in its care. The ongoing failure of the faith to recognise that children and young people were in its care and adapt its approach to child safety gives the inquiry significant concern about the faith’s overall approach to the safety of children and young people in its care.”

The church is currently seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. Pending that decision it applied to the Court of Appeal on Friday night to halt today’s publication of the case study as part of the overall report.

Justice Cooke on Tuesday dismissed the application, saying the prospects of success in the Supreme Court were low and noting the report’s publication was “a matter of considerable public interest”. It was relevant, he added, “that the appellant has waited until the very last moment to make this application.”

In a statement following the court ruling, a spokesperson for the Jehovah’s Witnesses said: “We have serious concerns about the accuracy of the report regarding Jehovah’s Witnesses and have no choice but to resort to court to address these issues. Child protection is of utmost concern to Jehovah’s Witnesses and we believe the people of New Zealand, its decision-makers and most importantly survivors, deserve to be presented with accurate information.”

The Royal Commission has recommended that the Jehovah’s Witnesses governing body should issue a “public apology and acknowledgement for the abuse and neglect in the care of Jehovah’s Witnesses in New Zealand”. Other religious organisations enjoined to publicly apologise are the Catholic church, the Anglican church, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Salvation Army and Gloriavale Christian Community.

You can read the commission’s report in full here and the Jehovah’s Witness case study here.