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.
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

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.
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.”

More Reading

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.

Keep going!
Image: The Spinoff
Image: The Spinoff

OPINIONPoliticsJuly 24, 2024

‘I’m even more concerned’: A survivor’s response to the final abuse in care report

Guest writer
Image: The Spinoff
Image: The Spinoff

Despite the many, many recommendations in today’s final inquiry report, there are still some glaring omissions, writes Steve Goodlass.

I’ve previously been critical about the abuse in care inquiry’s productivity and the actual independence of the inquiry process. The final report and its recommendations haven’t shifted that viewpoint – in fact, I’m even more concerned than before.

One of the most important outcomes that survivors needed from this inquiry was a clear path through the civil courts. It’s on record now with the inquiry that in the first decade of this century, the Crown deliberately and systematically sought to test its litigation strategy, set precedent and sew up any remaining holes in statute. A civil litigation attempt by survivors is blocked due to statutes of limitation, the ACC bar (which prevents anyone technically covered by ACC from engaging in a civil suit) and the question of vicarious liability, let alone the enormous cost involved in taking a civil suit against an entity with limitless budget.

Recommendations 75, 78 and 79 of the 2021 redress report dealt with the recommendation for reform of the limitations acts, a lifting of the ACC bar in these specific cases, and for the Law Commission to review any other obstacles to civil litigation, recommend corrective steps and report back within 12 months. The final report neither reinforces or follows up on this. Instead, it lets the Crown off the hook with recommendation 11. Here it says that “If the government does not progress the inquiry’s recommended civil litigation reforms (holistic redress recommendations 75 and 78 from the inquiry’s interim report”, it should reform the ACC act to provide tailored compensation and other suitable remedies.” The status quo with the Crown holding all the power remains.

At the same time this also highlights another glaring issue. The inquiry didn’t investigate the judiciary with regard to bias, or the legal profession (lawyers) with regard to ethical execution of duty. The police were called out as part of the Lake Alice inquiry but was there an investigation into how they treated complaints, and the decisions around taking something to prosecution? None of these entities appeared as part of the investigation streams but make up a critical part of the system. Compare this with the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that commissioned work that sought to look at bias in the judiciary and highlighted a range of issues that they could learn from.

As advocates and civil society organisations in the inquiry lost faith in it, we started to lobby the United Nations, specifically the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT), following the pathway carved by some of the Lake Alice survivors. In its 2022 Lake Alice report, the inquiry strongly urged the Crown to meet it obligations to provide fair redress to survivors of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment based on the inquiry’s interim report (2020) and redress report (2021).

In the final report summary just released, the inquiry has made no reference to those recommendations of the UNCAT. The term UNCAT is completely missing, yet the Crown has been making its case repeatedly to the UNCAT. Now, at the UN periodic review (2024), the Crown said it was waiting for the final report before deciding on redress for the likes of the Lake Alice survivors who the UNCAT found in favour of.

As the UNCAT pointed out, the inquiry has no bearing on international law and the government must meet its obligations for redress. So, there is no support in the final report for Lake Alice for redress under international law. Rather, recommendation 18 seeks parity of redress from the two settlement cohorts where one had legal fees subtracted from the settlement and the other did not.

All of this against the backdrop of minister Paul Goldsmith’s statement to the UN’s Periodic Review of New Zealand, where he said:

“Through the inquiry process, serious issues have been raised around possible breaches in international and domestic human rights in the care system, including the Bill of Rights Act 1990 and the Convention Against Torture.”

New Zealand has just spent $170+ million on an inquiry only to have a minister use the term “possible breaches”! His statement is of great concern because it again points to the minimisation position continued by the Crown.

A common request from survivors has been to not have to report to the perpetrating institution. There are a variety of reasons for this, from re-traumatisation to concern about fair process. Although this report sets out recommendations for a Care Safe Agency under statute, it specifies that the agency is largely a policy setter/watchdog/data collector. Survivors will still have to go to the perpetrating institution to report. The one saving grace could be that in its role, the Care Safe Agency can receive complaints about processes about entities under its purview.

There is no mention, I believe, of the issue of bringing enablers to justice and thus no guidance or framework for achieving historical accountability. In the case of the Crown, how does the Crown investigate and prosecute the Crown when it comes to past or current heads of ministries, politicians and the like? It would seem to me there is a conundrum here as police seek to use Crown Law, yet Crown Law might be a focus of a complaint? What mechanisms exist to work through this? Looking more broadly, it appears there is not a precedent of criminal accountability in New Zealand for those who have enabled abuse. With the passing of this inquiry, the question as to how to implement that goes unanswered.

In one sense, this has been New Zealand’s largest research project around the abuse of children in out-of-home care settings. Unfortunately, with the inquiry’s final minute they’ve locked all of the data away that they possibly can when adopting the data access strategy implemented by the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terrorist attacks. No accredited researcher can access the background information to better understand what happened, to assess the productivity of the inquiry, understand the obstructions placed in its way or the internal issues.

Instead we have a handful of case studies that don’t fully cover the investigation streams the commission said it was undertaking. If you’re patient, you can watch the livestream recordings of the public sessions to screenshot some evidential documents flashed up on screen. However, we are left with significant holes and therefore much less understanding than we should have. Of particular interest to me is the fact there is no case study covering the Catholic church, yet the final report notes that the incidence of sexual abuse of children was highest in the care of this entity. The result is the bishops are relaxed, the fear of the inquiry has passed, they can see they are safe, untouchable. What a waste of a significant body of knowledge thanks to poor productivity and locked-up data.

More Reading

    The final report is here now. The Crown has it. Yet the Crown has delayed fair redress to Lake Alice survivors while waiting for it, ignored the information pouring out of the public hearings or in the interim reports and continued to make decisions on the care of children. This has been the case throughout the inquiry. In 2022, Aaron Smale asked government minister Carmel Sepuloni, during her push for a monitoring mechanism, whether she had read the redress report. She had not.

    Then-minister Hipkins said the Crown accepted the redress recommendations and proceeded to roll out the Crown’s version of rapid redress on MSD survivors. The redress entity is still in planning two years later. This year we hear Goldsmith talk of “possible breaches” to human rights closely followed up by the same from Erica Stanford, minister in charge of the government response, in her cabinet briefing papers. This month, we roll out “trauma-informed” bootcamps despite international evidence and horrific accounts of other military-style interventions highlighted in the inquiry’s testimony.

    The Crown picks and chooses what it actions, it still holds all the cards, the status quo is firmly in place – and I fear for the survivors and our children now and in the future.

    Politics