The Prime Minister of New Zealand apologizes for the abuse of thousands of people in care for decades

MADRID 12 Nov. () –

The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Christopher Luxon, offered this Tuesday a historic apology to the thousands of children, young people and vulnerable adults who survived abuse, rape and mistreatment when they were under state or religious guardianship for decades.

In a speech before Parliament, attended by dozens of victims, Luxon asked for forgiveness and regretted “not having believed them at first when they reported the abuse” suffered. “Now you have been heard. Now you are believed. I am sorry that many people, staff, volunteers and caregivers, turned a blind eye. I regret that state supervision was deficient,” he stated.

Thus, he recalled that many of those abused “have not been brought to justice, which has meant that many of the abuses could have been avoided.” “I am sorry that the State did not act quickly and bravely enough to improve the protection of people in all shelters,” he stressed.

Luxon has acknowledged that this is only the first step to achieve reparation for the victims, who are awaiting the implementation of other measures, such as obtaining compensation, according to information from radio station RNZ.

“It is clear that words must be accompanied by actions,” he said before stating that “it is necessary to do the right thing and provide them with the support they need.” “Secondly, we must do everything possible to prevent abuses from occurring in the future,” he added.

The leader of the opposition, Chris Hipkins, has formally joined the Government’s apology and has stressed that this is an “important step”. “Today is a hugely important day for all of you, to finally hear what the Crown has not given you for all these years, an apology. It is a hugely important day for us, the representatives of the Crown and successive governments, in which we finally recognize the thousands of experiences of abandonment, abuse, trauma and torture that we have faced, and in which we finally fully accept our failures and offer our most sincere apologies,” he explained.

“We are sorry. Today all of New Zealand will bear witness to the truth, to what the survivors experienced, to our decades of willful ignorance, denial and minimization, and to our conviction to put an end to such horrors and vile acts so that they do not continue.” , he highlighted before clarifying that the country “has an enormous debt” to those affected.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care Centers estimated last July that more than 200,000 children, young people and adults who were in state or religious care in New Zealand in the last 70 years were victims of abuse. .