“Community is first of all a quality of the heart. It grows from the spiritual knowledge that we are alive not for ourselves but for one another”
– Henry Nouwen
A 25-year plan to tackle the amount of violence in New Zealand homes is being unveiled by the government this morning. The country’s first National Strategy for eliminating family violence and sexual violence, called Te Aorerekura, will see 10 agencies…
Children in sex assault trials are blamed for their own abuse, criticised for keeping secrets and repeatedly accused of lying by defence lawyers, causing extreme distress and undermining their ability to give evidence, a study has found. Judges either failed…
It finally feels as though Lake Alice survivors are being listened to after a former staff member was charged, says one former patient. Selwyn Leeks is a 92-year-old with dementia. As lead psychiatrist at the Lake Alice child and adolescent…
The Moral Drift is the name of an exhibition that is on at the Tauranga Art Gallery until January 23rd. The exhibition investigates a partial history of our state care system, uncovering a legacy of abuse and the resiliency of…
A new strategy aims to eliminate family and sexual violence without even using the word “perpetrator”. Will a plan focusing on healing and prevention be enough to turn our appalling statistics around? OPINION: If ever there was a poisoned chalice in…
John’s* life has been blighted by the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his Catholic school principal. Forty years on, he is having to appeal to the Marist Brothers for redress, the very institution who employed the perpetrator. John was…
In Kansas City, six men who were sexually abused by Catholic priests as children collaborate with a film crew to tell their stories — but not in the way you might think. They don’t act as talking heads in the…
An independent review into the access and use of client information within ACC will be led by prominent lawyer Linda Clark. The review was announced after RNZ revealed a group of ACC staff shared and laughed at client information in a…
There is a widespread and systematic problem of ACC staff having inappropriate access to the files of sexual abuse survivors, advocates say. One advocate believed her own privacy had been breached about 30 times by ACC staff clicking into her…
OPINION: Never look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s the first phrase that sprang to mind when Dilworth School announced plans to compensate former students who were sexually abused by its teachers, over many decades. But Dilworth’s offer of money…
The head of the New Zealand Catholic church has asked the Vatican for permission to launch an investigation into the handling of complaints about a priest who groomed a teenage girl. Sateki Raass resigned from the priesthood after he was convicted…
ACC is spending nearly 45 million dollars on a bid to prevent sexual violence, including $11.7 million for kaupapa Māori approaches. Over the next four years it aimed to tackle the underlying causes of sexual violence and to do work…
