Traumatic, long path to change
For five long years, survivors of abuse at the hands of Dunedin clergy have waited to see if a reminder of the city’s dark past would be removed. The news that they had succeeded was greeted with relief, but the…
News & Events
"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
One in six Australian university students say they have been sexually harassed. How can this be stopped?
Australian university students have shared harrowing stories of sexual harassment and assault in a damning new report that shows the prevalence of these incidents at institutions across the country. In what was labelled a “difficult day” for the university sector,…
Kavanagh College to be renamed
Dunedin’s Kavanagh College will be renamed after an investigation found its namesake failed to take appropriate action over claims of abuse. The school will become Trinity Catholic College from January 1, 2023, the Bishop of Dunedin saying the church had…
Abuse in care: Māori survivors faced ‘significant racism, torture’
Māori survivors of abuse in care want urgent change to Aotearoa’s care and protection system, which has seen whānau suffer significant racism, torture, slave labour and disconnection from whakapapa, an inquiry has heard. For the past two weeks, ngā mōrehu…
Embracing Māoritanga helping state care abuse survivors heal
Māori abused in state care have spoken about the violent environments they were placed in as children, and how embracing their Māoritanga, their cultural identity, has helped them on their healing journey. Friday was the fifth day in a hearing…
Someone Who Has Been in My Shoes”: The Effectiveness of a Peer Support Model for Providing Support to Partners, Family and Friends of Child Sexual Abuse Material Offenders
This article details an evaluation of PartnerSPEAK, an organization in Victoria, Australia, that supports the non-offending partners, family and friends of CSAM offenders. PartnerSPEAK is the only support service of its kind in Australia, and one of only a few…
Marylands School abuse: How a tiny religious order in Christchurch became an outsized scandal
Abuse of children at Marylands School in Christchurch was so rife it was described as a state-supported, church-run brothel for paedophiles. But so far the spotlight has focused on a handful of individual abusers. An inquiry this week tried to…
Church fixer’s damning revelations: 21 out of 23 St John of God brothers faced allegations of physical or sexual abuse
Damning revelations from a former church fixer reveals that almost all St John of God Catholic brothers faced allegations of physical or sexual abuse. Steve Kilgallon reports. In 2002, Sydney clinical psychologist Michelle Mulvihill made 13 trips to New Zealand;…
An Update of Peer Support/Peer Provided Services Underlying Processes, Benefits, and Critical Ingredients
The purpose of this article is to delineate the current state-of-the-knowledge of peer support following the framework employed in the 2004 article (Solomon, Psychiatr Rehabil J. 2004;27(4):392–401 1). A scoping literature was conducted and included articles from 1980 to present. Since 2004,…
Time to change course in stigma research?
As one of the world’s longest running anti-stigma campaigns, Time to Change (UK), came to an end in March 2021, policy makers, campaigners and researchers will be looking to learn lessons to take forward into the next phase in the fight against…
Abuse ‘disproportionate’
Dunedin victims of church abuse were likely to number even more than those shown in national figures released on Tuesday, a survivor’s advocate has said. The Catholic Church had released the figures which showed 1122 survivors had laid almost 1700…
Catholic Church in New Zealand discovers 14 per cent of clergy accused of abuse, with Cardinal describing findings as ‘horrifying’
As many as one in seven Catholic diocesan clergy in New Zealand have been accused of abuse, according to an investigation by the church. But groups representing victims say that is likely to be a fraction of the actual abuse…