WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon apologised and promised reforms on Wednesday after a public inquiry found some 200,000 children, young people and vulnerable adults were abused in state and religious care over the last 70 years.
Nearly one-in-three children and vulnerable adults in care from 1950 to 2019 experienced some form of abuse, the report said, a finding that could leave the government facing billions of dollars in fresh compensation claims.
"This is a dark and sorrowful day in New Zealand's history as a society and as a state, we should have done better, and I am determined that we will do so," Luxon told a press conference. An official apology would follow on Nov. 12, he added.
Survivors and their supporters filled the public gallery of the country's parliament as the report was debated, while still more watched from a separate room.
After Luxon spoke, likening the abuse against children to torture at one state care facility, Lake Alice, many stood and sang an Indigenous Maori song about love and unity.
The report by a Royal Commission of Inquiry spoke to more than 2,300 survivors of abuse in New Zealand, which has a population of 5.3 million. The inquiry detailed a litany of abuses in state and faith-based care, including rape, sterilisation and electric shocks, which peaked in the 1970s.
Those from the Indigenous Maori community were especially vulnerable to abuse, the report found, as well as those with mental or physical disabilities.
Civil and faith leaders fought to cover up abuse by moving abusers to other locations and denying culpability, with many victims dying before seeing justice, the report added.
"It is a national disgrace that hundreds of thousands of children, young people and adults were abused and neglected in the care of the state and faith-based institutions," the report said.