All survivors who take part in private sessions – including the 50 we selected – approach the inquiry voluntarily. For this reason, what they describe may not be representative of all survivor experiences. Many more survivors are likely to come forward. We selected our sample to ensure a mix of demographics (ethnicity, gender, age and disability) and settings (State and faith-based institutions). Some survivors  were in prison at the time. Key characteristics of the survivors were:

• Fifty-six per cent were male (n = 28) and 44 per cent were female (n = 22). None identified as being gender-diverse.
• The youngest survivor was 27 and the oldest was 88. The average age was 50 and the median age 51.
• Sixty-six per cent identified as Māori (n = 33), 34 per cent as Pākehā/European (n = 17), and 14 per cent identified as Pacific people (n = 6). Some identified with more than one ethnic group  so the total is 114 per cent (n = 56).
• Eight per cent had a disability (n = 4).
• Eighty-four per cent had been in State care (n = 42), and 22 percent had been in faith-based care (n = 11). Again, some survivors
  had been in both, hence the total of 106 per cent (n = 53).
• The table below provides a breakdown of survivors’ care settings. Many survivors were moved frequently between different places  bof care. Nearly all were in State care at some point.

* Totals exceed 50 and 100% because most survivors were in numerous care settings
** State care refers to survivors in state care where no further breakdown by setting was provided and/or recorded
*** These settings are included in state care, where further breakdown by setting was provided and/or recorded

Being taken into care

Thirty-eight survivors talked about why they were taken into care. For most, it was because of abuse at home or safety concerns. Some had no idea why they were removed into care or said the reasons were unjustified, or found the removal process disturbing or badly handled.

Key insights:

• Most survivors were taken into care because they were experiencing abuse at home and/or there were concerns for their safety at home.
• Some survivors did not know why they were taken into care. For others, the reasons were arbitrary or unwarranted.
• Twelve did not talk about the circumstances that led to their being taken into care.
• Some survivors reported inappropriate or poorly handled removal into care that left them with a sense of fear or uncertainty about what was happening.
• Nearly all survivors described being moved between numerous care placements and settings, although those in psychiatric institutions reported fewer transitions than those in State or faith-based care.
• Nearly half of survivors’ siblings were also placed in care, most initially together, although they were sometimes separated in the course of numerous transitions. 

Reasons for being taken into care

As mentioned, 38 survivors discussed the reasons for being taken into care. The majority said it was because of abuse in the family home and/or concerns for their safety at home. This abuse included physical, sexual, psychological and emotional abuse as well as neglect. As one survivor said:

“One of the worst things was, I got made a ward of the State because of the pure amount of broken bones and stuff I got from my beatings at home. And yet at Christmas time, they’d pick you up and they send you home.”

DARREN, UNDISCLOSED ETHNICITY, 56

Other reasons included parents’ substance abuse, the death of a parent, and survivors’ own behaviour (such as criminal activity and aggressive behaviour), mental health difficulties and/or physical disability.

Some survivors recognised their own behaviour, such as criminal activity or alcohol misuse, as the cause of their removal from home, although it was common for many to also describe living in a volatile family environment. One man, for example, talked about how his stealing from the age of six or seven led to his removal into care, but he also described physical abuse and lack of support for himself and his sister while growing up.

Some described intergenerational abuse at home, and a few recognised that their parents’ behaviour stemmed from abuse their parents had experienced. One survivor said he could understand how his parents became perpetrators because he, too, had become an abusive parent, repeating the pattern of the previous generation.

Unclear, arbitrary or unwarranted reasons

Ten of the survivors either did not know why they were taken into care or considered the reasons arbitrary or unwarranted. Some noted their parents’ role in putting them into care. One survivor was taken to a police station and another was dropped at an orphanage by his parents. One survivor said:

“Sometimes State  wards have a stigma attached to them with the Police anyway. It was just all too easy for them to throw us into boys’ homes. Nobody really looked at anything. It would’ve taken someone just to say, ‘What happened?’ ”

PETER, MĀORI, 50

Two survivors placed in psychiatric institutions said they had no idea why they were taken into care, adding that they were tricked into signing documentation. A woman who was 17 at the time of being admitted to a psychiatric institution in 1973, spoke of being deceived into agreeing to “voluntary” care:

“If you sign this,’ [he said], ‘you won’t go to [a psychiatric institution].’ Well, I immediately signed it. He said, ‘Gotcha. You have just signed your voluntary admission’. The nurses grabbed me and dragged me to the car.”

RHONDA, EUROPEAN, 63

Another survivor recalled:

“I think I was 13 or maybe 12, you know, I had this lady come to our house and I hadn’t been in any trouble, she just turned up and said, ‘Oh, you’ll like it where you’re going’ and I didn’t know if I was – where the hell I was going.”

SHANNON, MĀORI, 59

For a few survivors, the abusive behaviour of family members enabled other people to abuse them. One survivor described how he was abused from the age of four by a priest his father would take him to. The priest would drive him to the church and to the institution and would sexually violate him in the car. When he revealed the abuse, his father and the priest took him to a psychiatric hospital to undergo   electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). His father, he said, had also sexually abused his sisters.

Experiences of being taken into care

Some survivors spoke of receiving little care or consideration, feeling only a sense of distress at being removed from parents and family and a fear and uncertainty about the future. In a few instances, survivors were taken from their beds in the middle of the night, but police officers were involved, too, and this left them with a sense of having been removed by force. As one survivor recalled:

“We were asleep at times, my baby brother and sister are asleep, and then the cops taking us and I remember running away, trying to fucking run away from them but there’s a cop over there, a cop over there, cop over there ... And, you know, we’re already traumatised ourselves but to also create another traumatising situation for us, you know, that makes me angry.”

EVANGELINE, MĀORI–EUROPEAN, 27

Some survivors spoke of family members stepping forward to offer to look after them (and such offers were typical in attempts to keep families together), but the offers were declined without apparent reason – those same offers also being rejected later when the survivors revealed the abuse they were subjected to in care. One survivor recalled how her uncle had tried to get her back after learning of her removal, but was told to “go away – he had too many kids – by a Family Court judge”. Another survivor described her physical and sexual abuse in foster care, and how her grandmother was aware of this and tried to get her out to live with her.

“They should have put me with my nana ’cos she was fighting tooth and nail to have me living with them. She even says to me now she doesn’t understand why they never put me with them ’cos she’s whānau. Why would they want to put me in a foster care so bad? They just refused. It doesn’t make sense.”

STEPHANIE, EUROPEAN, 32

Some Māori survivors described the loss of connection to their whānau, hapū, iwi, tikanga Māori and te reo Māori after their removal. They talked about how they were put into State care in locations far from home, resulting in little or no contact with whānau. One spoke of how her carers placed no value on tikanga Māori and how she soon lost her connection with her whānau and her ability to speak te reo Māori, which had till then been part of her daily life:

“Well I mean we used to be able to speak our reo and that … Yeah. But then by destroying us apart from family, putting us with other nationality and that, that don’t understand our values and stuff, how was that going to follow through with our beliefs?”

MARY, MĀORI, 35

Movements between places of care

Nearly all survivors described repeated moves from one placement to another, and this included foster homes, children’s homes, orphanages, boys’ homes and faith-based institutions.

Some couldn’t recall exactly how many, although one remembered more than 10 moves. The sense that survivors conveyed was one of continual transfers:

“This one was just a single lady, looking after children. Then, the house out in Mangere, and then there was another home in Mangere that I got put in. I just remember I kept moving around.”

ROBIN, PACIFIC, 32

If placed in psychiatric institutions, individuals appeared to have fewer transitions than others. In the case of the few such survivors who were moved, the transitions were between faith-based and psychiatric institutions. For a few who were transferred to a psychiatric institution for ECT, their treatment was justified as a “cleansing process”.  One understood ECT to be a response to having disclosed abuse, and another said it was used as “conversion therapy” because her sexuality was deemed a mental illness.

Some survivors considered the frequent moves to be a way of dealing with disclosures of abuse and anti-social behaviour such as running away, criminal activity, aggressive or disruptive behaviour and taking drugs or alcohol. They said this behaviour should have been seen for what it was – a signal that something was wrong with their living situation, rather than with them. Whatever their rationale, these repeated upheavals added to survivors’ sense of feeling unwanted and uncared for:

“Welfare just really didn’t care about me. I was just shoved around to suit themselves instead of sorting the problems out.”

MARK, EUROPEAN, 71

Survivors and siblings

Nearly half of survivors were placed in care with siblings, mostly in the same placement, although for some it was a mere interlude before an immediate separation. For others, siblings were separated in the course of transitions. Survivors and siblings were more likely to stay together if placed in foster care, but less likely if placed in

State or faith-based institutions. If placed in the abusive care of relatives, the eldest sometimes described enduring more abuse to save younger siblings from a perpetrator. Mostly, however, the perpetrator spared neither:

“To me it was like I was sacrificing myself because my brother and sister would be there, but it was, like, I would rather just him be over here than over there with them.”

EVANGELINE, MĀORI–EUROPEAN, 27

Next: Nature of Abuse