Nelson author opens book on 'national shame' of institutional child abuse and racism

Thursday, 27 February 2020

A Nelson author hopes his new book will shine a light on the 'national shame' of child abuse and institutional racism during the 1960s and 1970s.

Dr Oliver Sutherland launched Justice & Race: Campaigns against Racism and Abuse in Aotearoa New Zealand in Nelson on Wednesday, which brought together more than 15 years of research detailing the plight of children incarcerated by the justice system.

From 1970 to 1986 Sutherland was part of a group of activists in the Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination (ACORD) who exposed the poor treatment of children at the hands of the police, justice and social welfare systems.

During the 1960s and 1970s as many as 4000 children per year were put into social welfare homes, while hundreds of others were held every year on remand in adult prisons around the country.

The Royal Commission investigating abuse in care has heard a disabled man who grew up in a raft of institutions was stripped of his human rights and led to believe his life didn't matter.

* Royal Commission into abuse to shine a light on NZ's 'dark' shared history, Satyanand promises

* State care abuse not just 'historical', inquiry told**

While in state care at facilities like Lake Alice Hospital, many of these children suffered physical abuse and mistreatment, with punishments including solitary confinement, electro-shock treatment, and caning.

In October 2019, Sutherland was one of the speakers who presented evidence at the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care.

Sutherland said Māori children were disproportionately represented in the children's courts during that time, a fact he attributed to institutional racism in the judicial system.

'We called it a racist system because it was all based on a European value system and a European approach to justice and punishment. It owed nothing to a Māori world view and there were biases where Māori boys, all other things being equal, were prosecuted more than Pākehā boys.

'And then these children ended up in the courts, standing there, saying nothing, feeling intimidated. If they were a Pākehā family they might have got a lawyer, but if they were a Māori family they almost certainly didn't. And particularly if they were state wards – it didn't matter if they were Māori or Pākehā – they never got any legal advice before they appeared in court.'

Sutherland said in subsequent years, ACORD's activism helped lay the groundwork for the duty solicitor scheme and provided more protection for children in the court system.

Some of the manuscript evidence from the book was put forward at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care in Auckland in November.

Kath Coster is a survivor of child abuse in state care. She is also a member of a survivors advisory group to the Royal commission of inquiry into state and faith-based abuse.

Sutherland said he had first been encouraged to write the book about 10 years ago by the then Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand, but started working full-time on it about three years ago.

'When I knew the Royal Commission was likely to be set up, that gave it extra impetus, because the full story would be valuable to be placed as evidence before the commission.'

Sutherland said he hoped the book would raise public awareness of what had happened, and help bring about some justice for those who had suffered at the hands of the system.

'The politicians or bureaucrats who were running the judicial system, they can never say they didn't know.

'We got headline after headline after headline, and some of the inquiries we instigated laid all this bare in front of the public. Yet it was extraordinary looking back on it, how little traction that got – we were pretty much a lone voice back in those days, and we were bitterly criticised.'

'I would hope people would look back at that and feel a sense of horror, and feel at the very least what must come out of the Royal Commission is somebody says sorry.'