'Contemptuous' treatment of state abuse survivors ran up 'huge and needless' bills
Wednesday, 15 December 2021
A survivor of abuse in care believes the Crown’s “disrespectful and contemptuous” conduct has cost a “huge and needless” bill – money he says could have directly compensated the many who suffered.
In the 1970s, at age 11, Keith Wiffin experienced repeated sexual, physical, and psychological abuse at Epuni Boys’ Home in Lower Hutt, including from one of the housemasters, Alan Moncreif-Wright.
Wiffin later struggled with alcohol, depression and nightmares.
He was denied access to a full education and his income, financial security, personal relationships, and health all suffered.
**READ MORE:
* Abuse in care: Faith-based institutions 'acted to protect their own reputations'
* 'National disgrace': Abuse in care survivors failed by state, inquiry finds
**
His experience was one of 17 case studies identified by a royal commission into abuse in state care, in an interim report on redress released by the Government on Wednesday.
The report concluded a new independent redress system for survivors is needed after it found decades of systemic failures by the Government, which led to those seeking justice being retraumatised, rejected, and disbelieved.
Wiffin believed the “utter determination” to avoid liability and resist meaningful payment to victims “shone through” all his dealings with government agencies said.
“Everything came down to one thing – money. Morality, ethics or humanity did not figure. [Wiffin] said the sad irony was that the Crown’s 'thoroughly disrespectful and contemptuous’ conduct ran up huge and needless bills at the taxpayer’s expense – money that might have gone directly to compensating victims.” the report said.
He believed a royal commission may have not been necessary if the Crown had acknowledged the abuse, shown respect to victims, and adopted a reasonable approach to redress.
Commission chair Judge Coral Shaw said historically, state and faith organisations were not willing to accept the widespread abuse that could have easily been uncovered.
“The costs were too high. They convinced themselves there wasn’t a systemic, widespread problem,” she said.
Wiffin met strong resistance to his claim of abuse, after first seeking redress in the early 2000s.
Despite reassurances from the Ministry of Social Development’s chief executive, Peter Hughes, in 2007 that Wiffin’s claim – which he’d filed in the High Court nearly a year earlier – would be taken seriously, the actual response was “a world away,” the report said.
In Wiffin’s case, the royal commission concluded the Crown didn’t properly investigate his abuser.
“Neither the Ministry of Social Development, nor Crown Law took any steps to talk to Moncreif-Wright as part of the investigation into the claim.”
The Crown’s conduct of his case was “often unnecessarily adversarial, legalistic and aggressive”, the report said.
Internal emails showed Crown Law advised the ministry it should take “more proactive and aggressive steps” on Wiffin’s claims, and two other survivors’, with a view to having them dismissed on limitation grounds without going to trial.
“The letter noted that this approach would have the ‘strategic advantage’ of delaying or preventing a trial in another case involving Kohitere Boys’ Home, and so avoid ‘an extremely lengthy, difficult, costly, and public examination’ of issues relating to that institution’.”
Another email noted a deterioration in Keith’s mental health “on account of having to give evidence” and wondered how tenaciously he was pursuing his claim and whether, if offered psychological services, “he would settle or give up?”
An earlier email to the ministry said “some plaintiffs may give up along the way … if they see another plaintiff having to go through the litigation process, face cross-examination etc”.
The tactic of hoping complainants would give up was criticised by the commission.
“What was lost in all this was an 11-year-old boy in the care of the state abused by a convicted sex offender,” the report said.
The commission also found the Crown failed to disclose relevant information to Wiffin, that his abuser had previous child-sex convictions and had outdated and ill-informed thinking about sexual abuse, questioning the delay in which survivors’ came forward.
He was offered compensation that was inconsistent with the Crown’s litigation strategy and three years after he first filed the complaint, received an apology that failed to directly acknowledge or take responsibility for the abuse he experienced.
Wiffin’s experience seeking redress added to the trauma from his abuse, it said.