Shane Te Pou is one of the finest political commentators in New Zealand, it’s my privilege to work with him on Waatea and always a great pleasure when he is on The Working Group.
Shane’s current crusade against the Solicitor-General is an important stand for justice.
I simply do not believe the vast amount of Kiwis have any idea just how involved the NZ State was in not only abusing victims in their care, hiding that abuse, and then using legal tactics to undermine, attack and retraumatize those victims!
The Solicitor-General was in the middle of that process and her apology is simply not enough and the rest of the NZ Media have an obligation to hold her to account.
Shane is leading that campaign and his NZ Herald column today is an important step in getting traction for that accountability…
- The report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care says of the roughly 655,000 children, young people and adults in care during 1950 to 2019, about 200,000 were abused and even more were neglected.
- The inquiry found evidence of abuse and failures of responsibility ‘everywhere we looked’, including welfare institutions, churches and other religious organisations, some schools, the police and successive governments.
- Solicitor-General Una Jagose was heckled by survivors at the Parliament apology gathering. As the head of the Crown’s legal team, she had been involved in defending the state against abuse claims.
For the last couple of weeks, I have been attempting to secure an interview with Solicitor-General Una Jagose to address the appalling tactics used by Crown Law under her leadership against victims of state abuse seeking compensation.
She has given an apology on behalf of Crown Law, but what about her accountability for those actions as Solicitor-General?
One of the key reasons I wish to speak with her is to seek assurance that effective policies and procedures have been established to ensure victims of abuse are heard and that appropriate remedies are put in place. Unfortunately, I believe there is still significant work to be done in this area.
…thank Christ Shane refuses to accept this insane situation!
I find it appalling that Investigative Journalist Aaron Smale was banned from Parliament and he didn’t receive solidarity from other Journalists.
It is journalists like Aaron and columnists like Shane who our only hope to hold the State accountable…
The state knew it had abused these children and its lawyers did everything to deny justice in case it cost us too much money. What sort of country makes value judgments based on such venal logic?
How can any of us hold our heads up knowing the state hired private detectives to undermine survivors in court by besmirching their reputations?
Why has the state knowingly abused its power against those they have already harmed? The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care investigated the Crown’s litigation strategy and described the Crown’s legal conduct as going beyond mere neutral defence of claims.
The Royal Commission accused the strategy of “causing long, avoidable delays and failing to keep claimants adequately informed of the progress of their cases”. They cross-examined witnesses to suggest that survivors should have, as children, disclosed abuse at the time it happened or somehow avoided it. They failed to disclose relevant information damaging to the Crown’s case − suggesting survivors were lying and colluding, even when they knew the survivors had been abused.
…you can not abuse 250 000 children in State Care, know that they have been abused and then implement legal tactics that use dirty under handed means to undermine those victims.
The State KNEW they had abused these kids, yet did everything to limit accountability.
We should all be ashamed and angry at how little we truly knew about what the State dod to these victims in the first place and then damaged them again.
Shane is being courageous as a columnist to challenge the narrative, we should support him and other voices prepared to keep asking questions.
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These well paid sycophants are the public service people that SHOULD lose their jobs. Oh look at the money they would save. Why do these people not resign any more . Then there’s “Lester Levy” cooking the books ,we have Paula Bennett still sucking on the tit of pharmac, Simon Bridges head of transport NZ cut cut cut but they are still there
We base our institutions on fiction and this is the result, a lawyer is employed to defend their clients and not to establish the truth, companies are independent so it can cause others to suffer a financial loss but those responsible for the failure can keep their I’ll gotten gains. Thankfully despite these flaws most of the time the people do have a sense of personal responsibility which is why we need a strong independent media to expose those with faults.
And why do you think the victims aren’t happy with her apology Nathan? could it be because she was instrumental in undermining them and trivializing what happened to them spending millions to protect the state and protect her salary. Her apology is shallow like her she is a cold-hearted false bitch.
I’d have thought that participating in a cover-up is a criminal offence, if this is what occurred here.
DENY DELAY DEFEND, the book by Jay Feinman about health insurers, could equally apply to crown law. Are they affected by split personality, prosecuting law breakers on one hand, but protecting them by attacking their accusers on the other. When abuse of children occurs in the family home, the police often hit a brick wall, with no one willing to talk about it, but they don’t give up. But they seem to give up very quickly on abuse in state care, or not even investigate in the first place. It seems the authorities only take notice when they have to, when there is damning camera footage for example: (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=elder+health+commissioner+dementia+care+abuse&t=operav&ia=web)
When any public servant including police are linked to ignoring or hushing up abuse in care like Jagose, then the govt needs to show that they are serious and dismiss them. That this is a serious matter. As serious as it gets. About Peoples lives. Not just shuffle them to another position in the public service. It’s not like the public service cannot hire new experienced people, at a time when experienced public servants have lost their jobs and are emigrating to Australia.
When is the public service commissioner going to make a statement about crown laws actions. When is the Police Minister going to make a statement about Police actions. This is what these people are paid to be doing, but they are not doing whats most important and most challenging, then maybe we just don’t have the right people in those positions either to be fair.
“We should all be ashamed and angry at how little we truly knew about what the State dod to these victims in the first place”.
Except the Lake Alice torture was written about in the Sunday Papers and was investigated by TV Current Affairs programs in the 1970s. Teachers and parents in the Whanganui region used to threaten misbehaving kids , “calm down or you’ll be sent to Lake Alice”.
What is Luxon doing about this former Lake Alice child victim’s misadventure?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360501079/pressure-government-get-nz-prisoner-antony-de-malmanche-home-bali
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