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- Mike Ledingham has announced he will reject the King’s Service Medal he was awarded in the New Year’s Honours list.
- He announced his decision on social media on Tuesday night, explaining the decision came after much “soul-searching”.
- Ledingham and his brothers were abused by a priest and he has been an advocate for survivors for decades.
“Sadly after much soul searching … I have decided can not accept this award from a government who has further betrayed faith-based victims by forcing them to return to their abusing organisation who will decide what shape or form ‘justice’ will take,” he posted on social media.
Mike Ledingham is the only person who deserves a New Years honour refused it because he has actual mana.
The appalling manner in which the State has acquiesced to religious organisations who abused alongside the appalling manner in which the State re-traumatised victims with despicable legal tactics and appallingly deceitful methods should shame every single Kiwi.
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 Te Pou is leading that campaign and his recent NZ Herald column is an important step in getting traction for that accountability…
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- 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.
…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.
Mike Ledingham has shown more honour than the entire Government put together.
He is deserving of recognition and his refusal to take it speaks volumes of how obscene the State has been to those they abused in their care and those they knew were being abused in the church.
Mike Ledingham is the only one worthy of the New Years honour.
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There are many honourable people in New Zealand, many of whom would have little interest in receiving the King’s gong or being dragged down to the level of Key, Mallard and other dubious politicians in an awards system which has become largely debased. Jim Bolger is the one I recall not bothering to come belting back to have his New Zealand award converted into the more royal one like all the other panting little minnows did, and good for him.
Irish and so intimately connected to our NZ underdog egalitarian central core.
My honours list would be all the talkers for social democracy and reality over the last 40 years in the bullshit rich-know-best era.
With honourable disrespectful mentions for the Left blog-holders that all without exemption went off down their own cul-de-sacs. And hurt our right cause. Thanks for nothing, comrades.