Survivors named their abusers. The Royal Commission didn’t. Its final reports turned personal wrongdoing into anonymous “institutional failure,” leaving truth‑tellers exposed and the powerful protected.
Christopher Longhurst.
One of the most troubling legacies of New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry into
Abuse in Care was its reliance on generalised language that often concealed the
identities of those accused by survivors.
Throughout the Inquiry, survivors were encouraged to tell the truth about what
happened to them. Many spoke publicly and courageously about specific priests,
brothers, nuns, bishops, caregivers, and institutional leaders. They named names. They
identified perpetrators. They described in detail who abused them, who ignored them,
who covered up abuse, and who failed to act.
Yet when the Commission reported its findings, much of this specificity disappeared.
Abuse became something that happened within “institutions.” Failures became the
responsibility of “systems.” Decisions were attributed to “leadership” or “organisations.”
The people who exercised power, made decisions, committed abuse, or enabled it
frequently disappeared behind collective and anonymous language.
This may have been intended to protect principles of natural justice. In practice,
however, it has had the effect of diluting responsibility and weakening the truth that
survivors had come forward to tell.
Truth-telling requires specificity. Abuse is not committed by institutions. Institutions do
not groom children. Systems do not assault vulnerable people. Policies do not threaten
complainants. Human beings do these things. Individual decisions made by identifiable
people create cultures of abuse, secrecy, and impunity.
For some survivors, the Commission’s approach created a painful contradiction. We
were invited to tell the truth, often for the first time in our lives. But much of that truth
was then hidden from public view.
I never wanted my testimony buried in a confidential file for ninety-nine years, as the
Commissioners required. On the contrary, I repeatedly urged them to publish my
witness statement. I believed that truth-telling demanded transparency, and that the
experiences survivors entrusted to the inquiry should become part of the public record
rather than disappear into an archive inaccessible to future generations.
My witness statement exceeded 200 pages. It documented not only my own
experiences but also patterns of institutional behaviour, the responses of church leaders
to complaints, and the enduring consequences of abuse, concealment, and failed
accountability. Yet the Commission chose to publish only eight heavily redacted pages.
What reached the public was not the full testimony but a carefully filtered fragment of it.
This felt like a second silencing.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Survivors were encouraged to speak openly and honestly,
yet many of the details we provided, including the identities of those we accused and
the evidence we presented, were removed from public view. What emerged in the
Commission’s reports was often a generalised account of institutional failure rather than
a clear account of who exercised power, who caused harm, who enabled it, and who
should be held accountable.
The consequences continue today. Survivors who speak publicly about those they
accused are increasingly met with demands to respect the presumption of innocence.
Yet many of these same individuals were never publicly identified by the Commission in
the first place. The result is a strange inversion. The accused retain anonymity while
survivors carry the burden of disclosure.
Some survivors are now criticised for talking publicly about what they experienced and
what they testified to before the Royal Commission. The principle of “innocent until
proven guilty” has been invoked as a means of dismissing survivor testimony. Yet this
overlooks an important reality. A Royal Commission is not a criminal court. It is a truth-
seeking inquiry established precisely because so many survivors were never able to
obtain justice through the criminal justice system.
The Commission heard evidence, received testimony, identified patterns, and reached
conclusions about institutional failures. Survivors who now discuss what they told the
Commission are not conducting criminal prosecutions. They are participating in the very
truth-telling process the inquiry was established to facilitate. To invoke a criminal law
standard as a means of silencing survivor testimony risks undermining the purpose of
the inquiry itself.
A culture of truth-telling cannot flourish when responsibility is endlessly generalised.
When names disappear, accountability becomes abstract. When accountability
becomes abstract, institutions can acknowledge historical failures without confronting
the actions of the individuals who caused them.
The Commission documented the scale of abuse. But what it failed to do was
document, with sufficient clarity, who exercised power, who committed abuse, who
enabled it, and who protected perpetrators from accountability. The result is that
responsibility became collective, diffuse, and impersonal.
For many survivors, this is not a minor procedural issue. It is the difference between an
Inquiry that exposes wrongdoing and one that merely describes it.
After decades of institutional secrecy, many survivors came to the Royal Commission
believing that light would finally be allowed to fall on the truth. Instead, too often, the
official record retreated into anonymity, redaction, and generalisation. The Commission
may have exposed the existence of abuse, but it frequently stopped short of exposing
those personally responsible for it.
Abuse is personal. Accountability must be personal too.
