Supplied by SNAP
SNAP Aotearoa says the Government’s proposed Redress System for Abuse in Care Bill risks creating a two‑tier system that will punish some survivors twice.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests warns the Bill, which has passed its second reading, could deny financial redress to people who were abused in State or faith‑based care and later served prison sentences for serious offending. Under Clause 9, the law says a “serious violent or sexual offender” is not eligible for financial redress unless a redress officer decides otherwise under section 19. SNAP says that carve‑out is discriminatory and cruel.
“Many survivors who end up in prison were first victims who were ignored and abandoned after being brutalised in State and Church care,” SNAP national leader Dr Christopher Longhurst said. “The abuse came first. The trauma came first. Now the Government risks abandoning them again.”
SNAP argues the proposal contradicts the spirit of the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care and breaches New Zealand’s international human rights obligations. The group says survivors do not stop being survivors because their trauma later exploded into addiction, violence, mental illness, homelessness or offending.
“Human dignity is not conditional. Human rights are not conditional. Redress is not supposed to be a moral purity test,” Longhurst said, calling the policy a betrayal of the Royal Commission’s findings.
The organisation also warned that giving a redress officer wide discretion to decide who is “worthy” of compensation creates a subjective and potentially arbitrary system. SNAP wants the presumption removed and clear, objective criteria added for any case‑by‑case assessments of survivors with offending histories. It says Section 20 makes no reference to people who are both survivors and offenders, leaving a legal gap.
The Government has justified the measure by saying compensating serious offenders could damage public confidence in the redress scheme. SNAP rejects that argument as simplistic, saying the State and Church abuse helped create many of the broken lives politicians now want to distance themselves from.
SNAP is urging Parliament to amend the Bill so redress is survivor‑centred and non‑discriminatory. “You cannot claim to care about survivors while abandoning the ones most visibly destroyed by abuse,” Longhurst said.
If the Bill passes unchanged, SNAP warns it will perpetuate the very harms the redress system is meant to repair.
