Secrets of state and faith-based care, finally revealed

The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care has finally been released. What will its real impact be?

A long-awaited report looks at the dark stories of Aotearoa's state and faith-based institutions.

Freelance journalist Aaron Smale has spent years covering the dark stories of abuse in New Zealand state care institutions and has broken some key stories that led to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

On today's episode of The Detail, he talks about what's in the final report, which was released yesterday.

The report is about 3000 pages and includes five case studies and 138 recommendations on how the government and others should respond.

"The Royal Commission has almost laid a whole minefield basically for the government to try and get through," Smale says.

"It's basically saying that some of these issues that have been dismissed or blocked or buried for years should go before the courts.

"It's going to be pretty cut and dried that if they take a case against the Crown based on these findings, what's the Crown going to do? It can't defend them anymore, and so that's going to basically set a precedent, it's going to set case law and its actually going to act, in my view, as a deterrent to the Crown."

Smale also explains how his personal experiences growing up as a Māori adoptee helped shape his understanding of what has happened in these state institutions, and the role of the Crown in allowing it.

Over the years, his reporting - and his own search for identity - led him to question why Māori boys were treated as less desirable by society, and to scrutinize social statistics such as Māori prison population numbers.

"There were a number of people that told me about these welfare homes and mentioned that as a contributing factor," he says.

As he looked into this, he found stories of horrific abuse and came to believe New Zealand had ignored it.

"For some reason, we've been trying to bury it for the last 30 years."

His stories about places such as Lake Alice and Kohitere, for instance, moved the conversation forward and - despite debate between parties about whether there should be an inquiry - Labour Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced one in 2018.

After years of work, and many interim reports, the final report by the Royal Commission was made public yesterday.

"It was a relief to see that the victims...their experiences have been heard, believed, and are now in this official document," Smale says…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details