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“We need to normalise the discussion around male sexual abuse. If we as adults can’t talk about it freely, than how on earth do we expect children to be able to come forward and report it?”
– Ken Clearwater.
The impossible task: How New Zealand plans to tackle violence without maligning men
A new strategy aims to eliminate family and sexual violence without even using the word “perpetrator”. Will a plan focusing on healing and prevention be enough to turn our appalling statistics around? OPINION: If ever there was a poisoned chalice in…
Survivors call for new Government entity to hear allegations of institutional child abuse
John’s* life has been blighted by the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of his Catholic school principal. Forty years on, he is having to appeal to the Marist Brothers for redress, the very institution who employed the perpetrator. John was…
Six Men Try to Heal Their Trauma with Groundbreaking Collaborative Filmmaking
In Kansas City, six men who were sexually abused by Catholic priests as children collaborate with a film crew to tell their stories — but not in the way you might think. They don’t act as talking heads in the…
Linda Clark to head ACC client information and privacy review
An independent review into the access and use of client information within ACC will be led by prominent lawyer Linda Clark. The review was announced after RNZ revealed a group of ACC staff shared and laughed at client information in a…
Check which ACC staff have accessed your file, abuse survivors urged
There is a widespread and systematic problem of ACC staff having inappropriate access to the files of sexual abuse survivors, advocates say. One advocate believed her own privacy had been breached about 30 times by ACC staff clicking into her…
How Dilworth School could start to atone for its dark past
OPINION: Never look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s the first phrase that sprang to mind when Dilworth School announced plans to compensate former students who were sexually abused by its teachers, over many decades. But Dilworth’s offer of money…
Catholic church calls in Vatican to investigate sexting priest case
The head of the New Zealand Catholic church has asked the Vatican for permission to launch an investigation into the handling of complaints about a priest who groomed a teenage girl. Sateki Raass resigned from the priesthood after he was convicted…
ACC to spend $44.9 million on sexual violence prevention
ACC is spending nearly 45 million dollars on a bid to prevent sexual violence, including $11.7 million for kaupapa Māori approaches. Over the next four years it aimed to tackle the underlying causes of sexual violence and to do work…
Catholic church knew of previous complaint against teen-grooming priest
A priest convicted of grooming a teenage girl to send him nude photos was the subject of a previous complaint that was covered up by the Tongan Catholic Church. The victim’s aunt and an abuse survivors’ group said it showed…
Laptop with thousands of child exploitation images found on rubbish dump
Thousands of child exploitation images, including images of children as young as two being raped and tortured, were found on a laptop computer discarded at an apartment rubbish dump. The computer was found by a member of the public at…
NZ, Canada join forces in fight against online child sexual abuse material
A web-crawling software will be used in New Zealand with the aim of detecting and removing child sex abuse material. The New Zealand Classification Office has joined a one-year pilot in collaboration with Canada’s Project Arachnid, which searches for and identifies…
Oranga Tamariki facility: Report detailed use of restraints at residence months before closure
Oranga Tamariki was warned about restraints at a Christchurch care and protection residence months before it was finally closed. The concerns are highlighted in a December 2020 report by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner into Te Oranga Care and…