News

A Tairāwhiti contingent represented the region’s peer support service for male survivors of sexual abuse at the second annual Male Survivors Aotearoa hui in Nelson last week. Five members of the Tauawhi Charitable Trust, which provides governance for Te Hōkai: Male Survivors Tairāwhiti, attended the three-day hui along with MSA representatives from across the country.…

The fragile dynamic between the sexes has always been somewhat fraught. Thirty years ago, American relationship counsellor John Gray seemed to hit both a nerve and a gold mine when he managed to shift more than 15 million copies of his bestseller, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Since then, things appear to have…

One man’s contribution to more than 50 years of fighting institutional racism in the judicial system have been recognised with a Queen’s Birthday honour. Dr Oliver Sutherland worked in and alongside groups like the Nelson Māori Committee, the Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination, and others from the 1970s onwards, fighting to bring about a…

More details have been revealed as part of ongoing research into the extent of reports of abuse in the Catholic Church – but survivors say it is not an accurate reflection of the abuse that happened. The continuing research is being undertaken by Te Rōpū Tautoko, the group that coordinates Catholic Church engagement with the Royal…

For five long years, survivors of abuse at the hands of Dunedin clergy have waited to see if a reminder of the city’s dark past would be removed. The news that they had succeeded was greeted with relief, but the handling of the investigation into Bishop John Kavanagh has come under fire. PIJF reporter Daisy…

Australian university students have shared harrowing stories of sexual harassment and assault in a damning new report that shows the prevalence of these incidents at institutions across the country. In what was labelled a “difficult day” for the university sector, a study of almost 44,000 students released on Wednesday found that one in six students…

Dunedin’s Kavanagh College will be renamed after an investigation found its namesake failed to take appropriate action over claims of abuse. The school will become Trinity Catholic College from January 1, 2023, the Bishop of Dunedin saying the church had previously let survivors down badly. The change has been welcomed, but the time it took,…

Māori survivors of abuse in care want urgent change to Aotearoa’s care and protection system, which has seen whānau suffer significant racism, torture, slave labour and disconnection from whakapapa, an inquiry has heard. For the past two weeks, ngā mōrehu (survivors) have been giving evidence as part of a special hearing for Māori in the…

Māori abused in state care have spoken about the violent environments they were placed in as children, and how embracing their Māoritanga, their cultural identity, has helped them on their healing journey. Friday was the fifth day in a hearing for Māori survivors in Auckland as part of the ongoing Royal Commission of Inquiry into…

Abuse of children at Marylands School in Christchurch was so rife it was described as a state-supported, church-run brothel for paedophiles. But so far the spotlight has focused on a handful of individual abusers. An inquiry this week tried to find out how deep the rot went. Alan Nixon nearly had to burn a church…

Damning revelations from a former church fixer reveals that almost all St John of God Catholic brothers faced allegations of physical or sexual abuse. Steve Kilgallon reports. In 2002, Sydney clinical psychologist Michelle Mulvihill made 13 trips to New Zealand; visits which took her the entire length of the country. It wasn’t a pleasant experience:…

Dunedin victims of church abuse were likely to number even more than those shown in national figures released on Tuesday, a survivor’s advocate has said. The Catholic Church had released the figures which showed 1122 survivors had laid almost 1700 complaints naming almost 600 perpetrators of abuse. Male Survivors Otago manager Michael Chamberlain said the…