News & Events

Police have reopened 54 adult sexual assault and child abuse investigations after concerns about one senior officer triggered a review of close to 1,000 files. The long-serving senior officer now faces an employment process. Following questions from Stuff, police have confirmed that concerns were raised in May this year about the officer’s management of one…

Eight years after she first sought help, Kristy Wilson has finally won weekly compensation for the childhood sexual abuse she suffered. But her case has highlighted a disputed new ACC approach that denies some survivors the payment – because ACC says they suffered their mental injury before they were earning an income. On a Monday…

For decades, a small group of specialists at Starship Hospital’s child protection unit have played a central role in some of NZ’s most serious physical child abuse cases. Their opinions trigger police investigations, child removals, criminal prosecutions and prison sentences. In many cases, their medical findings are treated as the starting point for everything that…

An abuse survivor feels as if he has been stabbed with a “sharp, long, bladed knife to the back” after his trial was aborted at the 11th hour due to an unprecedented legal tactic by the Christian Brothers. Last week, the Christian Brothers sought a permanent halt to hundreds of cases lodged by survivors of…

Twisted and raised scars run across the top of Alan Nixon’s hands like topographical maps of the abuse in his past. The marks are the physical reminders of what the Brothers of St John of God did to him as a child but the psychological scars run deeper. Nixon ended up in the care of…

It was a bad headline for the Government: deep job cuts in the family and sexual violence sector. But what will the cuts actually do, and has the prevention taskforce made any difference? Isaac Davison reports Ten years ago, the sexual and family violence sector in New Zealand was a mess. Rates of violence were…

A landmark new body of research suggests New Zealand may have spent decades measuring the wrong thing – and asking the wrong people – about family violence. Paula Penfold investigates.

Police have prosecuted fewer than one in ten of the cases referred from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. The inquiry found at least 200,000 people were abused, and even more neglected, by the state and faith-based institutions from 1950 to 1999. More than 2300 survivors gave evidence to the inquiry with…

A sexual abuse support foundation says survivors are at risk as it braces for funding cuts in the new year. HELP Auckland will have $380,000 less to work with in 2026, after the government announced it would redirect $1.7 million from the sector. Sylvia Yandall, HELP’s Pasifika Services Manager, told RNZ the funding cut would…

Less than a third of the government’s $774 million abuse in care redress and reform package will end up in the pockets of survivors. Figures obtained by RNZ revealed only $205m was earmarked for paying new claims with $52m to go towards topping up previously closed claims. In defence of the figures, Erica Stanford, the…