News & Events

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 (details of which are yet to be released) is not a gift, of course. It…

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 in 2019 of indecent communication with a girl under 16 and ordered to serve 100…

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 on changing attitudes and behaviours. The agency would work on the problem alongside other government…

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 the church should have prevented Sosefo Sateki Raass’ offending. The Tongan church gave Raass a…

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 a central Christchurch address, who briefly checked it and saw what appeared to be images…

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 child sex abuse material online. Chief Censor David Shanks said the worldwide scope of the Canadian…

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 Protection Residence. It said children and young people were still being hurt during restraints. A…