March 07, 2022
Māori abuse in care hearing goes online
A lawyer assisting the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in state and faith-based care is confident a hearing on Māori cases starting today won’t suffer from being held online.
The 10-day hearing was postponed from last September because of the Covid lockdown.
Commissioners Anaru Erueti and Julia Steenson will co-chair the hearing from Ōrākei Marae, with other commissioners and witnesses linking in.
It will be streamed on the commission’s website
.Julia Spelman says witnesses have been waiting all their lives to be heard, and the hearing can’t be postponed anymore.
“The importance of this hearing to the inquiry as a whole is so significant we have to get it done, and being led by our survivors, they said they don’t want it to be postponed again so that’s why we are shifting to this online mode but I am confident the strength of their voices will come through,” she says.
The hearing will focus on racism in case, intergenerational trauma and contemporary experiences of abuse in care.