A state care abuse survivor says Tuesday’s apology felt like the Prime Minister was saying, “We hear you, acknowledge you, but we don’t care.”
The apology was held at Government Buildings, with approximately 300 survivors attending in person and livestream events hosted in Christchurch, Auckland, and Wellington.
Tu Chapman, a board member of the Internal Affairs Survivor Experiences Service, says allocating only five minutes for survivors to share their stories undermined their mamae and seemed like an attempt to sanitize their experiences.
She says this whakaaro comes from the top, lead minister Erica Stanford.
“There’s thousands of us that need to be engaged with. As you know, you’ve been following for a long time now, and we’ve had many chats about this, but you can’t just continue to deal with one group of survivors and think that’s what everyone wants to do,” says Chapman.
Chapman says the apology was a missed opportunity to make a difference for survivors and, overall, it failed.
