NEW ZEALAND
Otago Daily Times
By Chris Morris
New Zealand’s most vulnerable children were failed by Church and State, the head of the Catholic Church’s National Office for Professional Standards says.
Bill Kilgallon told ODT Insight the Church’s New Zealand office, created in 2004 to investigate historic abuse claims, had fielded about 22 complaints a year since 2013.
About 20 a year related to ”non-recent behaviour against children”, either within a church setting or involving clergy within the state care system, he said.
”A number of the complaints we’re dealing with would be children who were in state care but placed in an establishment run by the Church – Marylands, for example,” he said.
The complaints of abuse, cruelty and very poor conditions showed the level of care by the State or Church was ”very often very poor”, he said.
And the Church, in particular, ”should have achieved better than the State”, he believed.
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