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Abuse in Care survivor Frances Ruwhiu: ‘I thought I was getting a family; instead it was a mental institution’
Nearly two years after Whanaketia, the Royal Commission’s final report into Abuse in Care, Ruwhiu says survivors are still waiting for meaningful change, redress and recognition beyond Lake Alice.
Nearly two years after the release of Whanaketia, the landmark Royal Commission into Abuse in Care report, survivor Frances Ruwhiu says the promises made to thousands of survivors have yet to translate into meaningful change.
Ruwhiu, now 72, spent decades in state care after being taken from her whānau when she was just three weeks old.
Across a childhood and early adulthood spent moving between foster homes and psychiatric institutions, she says she endured abuse, neglect, repeated institutionalisation and decades of disconnection from the people and culture that should have surrounded her.
Today, she has become one of many survivors continuing to speak publicly, not only about what happened to her, but about the lasting impact state care has had on generations of whānau.
As the second anniversary of Whanaketia – Through pain and trauma, from darkness to light, approaches, Ruwhiu says survivors are still waiting to see many of the changes they were promised.
Released on 24 July 2024, the Royal Commission’s final report described abuse in state and faith-based care as a “national disgrace”, concluding that hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders had suffered abuse and neglect while in care over more than five decades.
The six-year inquiry heard almost 3,000 survivor accounts, made 138 recommendations for reform and redress, and led to the Crown formally acknowledging that children at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital had been subjected to torture.
For Ruwhiu, however, the report confirmed what she had spent a lifetime trying to tell people.
“I was just nine years old.”
“I thought I was getting a family”
Before Ngāwhatu, there were foster homes; Ruwhiu estimates she lived in five of them. Some carers were kind. Others were not.
She recalls being beaten, moved repeatedly and never knowing how long she would stay before another placement ended.
Looking back now, she says none of what happened was because she was a “naughty” child.
“It was beyond my control,” she says.
She compares it to peeling wallpaper from a wall.
“You pull a little bit… and it gets bigger and bigger.”
Eventually, she says, adults stopped seeing a frightened child and instead saw behaviour they believed needed correcting.
At nine years old she was told she was finally leaving to live with a proper family.
“I was told I was going to have brothers and sisters… a mum and dad.”
Instead, she arrived at Ngāwhatu Psychiatric Hospital in Nelson.
“But really what it was, was a mental institution for adults.”
Opened in 1922, Ngāwhatu became one of New Zealand’s major psychiatric hospitals, housing adults and children with mental illness, intellectual disabilities and behavioural problems.
Decades later, survivors would tell the Abuse in Care Royal Commission about physical abuse, neglect, forced medication and institutional practices that left lasting trauma.
