I think there'd be public support for a levy on the faith-based institutions responsible. Respect for religious organisations has diminished in the last 30 years or so, for better or worse, and fewer people have vested interests in protecting their reputations. All the revelations about the cultish Gloriavale have contributed to the trend. Joanne Wilkes
Good comment, thank you Joanne. I was wondering about what kind of levy too. Employers are levied a % of payroll. But many faith organisations are charitable with unpaid labour. Perhaps they should pay a percentage of their audited assets, or face cancellation of charitable status.
Another insightful and thought-provoking commentary, thank you.
The photo of Seacliff asylum built in 1878 with its amazing architecture intrigued me and I did a little background reading: perhaps it is too long a bow to draw to claim that is a metaphor for mental healthcare in New Zealand: great intentions and fashionable design built on geologically unstable land that (as predicted at the time) lead to subsidence and a general collapse of the infrastructure.
There is something symbolic about that, Jeff. When I was last in that neighbourhood, there was one building left. The idea of an asylum could have started out with good intentions, including occupational therapy, but medicalization and over-crowding made them unsafe. The trouble now is that we've shifted from abuse in care to neglect with very little care at all.
Eugenics & other ideologies underpinning these asylums are a perfect example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. It took a ruinous world war to make people realise how far down the road it had gone.
I think there'd be public support for a levy on the faith-based institutions responsible. Respect for religious organisations has diminished in the last 30 years or so, for better or worse, and fewer people have vested interests in protecting their reputations. All the revelations about the cultish Gloriavale have contributed to the trend. Joanne Wilkes
Good comment, thank you Joanne. I was wondering about what kind of levy too. Employers are levied a % of payroll. But many faith organisations are charitable with unpaid labour. Perhaps they should pay a percentage of their audited assets, or face cancellation of charitable status.
I think, Grant, that any threat to their charitable status would bring them into line!
There's known to be a pipeline from state care abuse to the prison system & gang membership. It's sadly just the same in other Anglosphere nations.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/473436/from-taonga-to-chattels-path-from-state-care-to-prison-revealed-in-new-figures
https://www.1news.co.nz/2024/07/25/state-care-has-key-role-in-creating-violent-gang-members-submission/
It's not easy reading, but thank you for the links.
Indeed, it’s not easy reading for most of us. But it’s necessary reading if the whole vicious cycle is to be broken.
What horror! What betrayal! Your dispassionate account makes it all the more unbearable.
Lake Alice was too much.
Another insightful and thought-provoking commentary, thank you.
The photo of Seacliff asylum built in 1878 with its amazing architecture intrigued me and I did a little background reading: perhaps it is too long a bow to draw to claim that is a metaphor for mental healthcare in New Zealand: great intentions and fashionable design built on geologically unstable land that (as predicted at the time) lead to subsidence and a general collapse of the infrastructure.
There is something symbolic about that, Jeff. When I was last in that neighbourhood, there was one building left. The idea of an asylum could have started out with good intentions, including occupational therapy, but medicalization and over-crowding made them unsafe. The trouble now is that we've shifted from abuse in care to neglect with very little care at all.
Eugenics & other ideologies underpinning these asylums are a perfect example of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. It took a ruinous world war to make people realise how far down the road it had gone.