For five years Aaron Smale has been uncovering the horrific details of abuse suffered by children in state care.
In 2016, Smale, a Newsroom journalist, stumbled across what he says is perhaps one of the biggest issues facing Māori, abuse of Māori children while in state care.
"I just don't think we have had a reckoning in this country with the significance and the damage that it has done. "
"I have covered prisons, issues like that. There was always a slight question in the back of my head, 'How did we go from these poor but functioning Māori communities to Once were Warriors? 'What was in that gap?"
This week, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in state care has centred on Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital where much abuse is believed to have occurred in the 1970s.
Smale says Lake Alice is the proverbial iceberg when it comes to uncovering abuse of children while in state care.
"I'd struggle to find or name an institution worse than Lake Alice. It sort of sits at the apex of the whole system. I initially thought it was out on its own, and it is, but most of the kids being sent there were coming from welfare homes, particularly from places like Kohitere and Holdsworth. I mean the abuse was terrible at those place, but Lake Alice is off the charts."
Smale also says that there is a direct correlation between Māori gangs and the abuse that Māori children suffered while in state care.
"Then you start to realise, all of your gang members, particularly the Black Power and the Mongrel Mob Nomads, went through those homes, and then you start to unpack a whole lot of downstream outcomes from those homes and it's catastrophic actually."
This year Smale was awarded Best Solo Investigation at the 2021 Voyager Media awards for his investigations into abuse in state care. But he believes this win isn't just for him.
"It's a validation for the survivors. That's probably more important for me, that their stories have been recognised or validated. It's a recognition that these stories are important."
