PRIME Minister Christopher Luxon made a “formal and unreserved” apology in his country’s parliament today for the widespread abuse, torture and neglect of hundreds of thousands of children and vulnerable adults in care.

“It was horrific. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened,” Mr Luxon said, as he spoke to lawmakers and a public gallery packed with survivors of the abuse.

An estimated 200,000 people in state, foster and faith-based care suffered “unimaginable” abuse over a period of seven decades, a blistering report released in July said at the end of the largest inquiry ever undertaken in New Zealand. 

They were disproportionately Maori, New Zealand’s indigenous people.

Mr Luxon said: “For many of you it changed the course of your life, and for that, the government must take responsibility.” 

The prime minister added that vulnerable people in foster and church care as well as in state-run institutions “should have been safe and treated with respect, dignity and compassion.

“But instead, you were subjected to horrific abuse and neglect and in some cases torture.”

The findings of the six-year investigation, believed to be the widest-ranging of comparable probes worldwide, were a “national disgrace,” the inquiry’s report said. 

Of 650,000 children and vulnerable adults in New Zealand’s state, foster and church care between 1950 and 2019 — in a country that today has a population of five million — nearly a third endured physical, sexual, verbal or psychological abuse. 

Mr Luxon was slammed by some survivors and advocates earlier on Tuesday for not divulging compensation plans alongside the apology. 

Some survivors were reluctant to accept the state’s words.

“It’s not enough to say sorry,” said Fa’afete Taito, a survivor of violent abuse at a state-run home, and a former gang member. “It’s what you do to heal the wounds of your actions and make sure it never happens again that really counts.”