A former Dunedin man says any Government inquiry into the historic sexual abuse of children needs to include those abused in the care of religious institutions, or it risks excluding more then half the victims.
A resolution was passed in Christchurch on Wednesday at the South-South Institute conference, organised by the Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust, asking the Government to commit to a royal commission or similar level of inquiry into the institutional abuse of children in New Zealand.
Labour has pledged to open an inquiry into the historic abuse of children within its first 100 days in office, but has not released any details about what the inquiry would look like.
An advocate for victims of sexual abuse, historian Dr Murray Heasley, said research showed overall about 60% of all victims of historic sexual abuse were abused while in the care of a religious institution.
``It won't be justice if more than 50% of the survivors don't have their histories recorded and have any avenue for redress, which is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.''
Dr Heasley is the head of a group of former pupils campaigning for Kavanagh College to adequately acknowledge its links to priest Magnus Murray, who admitted to abusing boys in Dunedin.
A royal commission would have more ``teeth'' and would give all victims a chance of redress and compensation.
New Zealand should follow Australia and its Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
``The fact is the Australian royal commission is now seen as the international benchmark for this kind of inquiry.''
There were still more victims who were abused in religious institutions coming forward and the experience from Australia showed more would come forward once they felt safe to do so, he said.
``A lot of these guys are in their 60s now but there are still more victims coming forward, but they will never get a chance for justice if the crimes committed against them are never accounted for.''
