Mr Darryl Smith, of Rangiora, KSM for services to survivors of abuse in care
Darryl Smith has served as the New Zealand Ambassador to the United States of America National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse and has self-published books on his experiences in state care and faith-based institutions. He has campaigned for decades against the abuse in Catholic Churches and state care, raising awareness on the forms of abuse and educational neglect faced by children. He has provided evidence to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Historical Abuse in State Care and in the Care of Faith-based Institutions on the physical and spiritual abuse he faced at Marylands School, and from witnessing the racial abuse suffered by Māori and Pacific children at the school. His experience has supported the inquiry’s case study on the St John of God abuse, ‘Stolen Lives, Marked Souls’. He provided evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse – Australia, concluding in 2017. In 2023 Mr Smith attended the Ending Clergy Abuse Summit in Rome, an organisation of survivors and human rights activists from 24 countries, campaigning to end clergy abuse and bring justice to survivors and their families and taking a stand on state abuse in New Zealand and Queensland, Australia.