New Zealand on Tuesday issued a historic national apology to the victims and families of hundreds of thousands of young people and vulnerable adults who suffered physical and sexual abuse in institutions over the past 70 years.

The apology follows a report from a public inquiry in July that found nearly 200,000 children and vulnerable adults in state and faith-based care suffered some form of abuse from 1950 to 2019.

“It was terrible. It was heartbreaking. It was wrong. And it should never have happened,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said, with about 200 abuse victims and families watching from the public gallery at parliament in Wellington.

“Today, I apologize on behalf of the government to all those who suffered abuse, harm and neglect while in care. I make this apology to survivors on behalf of myself and my previous governments.”

The Prime Minister said the government had completed or started working on 28 recommendations from the inquiry and would give its full response early next year.

Luxon said National Day of Remembrance will be held on November 12 next year and work will begin to remove monuments such as street names, public facilities and other public honors to proven criminals. Instead the country would honor the victims, many of whom were buried in unmarked graves in psychiatric and other care facilities in New Zealand.

The bill, which includes a number of measures to increase security in state care, will be read in parliament for the first time on Tuesday.

The Royal Commission of Inquiry was the longest and most complex investigation conducted by New Zealand. The investigation interviewed more than 2,300 survivors of abuse in the country of 5.3 million.

The inquiry detailed a range of abuses in state and faith-based care, including rape, sterilization and the use of electric shocks, that peaked in the 1970s.

The report found that the indigenous Maori community, as well as people with mental or physical disabilities, were particularly vulnerable to abuse.

The final report listed 138 recommendations, including a call for public apologies from the New Zealand government as well as the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the heads of the Catholic and Anglican churches respectively who have condemned child abuse.

It also called for new legislation to include mandatory reporting of suspected abuse, including confessions made during religious confessions.

The report estimates the average lifetime cost of an abuse survivor to be around NZ$857,000 ($511,115) per person as of 2020, but does not make a clear recommendation on how much compensation survivors should be paid.

($1 = 1.6767 New Zealand dollars)