Stories by Kirsty Johnston
Audio and features
A woman adopted at birth chases the shadow of a missing sister
When an adopted child goes looking for her supposed sister, it’s a tortuous search. Did she ever exist at all? And why was it so hard to try to find her?
The law that banned sex for the “mentally defective”
For more than 80 years, women in mental health and disability facilities in New Zealand were effectively banned from having sex. Why?
Nellie and me: Unravelling the story of a life inside an asylum
Can you truly know someone when you’ve never met them? Reporter Kirsty Johnston spent a year trying to understand the tragic life and death of Nellie Wilson.
‘It was an evil, evil place’: How a refuge for the mentally ill became a nightmare
It was designed to give the mentally ill a refuge from the cruel world. But some patients of Porirua Lunatic Asylum say it was nothing more than a prison.
Nellie’s Baby: One woman’s story of an adoption, an asylum and a search for the truth
Sarah is born in a psychiatric hospital, taken by the state and adopted to a new family in secret. By the time she goes looking for her birth mother, it’s too late. Nellie has died and Sarah is left…
People are dying while pollution continues to waft over schools, marae and family homes in a beachside town
People are dying while pollution continues belching into the air in one of New Zealand’s most beautiful beachside suburbs. What will it take to stop it? Video
Crown vs Cow: The plan for pricing agricultural emissions is effectively dead - what killed it?
Agriculture contributes more to global warming than any other industry in Aotearoa. Yet attempts to rein in the sector’s emissions have repeatedly fallen short. Kirsty Johnston investigates how a…
Crown vs Cow, part two: How agriculture and government fell out, and the climate lost
Agriculture contributes more to global warning than any other industry in Aotearoa. Yet attempts to rein in the sector’s emissions have fallen short once more. In Depth reporter Kirsty Johnston…
Deny, deny, delay: How agriculture lobbied Labour into putting off a climate tax, again.
Agriculture is warming the earth faster than any other industry in Aotearoa. Yet attempts to rein in the sector’s emissions have fallen short once more. In a three part Kirsty Johnston investigates…