There's always 3 sides to the coin...

There's always different perspectives to any story. I think that's why I never liked history at school. Black and White. 1 + 1 = 2. Real life, is never so simple. Shades of grey, flashes of white light and pitch darkness punctuate my existence, and 1+1 always = 3...

Following my visit to the women's refuge at Viviana, I had a meeting with Shakti Women's Aid Auckland last Thursday which left me in much more hopeful spirits. They are members of the National Collective of Women's refuges and contrary to what Viviana told me, there is no rule that women can only stay in refuge for 2 weeks. In fact, Shakti reckon that it's a pretty good model and works nationally rather well.

The Director, Farida, actually went to the Shakti Women's Aid in Edinburgh, moved to Auckland and set it up 14 years ago because there was no service for women of Asian, African and Middle Eastern women. The pacific, islanders and Maori women have their own services. There are no 'ethnic minorities' here. The heirarchy are Pakeha and Maori, I'm Pakeha, anyone who's not Maori, is Pakeha. There are no Chinese, South Asian parties in parliament, but there is a Maori party who make a lot of noise....

Anyways, so Shakti brought my domestic abuse research back to speed, in that they were realistic about the seriousness of our task, but actively challeninging, and in a positive way. I liked their energy, their enthusiasm to show me around their organisation and Farida asked me to pass her contact details on to the various people we happen to both know, her through her life's problems and me through my race equality work. It's a small world afterall and in Auckland they're proud that it's 4 degrees less than the average 6 degress of separation that connects everyone in this city. Indeed, for me it's only one because I make the most of my connections...

So Shakti told me that they do have 24 hour refuges and don't turn away women who have additional support needs but have no capacity to support these women separately, as we do in the UK. This was a relief. I didn't want to believe that refuges were turning all these women away. Women's refuges are the only way out for these women sometimes. Also heartening was the size of the organisation with approximately 40 staff, it's the same size as Edinburgh Women's Aid and growing, plus a core group of volunteers that are involved in all aspects of their activity. Really looking forward to visiting them and next week on Tuesday I'm going to the Maori refuge...


On Friday I went to visit Man Alive, another very interesting, active organisation challenging domestic violence from the perpetrators perspective. They started in the 1990 out of a need identified by men who understood that a violence free future for male perpetrators was not being supported by the justice system which put them in jail or community service, only to make them even more violent (if in jail) or set-up to repeat history. It seems obvious to us now, but the shock is beginning to wear off that these organisations have only been around in the last 25 odd years, some only in the last 10 years...anyways, Man Alive have 17 groups across New Zealand with hundreds passing through the doors of their base where I visited. Jim, the Director, explained that 90% of clients are mandated from the courts of justice and thus recieve government funding for their counselling, group therapy or support service uses. The other 10% self refer but are required to pay the fees ($60 to $90 per hour) that are not cheap. A barrier that they are overcoming with a staff member dedicated to funding applications and sourcing alternative funding. I was surprised, but pleasantly, to hear that they have a boys group, from 8 to 13years, then young mens, from 14 up, in addition to the expected men's groups.

Historically, as expected, they were shunned by the women's organisation because they refused to employ female staff. As a Community Development Worker, I believe in these circumstances that this is the best empowerment strategy for men who have lacked male role models through their whole lives. Having cut my teeth on the National Union of Students, Black Students' Campaign, I'm all for self-definition and automous governance. It goes back to that parenting responsibility I talked about before; how can you know others if you have yet to know yourself?

So the good news for Man Alive is that they overcame the barrier to accrediting their counsellors by creating their own body for this and are now becoming more accepted in the gender-biased non-profit and statutory violence prevention sector. United we stand; divided we fall and this applies equally across genders in the feminist movement for equality.

Every 12 days, a woman or child is murdered in New Zealand; a woman is murdered every six hours, in South Africa.

I met an interesting woman at Viviana, skeptic and disappointed in New Zealand's domestic violence services, or 'family violence, as they call it here, and the title was the alarming fact she told me. I replied with that little known and more alarming fact that a woman is killed in South Africa every 6 hours. There's always someone else,  somewhere else, who has it worse... I'm not sure if there is a higher femicide rate that South Africa's: does anyone know?

 

Viviana is not a member of the National Collective of Women's Refuges, the equivalent to Scotttish Women's Aid back home, for the following reasons that Membership Rules dictate (however I can't seem to access them from the website so I go by the worker):

• refuges can only house women for 2 weeks only 
• refuges do not accept women with additional support needs
• volunteers run refuges with few paid staff

She said they also are fundamentalist feminists, lacking a grounding practical application of their theory and holistic understanding and approach to anti-violence work. Women aren't supported to leave abusive relationships and re-establish new lives with their children; how can you possibly do that in 2 weeks? Maybe you can, but only in exceptional circumstances; most women need more than 2 weeks to break free from the chains of an abusive partner, and even then, it's only the physical chains. The psychological and emotional damage takes sometimes a lifetime to heal, or never...

Anways, she talked disparagingly of New Zealander's and her colleagues' work ethic. While she's comfortable working with women with additional drugs, alcohol, mental health needs, her peers aren't and it's because there is a mentality resistant to change. It's not just about resources, although that is an issue, she said; staff have no training budget but they wouldn't use it even if they did. The only reason she's different is because she's travelled and worked around the world, Ireland, England, Korea, etc. etc. 9 years after, she was horrified when she came back that things had gone back 50 years... I'm not really sure in what ways because she didn't explain.. She did have an interesting take on co-gender prevention group work. When in groups, there can be no collusion. It's probably more difficult, but it's not impossible... group's have cliques and couples and relationships within aren't necessarily equal... when I work in groups there is the attempt to prevent that from happening, definitely however I believe that where there's a will, a way shall be found, or created and if two people want to collude, they'll make it happen... isn't that how doemstic abuse starts?

Back to the refuges:

• weekly rent costs $450 to $600 per week, that's approx 200 to 300 pounds, not including bills, living costs so women do receive benefits but they come nowhere near to covering it
• women seek refuge so that they recieve priority when applying for council housing with Housing NZ however, unlike Edinburgh, the council have no obligation to house women presenting homeless because of domestic abuse
• some refuges at Viviana are not staffed ie. women don't receive support while there and basically have a building (There are only 5 staff, down from 9 when the previous manager left. Not only that, but those staff are on call 24 hrs outside of office hours...unpaid) ... is it better to have volunteers rather than no staff at all...??

So the picture's bleak for women being tortured by their abusive partners in New Zealand. I almost rescheduled the meeting to next week because the 5 staff were snowed under with court appearances at the Family Violence court each Wednesday. They seem to do a lot more legal support and advocacy work for women here... the staff I spoke to was also of the opinion that the Family Violence Unit were biased towards men, as part of a patriarchal society originating from england. She felt that all the men got programmes and support services for them and very little for women. I'm beginning to see her point; fathering week was a big deal and I've heard more about the men's counselling and parenting programmes that I have for women. I thought that this might be correctly directed towards the men as they're the ones who are at fault, but maybe she was expressing a disatisfaction more with the unequal allocation of resources between men's rehabilitation and women's protection, understandably.

This meeting was different from any other I've had with agencies so far. Partly to do with their stretched staff time and resources I guess. Partly to do with this staff's strange contradictory, ambiguous and indignant attitude towards her own sector. While she complained and compared New Zealand to other countries harshly, she wasn't trying to change it. Indeed, she was criticising in others the very short-comings she displayed herself. This woman's possibly been in this field too long. Or maybe her character's just the kind to look at the worst in people and get fixated on them, despite all the good that's there. Shame, because that's the first sure sign of a dying organisation: people tend to leave organisations with a self-defeating culture. People need to celebrate achievements and have visionary focus on change for the better, together. I'm feeling really sad about the anti-violence sector in New Zealand. the more I learn about it..and I haven't even been to the maori refuge yet...