Rugby star joins Hastings Mongrel Mob dad on White Ribbon Ride

Rex Timu (right) and sons Star (centre) and Monte (left) as the family prepare the Harley-Davidson Breakout bikes for the annual domestic violence prevention White Ribbon Ride. Photo / Doug Laing

Former Magpies and New Zealand Under 20 rugby player Star Timu is bringing an inter-generational angle to domestic violence prevention by joining dad and gang leader Rex Timu on next week's White Ribbon Ride.

Rex Timu, the Mongrel Mob Hastings national president, first took part in the ride in 2015, and but for two years of Covid cancellations would have taken part every year since, alongside such people as MPs, police officers, Christian riders, ex-gang members, members of other gangs, and now the first of his five sons – including 32-year-old Star, a teacher at Flaxmere College.

Rides will be held in both the North Island and the South Island, starting on Saturday, with more than 300 expected to take part, some for the whole journey, some as they can depending on other commitments, such as work.

The North Island ride will start in Wellington, and head as far north as the Bay of Plenty before returning via Hawke's Bay to be welcomed to the area by Hastings mayor Sandra Hazlehurst next Wednesday, November 23, and take part in at least two public events in the Hastings area.

It will then head to Wellington for a commemoration on the Friday of international White Ribbon Day, which was established first in Canada in 1991. Since then it has been adopted by the United Nations as its International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The ride was started more than a decade ago and is part of the activities linked to the White Ribbon Trust which was established in 2014 to co-ordinate the campaign in New Zealand.

According to the trust website, the key focus of the 2022 campaign is the role dads (and parents and caregivers) can have in setting up their children to have respectful relationships and role modelling "healthy masculinity".

Rex's own drive in making the point included giving evidence in 2020 to a Waitangi Tribunal hearing in the wake of child welfare agency Oranga Tamariki's handling of an attempted taking of a baby from its mother in Hawke's Bay Hospital the previous year.

At the hearing he asked for help in reversing the impacts of the state removal of Maori children from families and the abuse that followed in other people's care, leading to the hatred of authority and the bonding of like souls in such groups as the gang, saying that
"the system created them, created their behaviour, created the mob as we know it."

He told Hawke's Bay Today at the weekend: "Violence in the home destroys families, which sets our children on destructive paths through their teenage years right through to adulthood.

"I see the White Ribbon kaupapa as a tool to use to educate our young boys, young fathers and men in general to understand the impact violence with the partner creates," he said.

Both father and son are grateful to employers who have allowed them time off, giving each the chance to get the message across particularly to young teen members, that violence against women and otherwise in the home, even though they may have seen plenty of it, is not okay.

Both say that if asked they will speak to the groups they meet, and Rex believes it is that age group that needs to hear the kaupapa, at a time they're making decisions which could severely hurt their own chances if they head down the wrong path.

In 2015, Rex said during a stop at Flaxmere College: "I'm passionate because I see a lot of our people being hurt. I'm in a position where I can make changes."

"I kind of thought it would get better, but it's not."

He supports the gang-based Kahukura drugs rehabilitation project in Central Hawke's Bay as one part of the recovery.

Most of his people have had lives of significant trauma, leading to issues of loss of interest in schooling and employment and social opportunity, and the consequences of anger, drugs, and violence.

"But, it's the start of it that we want to target," he said. "We sort out the violence at home and some of these problems are fixed. Fix the problems at home and we have a safer community."

Star Timu, whose rugby career is on-hold rather than "retired", has played premier rugby for Hastings Rugby and Sports for most of the years since he finished at Te Aute College, and was a member of the World Champion New Zealand Under 20 rugby team in Argentina, became a member of the Hurricanes Development squad, and played in France.