Brutal attitude changed by ancient belief

A Maori social service agency in Rotorua is melting hard-man attitudes to women by reviving an ancient Maori belief that women are tapu (sacred).

Mana Social Services has started one of the country's first "restorative justice" programmes for men who beat their partners.

Statistically, it has so far failed to dent reoffending rates. But a Justice Ministry evaluation has found that it holds offenders "tribally accountable" and so "better responds to the needs of Te Arawa than that provided by the conventional justice system".

A man who completed the programme late last year told the Herald that the Mana counsellor talked language he could understand. "It's not like a person that's read it in a book. They have seen it. They have experienced it. It's like a family kind of atmosphere."

The man, now 36, grew up with five full siblings and six half-siblings in Rotorua's Ford Block. His Pakeha father was a truckdriver and his Maori mother was "out partying all the time".

When he was 9, his mother abandoned him and his sister. Their father passed them to his parents, then took them back but asked the boy to leave when he was 11 or 12.

He was made a ward of the state and spent the next few years in state family homes and boys' homes. At 15, he went to jail after cutting a man's throat. In the next 15 years he was jailed about 20 times.

He has had children with three women, and started beating his partners after he "heard things through the grapevine" about what one was up to while he was in jail.

He met his current partner 12 years ago when she was 14, and she had the first of their five children a year later. She wept as she told the Herald how he began assaulting her a few years later.

"Most of the time he only did it when he was drunk," she said. "I think he was just out [of jail] for too long and saw what I was doing. I let my Mum babysit and went out. He didn't like that."

The couple moved to Auckland and the man stayed out of jail for six years. But his partner spent several spells in a women's refuge. When he assaulted her again soon after they moved back to Rotorua last year, she called the police.

He was jailed again. This time he was put in a Maori focus unit which he says was "a real eye-opener".

"There were things I didn't realise about women in our culture way back, when they were considered tapu," he said. "You were there to look after them. They were the bearers of our children."

A judge ordered him to do the Mana restorative justice programme when he came out of jail.

The man learned to walk away until he calmed down. His partner learned techniques to defuse a situation.

For the first time, the man allowed his partner to go out to work while he looked after the children.

"He's good with the kids. He's very strict. They won't dare pull any of the crap they pull with me," his partner said.

The Justice Ministry found that 42 per cent of the 173 offenders in the programme in 2001-02 were convicted again within a year - almost exactly the same as in a comparison group with similar backgrounds.

But the man's partner said: "It did help at the time, and we haven't gone backwards. He's no saint, he's still drinking, but he's thinking more of consequences. It's looking a bit better, but some things just take time."

* Mana Social Services, (07) 348 6191.