Politicians may well find it difficult to talk about sexual violence, because it is a difficult topic to talk about, even for families.
Politicians may well find it difficult to talk about sexual violence, because it is a difficult topic to talk about, even for families.
OPINION
The prevention and elimination of sexual violence should have been a significant election issue. As of today, it’s a missed leadership opportunity by all political factions.
Surprisingly, given the minimum $6 billion annual cost to Aotearoa, let alone humanitarian trauma, it wasn’t prioritised in a vocal way by any of the major political parties, except for ardent Marama Davidson.
She broke new ground coming in as the inaugural Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence in 2020, and that was progress.
So was Te Aorerekura, the 25-year strategy to tackle family violence and sexual violence.
Marama Davidson broke new ground as the inaugural Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence in 2020. Photo / Newshub
We are miles from where we can talk about it publicly. It doesn’t matter what political party you belong to — we need to all agree that sexual violence is an issue that must be addressed.
It’s the key to restoring the health and wellbeing of our nation.
My observations as a member of national body TOAH-NNEST (Te Ohaakii a Hine – National Network Ending Sexual Violence Together) on the last two terms of governments helping to prevent sexual harm on the ground come with a dose of pragmatism and practicality.
In 2015, we walked the full length of Te Tai Tōkerau, from Tāmaki to Cape Reinga, to raise awareness of the support needed to manage the damaging impact of sexual violence.
The following year we committed to walking 40km around Kaitāia daily for a week in The Seven7 Challenge.
At the time the central message of myself and Joy Te Wiata, of Korowai Tumanako, was we can prevent sexual violence and as a whole community we can achieve this. My position remains the same.
One of the impressive things about the walk at the time was that all political parties joined us — everyone from across the political spectrum participated.
Russell Smith says we need to all agree that sexual violence is an issue that must be addressed. Photo / Supplied
We need this cross-party collectivism for the sake of our nation in action, we all agree that sexual violence is a real blight in our society.
Yes, there has been an acceleration of support in the House around the implementation of the Sexual Violence Legislation Act 2021 that is pleasing.
The new law was a critical component to the work that’s been carefully done, especially for judges to intervene when inappropriate questions are being asked of victims/survivors giving evidence.
For example, when a lawyer asked a 6-year-old child “If you didn’t like what happened to you, why did you go back to the bach?”
There’s also been grown partnerships with Māori and kaupapa Māori so there’s been a greater understanding that Māori have an answer and a healthy response to meeting the needs of whānau that have been violated.
Yes, it’s still early days, especially when this blight has been around for hundreds of years. But it doesn’t need to take 100 years to fix. It’s all about ensuring that we get the resources to do that.
Maori service providers in the sexual violence sector have a quite different approach to how we work with whānau in this space — hohoa rongo to restore tapu, mana and reconciliation is critical in sexual violence when there’s been a transgression.
You can’t move through the community without meeting anyone who hasn’t been affected by sexual violence. When you look at the tip of the iceberg statistics; one in four wahine and double that for Māori, one in six Tane are impacted.
When you start to look at the gargantuan numbers, what you can say is everyone in New Zealand is affected by this. This means we need an increase in access to services of support and informative information and education. It’s a must-do.
What I’m witnessing professionally is we’re dealing with a lot more sexual addiction, which leads to harm of self and chances are harm others.
So that’s what clinicians are dealing with right now. Government has to help us address this because we can’t do it alone.
While we’d love to not depend on government to do that, it’ll take a village as we certainly also need to look for support within our own communities, and our own resources to meet the needs of those people.
Politicians may well find it difficult to talk about sexual violence, because it is a difficult topic to talk about, even for families to talk about. Many don’t know how to talk about it, but the fact is that as a country we need to find healthy ways of talking about it.
You don’t have to scratch the surface very far to see the effects of sexual harm, or psychological effects, the emotional effects on harm within the community.
The ongoing insidious effects of it and the required fix is quite huge, which one would think would’ve been a conscience call for political prioritisation.
Russell Smith is co-director/senior clinician, Korowai Tumanako and member of Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri Taumata TOAH-NNEST — a national organisation focused on the prevention of sexual violence.
