When home becomes a battlefield

The most violent place in New Zealand is not under an All Black ruck or late at night in a dangerous bar.

It is the family home.

From 1988 to 1997, convictions for what police call "male assaults female" - domestic violence - increased by 168 per cent.

Last year 5054 men were prosecuted for domestic assault, and 1000 more faced less serious family violence charges. Family Court applications for protection orders have averaged 616 a month for the past three years - 154 a week.

Senior Sergeant Dave Ryan, police family violence coordinator for Waitakere, North Shore and Rodney and a veteran of scores of domestic callouts, says "Marie's" account on this page is fairly typical, though he notes that she managed to leave the relationship.

"We get 8-year-olds ringing us up, scared out of their wits. I've seen spades, knives, bottles used as weapons."

Mostly it is men - often fuelled by alcohol - who perpetrate violence, but he has arrested women. He has found solo mothers living in fear of their own children, and recalls one woman who had locks on her bedroom door to protect her from her violent children.

Senior Sergeant Ryan is part of an industry which picks up the pieces of damaged lives and broken families. Frontline workers include crisis teams with welfare, health and family skills. Behind them are hundreds of volunteers who answer emergency calls, make late-night visits to victims or attend to children's needs.

The services all complain of being stretched, and believe the country ignores this epidemic at its peril.

The police response has stiffened in the past few years. Officers arrest where once they might have warned, and intervene when they might have backed away.

The latest trial initiative involves trying to stop the cycle of violence, where youngsters exposed to abuse go on to commit violence.

Safety assessment and referral projects started this year in the Far North, West Auckland, Wanganui, Nelson and South Canterbury.

Designed to better protect children exposed to repeated family violence, they spring from research revealing that much domestic abuse involves the same perpetrators and victims.

A joint study by police and the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Agency of 166 cases of family violence found nearly half (45.2 per cent) of the callouts were repeat visits.

In some cases, police were intervening up to five times or more in homes where half the adults had convictions for violence and dishonesty. One in three men had protection orders against them, forbidding them to harm others.

On average, two children under 10 were present at callouts, half already known to welfare staff.

Sergeant Jeff Taylor, of Police National Headquarters, says there is solid evidence that domestic violence has long-term effects on children.

New Zealand's Domestic Violence Act makes it an offence to allow children to witness physical, sexual or psychological abuse in a family setting.

The one major New Zealand investigation in this area revealed that 75 per cent of children in women's refuges who had seen their mother abused had severe behavioural problems. Last year 10,000 children, mostly under 10, spent time in refuges, sometimes returning again and again.

Sergeant Taylor hopes the trials will reduce these numbers by targeting the safety of children present at incidents. Police safety assessments are passed to welfare agencies to decide what is in the child's best interests - from a visit by a social worker to removal in extreme cases.

This approach differs from existing practice where neglect, ill-treatment or abuse of children are not always assessed during police callouts.

The women's refuge movement partners police in much of this work. The chief executive of Women's Refuge, Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, wants the partnership improved in some regions.

Police themselves admit that some frontline officers have been slow to move beyond the view that "it's just a domestic" to the pro-arrest policy.

Merepeka Raukawa-Tait says that as many as 70 per cent of the 6000 women who fled to refuges last year had been before.

It takes women an average of seven visits before they leave abusive partners.

"It takes a long time to make that break, to know they can survive on their own, to believe there will be community support."

Just as disturbing were young women who spent time in refuges as children returning with their own offspring.

"We are trying to short-circuit that because we are concerned about the impact on children."

But she feels refuge work, like other agencies in the domestic violence field, is limited by a lack of funds.

The country's 56 safe houses get $4 million a year from the Government, with donations and fundraising topping up the $16 million budget. Refuge employs 159 staff and needs 462 unpaid workers to run its services.

Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, who came to her job this year after a corporate career, is staggered by the scale of domestic violence in New Zealand and disturbed by the failure to confront it.

"It is leaving a dark cloud over our nation. The longer it lasts the further it will drag us down."