KEY POINTS:
The first time it ever happened, they were arguing in the kitchen and out of nowhere she hit him hard in the stomach. He was so shocked and surprised that he turned and walked out.
The relationship hadn't been good for maybe five years, but he was prepared to do anything to stay with the two children he adores.
Then came one night in October. He didn't drink that much, but he did this night. When he got into bed, she tried to pull his drunken body out several times, but he kept climbing back in. That's when she began to hit him. When he let go of her arm to stop her, she fell backwards. She grabbed a lamp and began to lift it over her head.
That's when he began.
"I retaliated. I proceeded to throw her around the room. I was screaming, 'It's not okay. It's not okay to hit -"' as he threw her. He tried to think of ways to scare her so she wouldn't hit him anymore.
What occurred to him first was how frightened he used to feel when his mother biffed him around the ears as a child, so he did that. He remembered being strangled once on the playground as a kid, so he grabbed her by the throat.
When his 5-year-old daughter came in crying, the abuse became shouting. Eventually, he said, they both went in to comfort the children but "it was enough to stamp a little child's mind".
He was the one who rang the police. He wanted to show her it wasn't okay to hit. When I repeated his words out loud, we both laughed at the absurdity.
Later when he saw the pictures of the bruises on her legs, arms, buttocks - he cried. "It wasn't her bruises - it was the look on her face. She was so scared, uncertain, almost pleading for help, so vulnerable."
He says he lost everything that matters. Now there are courts, protection orders and seeing his kids only four times a year for a week.
I've been in this country for just over three years. I don't see the context of history here yet, I only see now. I see this country's greatest national shame.
I drive home listening to Willie Jackson on the radio, arguing how a clip around the ear didn't do his family too badly - and the image I can't get out of my head is the single gesture of a successful Auckland businessman unable to wipe away his tears of pain in an empty restaurant.
For maybe 15 minutes of his life, he had reverted to what his childhood self knew would be the most frightening thing. And the horrifying cost of that moment today?
Where I come from, Jackson's studio switchboard would have lit up like a Christmas tree with incensed callers. It would be rare for a prominent leader of the community to publicly advocate hitting a child - to any degree.
Here, domestic violence is so insidiously ingrained in the culture, it's just another "issue" - listed after surgery waiting lists or affordable housing - until it's pushed to the top of the news pile if twin baby boys get murdered that week.
An international poll just rated New Zealand the fourth most peaceful place in the world. That's because nobody stood in our bedrooms.
I'm supposed to be reassured because calls to the national helpline went up by 300 per cent last year and police reports are up almost 32 per cent. What sad, great news.
Finally, people are starting to call for help - or are we just beating each other senseless in more obscene numbers? There is a two-month waiting list to get into the No Excuses programme that my lunch partner eventually found. It gave him a new beginning.
He feels irrevocably changed, and passionately believes others can too. He said, "I want somebody to read this and say, 'There's a piece of me in that'."
There is a piece of this in all of us.
When I left the restaurant that day I found something unexpected. In a man who had beaten his partner, who had violated a basic premise of what society asks of him, there was an incredible strength in his drive to heal. I didn't realise how much respect and integrity I would see in that beginning.
If there is hope in just another statistic, it was in his hands.
For help, call: 0508 DVHELP [0508-384-357].
* www.traceybarnett.co.nz
