KEY POINTS:
A South Island judge says no area or social group in New Zealand is immune from the "horrific" domestic violence she sees every day.
Queenstown Family, District and Youth court judge Mary O'Dwyer told a local audience yesterday there were 61 domestic violence-related murders in New Zealand in 2005.
That was half as many as the total for the four previous years.
Judge O'Dwyer said when the film Once Were Warriors were released, some people thought the kind of violence it depicted only happened in certain communities or social sectors, but that wasn't true.
"I have to say, in the four years I have sat as a judge in Dunedin, serving Central Otago, including this district, I see that violence.
"It's not restricted to the North Island, certain communities or ethnic groups."
Judge O'Dwyer was speaking on the same day new figures from the Women's Refuge revealed more than 24,000 women and children fled domestic violence last year, up from about 15,000 the year before.
The refuge received around $5.5 million in government funding each year, but said if it did not get more money it would be forced to reduce its services for victims of violence.
On Monday an article on the BBC website described domestic violence as New Zealand's "dark secret".
It said that there was a common perception amongst New Zealanders that the country had one of the worst rates of domestic violence in the developed world.
But international systems for recording domestic abuse varied, and New Zealand "may simply be better at monitoring the problem than other nations".
- NZPA
