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Warning: This article discusses sexual abuse and family violence and could be distressing for some people.
Nearly 80,000 people were sexually abused in New Zealand during the past year. But, that number is far from an accurate reflection of the extent of the offending, as the vast majority of victims never come forward. For those who do report the abuse, the process of giving evidence - where victims are often blamed or called liars - is especially tough and conviction rates are low. While a guilty verdict brings justice for some survivors, others say the sentences are nothing compared to what they have to live with for the rest of their lives. In a three-part series, Open Justice talks to survivors who have been through the court process about whether there really is justice for people who are sexually abused.
Julie* was heavily pregnant and had just been dumped to the ground and humiliated by the man who claimed he loved her when the reality of her situation finally hit home.
"He was acting intimidating by smashing up things; there was an escalation in his behaviour..."
She recalls her fear. She remembers lying on the floor, asking herself: 'What am I doing? This is so bad.'
"Then I stood up and, unconsciously, I took my wedding rings off."
Three years after the 2018 attack, Julie's ex-husband was sentenced to nine years' imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the abuse he inflicted on her and another woman, Mary*.
The pair were not alone - the Ministry of Justice's most recent New Zealand Crime and Victims survey recorded 78,000 adults were sexually assaulted in the previous 12 months.
The offender in nearly 50,000 of the cases was an intimate partner, another family member, or someone else known to the victim.
Julie and Mary's abuser pleaded guilty to two charges of rape, two charges of intentional damage, two charges of male assaults female, one charge of unlawful sexual connection, one charge of reckless driving and one charge of breaching a protection order.
"I thought that that was a pretty decent sentence. We were not sure what we were going up against," Julie says.
"It gave my children time to grow up before he was out again."
While it took a lot of courage to initially make the break from the abuser she had lived with for 10 years, Julie said going through the process of making the complaint felt like she had gained her power back.
A Ministry of Justice Crime and Victims survey showed of 78,000 adults sexually assaulted, in almost 50,000 cases, 64 per cent, the offender was an intimate partner or known to the victim.
"It was empowering because I felt like, for the first time in a decade, I had a voice."
However, 12 months later, the Court of Appeal reduced the overall sentence to eight years and six months' and imposed a minimum non-parole period of four years and three months'.
The decision effectively halved the sentence imposed, which horrified the women when they were contacted by the officer in charge of the case.
System requires remodeling to cater for vulnerable people
They spoke to Open Justice hoping to highlight the issue and bring about change, and to give victims their voices back in a system they say is catering to criminals.
Victim Support's Dr Petrina Hargrave echoed their beliefs, saying New Zealand has an offender-centric justice system and that victims were often shocked by how little they were acknowledged in court, which left them feeling their involvement was tokenistic.
"We know that any opportunity for victims to participate and have a voice can be hugely therapeutic for victims. However, many are shocked by how few genuine opportunities exist for them to currently have a voice in the justice system," the principle adviser for victim advocacy and research says.
Julie says the decision to reduce the overall sentence and impose a parole period was gutting.
"I felt like the system had let us down.
"The sentence that he gave me, is for life. I have to live with what I live with."
Despite the offender having two strike warnings, meaning he should have had to serve the entire sentence without the possibility of parole, the Appeal Court ruled it would be manifestly unjust without the prospect of early release.
The initial sentence had already provided a discount for his guilty plea and abusive childhood.
Julie believes the guilty pleas were only entered for the discount and that her abuser has no genuine remorse.
Discounts should be used only in exceptional cases, she says.
"There is no justice in giving a discount to somebody who raped or sexually abused someone. It doesn't take into account or represent what the victims have had to go through.
"They should just be for those who prove themselves by their actions, rather than a discount just being given because they said the right things."
Mary says leaving the man who repeatedly raped her, including once when she was pregnant, was difficult, and the lenient justice system added insult to injury.
"I am deeply upset with the justice system. I feel that they have betrayed me as a victim.
"They [criminals] don't deserve justice on their side, they deserve the book to be thrown at them."
Victims' voices need to be heard
The women believe victims should be consulted throughout the entire process, including any appeal of the convictions or sentence.
"Then they are actually making decisions with the victim in mind."
Dr Hargrave says discounts on sentences were often seen as insulting, unfair, and could trivialise the situation in the eyes of victims.
"They have in their mind that there's a maximum sentence, but what they end up with is often very far from that, because it's common for several discounts to be applied at once.
"Victims often feel that offenders are being rewarded by being given discounts, so it can actually contribute to a sense of revictimisation and confusion because they're asking how this person can be both punished and rewarded at the same time."
New Zealand's justice system has been described as catering for criminals and victims want it overhauled so their voices can be heard. Photo / NZME
While remorse and apologies were vital for victims, they were sometimes abused by offenders with self-serving purposes.
"If they are perceived to be genuine, they can help the healing process, but the contrary is true if they're perceived to simply be a means to a lighter sentence."
Dr Hargrave says the system needed to balance the needs and rights of both defendants and victims, but there was a lack of evidence that balance was being achieved.
Change coming
She welcomed the Government's budget commitment to invest $45.7 million over four years developing a Victims' Operating Model, where they are informed of their rights, where voices which were not being heard can be identified, and where processes and legislation can be strengthened.
"This big-picture view is vital to start shifting the culture of our justice system from one that many victims find indifferent to their needs to one that understands and meets them.
"Achieving that balance is about looking at the whole process from the perspective of victims and ensuring they feel safe enough to report crime in the first place, to participate in the court process, to have a say in parole, to be supported – the whole justice journey."
While National's justice spokesman Paul Goldsmith says the party would look to reintroduce legislation similar to the recently repealed Three Strikes model, Dr Hargrave says the toughest sentence would never be enough for some, and was not the answer to justice for victims.
Dr Hargrave says recent research showed 68 per cent of victims of serious crime felt justice had not been served in their case, despite 86 per cent of cases resulting in a guilty verdict and 52 per cent resulting in imprisonment.
"When we spoke to victims about this, they described justice as accountability, righting the wrong, hearing both sides of the story, and getting a fair deal.
"That's why it's so important that we don't look to sentencing alone to make things better for victims."
Goldsmith says National believes repealing the Three Strikes legislation was a backward step.
"Given the current substantial rise in violent crime, it is out of touch for the Government to conclude that the priority now should be to reduce sentences for our most serious, repeat offenders – those targeted by the Three Strikes Legislation.
"We are open to considering any suggestions that give greater voice to the victims of crime."
From fairy tale to fear
Julie married her abuser in 2017, 10 years after they were first introduced by mutual friends when she was 13 and he was 15.
The couple began communicating via text messages and social media, and they spoke on the telephone for the next two years while they attended boarding schools in different parts of the country.
"We used to spend hours talking on the phone, telling each other all of our secrets. Some of the time you spent crying, telling me about what you had been through, and other times were full of laughter, or just random banter.
"We had never met in person, but it felt like we really did know each other."
They came from completely different backgrounds - she was from a wealthy family, but was overweight and suffering from low self-esteem. He was two years older and much more street-smart.
Julie says while she was smitten by the attention, she was too young to comprehend the difficulties they would face due to their different backgrounds.
Then, in 2009, she ran away from home and headed straight into the arms of her teenage lover, thinking things would remain the same forever.
Red flags, however, began appearing almost immediately when Julie was assaulted out of the blue for an innocent mistake.
"It caught me off guard, but I knew then, the precedent was set. I could not do anything to make you angry or I would get hurt," she says.
Julie and the man who abused her for years first met when they were teenagers, but it didn't take long for the red flags of a toxic relationship to show.
It didn't deter them, and within a year Julie was pregnant with their first child - but trouble was never far away.
Mere weeks after the couple's first son was born, Julie discovered her partner was cheating on her with Mary, who was a good friend of his sister.
"I was pretty upset, but it was expected. He was always going to find someone else."
The couple spent most of the year apart, but following their son's first birthday they got back together.
"He was telling me, 'I want to be there for you and our son'. It sounded very legitimate."
The relationship was fraught with infidelity and controlling manipulative behaviour, which left Julie, who completed a Bachelor's degree in 2016, feeling stumped about what to do.
"I kept thinking, 'Maybe I shouldn't be with him, but how do I get away from him?'"
The manipulation ran so deep. She says she almost felt "owned by him".
Despite her qualifications and having worked with vulnerable families professionally, she struggled to acknowledge her own situation.
"I care so deeply about other people. I felt I couldn't help myself, but I could help other people.
"I didn't feel like I could make my life any different."
Julie says in the final years she began withdrawing from the relationship, and was just going through the motions to get through daily life.
Reality hits home
Then came the breaking point in 2018. They had been married for about a year and had one child together with another on the way, but the realisation finally struck that "things were not right and were never going to be".
Although her husband had fled the scene after the attack, his reign of terror hadn't finished for the night. He later texted Julie, outlining that he had more in store for her.
"I'm going to make your life a living hell", it read.
Somewhere deep down, Julie knew she had to swallow her pride and make a clean break, so she summoned up the courage to pack a bag and got out.
"It was really, really hard. It's not as easy as someone might think.
"There's so much pride, and it's embarrassing that you got yourself into this situation."
Julie called her sister, who rang police, and although she knew the relationship was over, she still struggled to break the shroud of silence she had lived under for the past decade.
"I didn't tell them what I should've told them. I told them the bare minimum: he was a bit angry. A toned-down version."
It wasn't until eight months later when Julie did a video interview with police officers that the most serious sexual abuse charges were laid.
"When you are living in a situation for a very long time, you don't remember things, your body's natural trauma response blocks them out.
"I had no clue what had happened in the last ten years."
Breaking the bonds of an abusive relationship and calling the police can be a tough step to take, but it's the first step to recovery, victims say. Photo / NZME
She still struggles to comprehend how the man she loved thought it was okay to hurt a pregnant woman.
"I look at my little girl now: she is a little warrior, who thankfully, you never got an opportunity to hurt."
In one incident while he was a passenger in a car driven by Mary, he became angry and yanked on the handbrake as they travelled along the open road, causing the car to veer across the yellow centre lines into oncoming traffic.
Fortunately, Mary managed to steer heavily to the left. An oncoming vehicle collided with the rear of their car, but no-one was injured.
The last straw came during a fight when their daughter was two months old.
"He told me he was going to wipe the smug look off my face."
She says she has concerns for her safety and that of her children if and when the offender is released.
Dr Hargrave says a lot of victims feel aggrieved by the sentence imposed on their offender, and felt like they were the ones serving life.
"Many are too scared to leave the house for fear of bumping into the offender, who has been released before the victim has even had a chance to work through the impact of the victimisation," Hargrave says.
"That really puts it in perspective that for offenders, incarceration is for a finite period, but for victims, the impact can last a lifetime."
* Names in this article have been changed to protect the identities of those concerned.
Where to get help: If it's an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111. If you've ever experienced sexual assault or family violence, help is available: • Safe to Talk confidentially, any time 24/7. Call 0800 044 334, Text 4334, For more info or to web chat visit safetotalk.nz • Women's Refuge: Crisis line - 0800 REFUGE or 0800 733 843 (available 24/7) • Shine: Helpline - 0508 744 633 (available 24/7) • It's Not Ok: Family violence information line - 0800 456 450 • Shakti: Specialist services for African, Asian and Middle Eastern women and children. • Crisis line - 0800 742 584 (available 24/7) Alternatively contact your local police station - click here for a list. How to hide your visit: If you are reading this information on the Herald website and you're worried that someone using the same computer will find out what you've been looking at, you can follow the steps at the link here to hide your visit. Each of the websites above also has a section that outlines this process.
