Silence a friend to violence

Every four minutes. That was the title of a report released almost exactly a year ago by the justice sector’s chief science adviser, Dr Ian Lambie. If you know that the report was on family violence in New Zealand, it should be fairly easy to figure out the meaning of the title. The report found that there were 121,747 ‘‘family harm’’ investigations by New Zealand police in 2017. That averaged out to more than 330 per day, or one every

4-5 minutes.

Family violence is New Zealand’s guilty secret. The same report showed that just over threequarters of family violence incidents go unreported.

The grim statistics pile up. In Counties Manukau in 2017, family harm episodes made up 21 per cent of total calls to police but absorbed 40 per cent of officers’ time. There is a brutal generational cycle.

When more than 16,000 New Zealand child and youth offender records were reviewed, it was discovered that 80 per cent had evidence of family violence.

Intimate partner violence is one category that falls under the larger umbrella of family violence. The same report found that one-third of New Zealand women experience physical and/or sexual violence from their partners. When psychological and emotional abuse is added, that number lifts to

55 per cent.

It is a social crisis that few are willing to talk about openly. A cycle of silence goes hand in hand with a cycle of violence.

This is the context for Lizz Sadler’s brave decision to seek an end to the name suppression that had protected her violent husband, the actor Pua Magasiva. He had appeared in media reports only as ‘‘a prominent New Zealand entertainer’’. A small number may have known his identity but the wider public were none the wiser.

Sadler had been willing to support the name suppression that shielded Magasiva, partly for the sake of his career – Magasiva had an image as a likeable comic actor on Shortland Street and in the film Sione’s Wedding – and partly out of fear that his anger would return if he was named.

The second reason is familiar to those who suffer such abuse. Some will try to protect their violent partners from social disgrace or may even see themselves as somehow complicit in the violence and aim to reduce its causes.

When Magasiva died in a suspected suicide in May, he had put his wife in hospital. His death came just two weeks after he was sentenced for a 2018 assault on Sadler.

There is a school of thought that says our courts are too eager to give celebrities, including entertainers and sports people, name suppression. It is easy to think of hypothetical scenarios had Magasiva been named after the 2018 assault.

His career would have been over but he may have got the help he desperately needed – he may have lived, and future acts of violence may have been avoided.

Dreaming up alternative scenarios may seem pointless, but the naming of Magasiva might help to end the cycle of silence. Other women who find themselves in similar situations – and there will be thousands more – may feel empowered to act decisively and assertively, as the conversations widen and the patterns of abuse are recognised.

A cycle of silence goes hand in hand with a cycle of violence.