Murder& heart break WHANAU’S FIGHT TO BREAK THE CYCLE
Hope lies with their precious girl
By the time Vicki Harlick arrived breathlessly at the Opotiki Police Station, her niece Vivienne was cowering in a corner, covered in her own mother’s blood. “She was quiet, very quiet – but when she saw me, she put out her arms and said, ‘Mum, Mum.’”
It was November 22, 2016 and at 11.30pm, Vicki had been getting ready for bed when the phone rang. “It was the police. They said, ‘Are you sitting down? It’s bad news. Your sister Marie has been murdered.’”
Vivienne, then 19 months, had been strapped in a pram when her mother, Marie Harlick, was punched, kicked and beaten during an unspeakable 20-minute assault at the hands of her partner, Robert Hohua, 36.
The toddler no doubt saw her mum choke to death on her own blood.
After his drunken and rage-filled assault on Marie, Hohua washed her limp body in the bath, stripped off her wet clothes and laid her on a mattress in the bedroom.
The police found little Vivienne cowering under the blanket next to Marie’s lifeless body.
The domestic violence wasn’t a one-off – Mongrel Mob wannabe Hohua already had a long list of criminal convictions to his name, including common assault against Marie, who’d been his on-off partner for two years. When he killed the 35-year-old mother-of-seven in a rage that night, he’d been freed on bail – not once, but twice.
It was nearing 1am when Vicki, 37, a mother of five, returned home to Whakatane with her niece Vivienne.
“She never cried – we didn’t hear a peep out of her all night,” she recalls. “My partner Sam put her in the bath and we washed her mother’s blood off her.”
Later that night, Vicki called her aunt – and Marie’s namesake – Marie Harlick, 54.
The two Maries had once been close, but had drifted apart and hadn’t seen each other for 17 years.
“I was asleep when the phone rang at the silly hour of 1.30am,” says aunt Marie, taking up the story. “It was Vicki. She was sobbing and she said, ‘Aunty, Mush is dead. She’s been bashed to death.’” Mush was Marie’s nickname since childhood, although no-one can remember why. “The first thing I said was, ‘Are you sure?’
“‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’ve been to the police station and I’ve got Vivienne.’ I said, ‘Who’s Vivienne?’ She said, ‘Her baby.’”
Two days later, Marie identified her niece’s body in the morgue at Auckland City Hospital.
“She was on a stretcher, mostly covered by a blanket and I thought how beautiful her face looked,” says Marie.
“I know now there was only a small part they could show me.”
Grief-stricken as she stood beside her niece’s lifeless body, Marie says she was wracked with guilt about whether she could have done more – but the younger woman’s future seemed predetermined even before she was out of nappies.
Her dad – the elder Marie’s brother – had walked out on the family when Marie was a baby and it would profoundly impact the rest of her life.
The youngster was handed around various relatives’ homes before returning to Whangarei to live at her mother’s. There she grew up wild with her big sister Vicki and other siblings.
Vicki tells, “We roamed free, wagging school to swim
in the Whangarei Falls and pinching apples from local orchards. Anything was better than being at home with Mum and our stepdad.”
Marie’s childhood existed under a shadow of alcohol, drugs and violence. She would later tell her family that she had been sexually abused by a family member.
“Growing up, it wasn’t unusual for Mum to have two black eyes,” says Vicki.
“I remember seeing her getting punched right in front of our grandmother. The sad thing is, we just thought it was normal.”
When Marie was 12 and her big sister Vicki was 14, the pair took off. “We were gone for months, hitchhiking around and living like street kids,” recalls Vicki. “Mum never came looking.”
And predictably, Marie’s own relationships would begin to mimic those she’d witnessed in her childhood.
A mix of alcohol and marijuana became her crutch, and long before she’d meet her killer Hohua, at least one, if not two, of her boyfriends would physically abuse her.
She would go on to have seven children during her short life, the first at just 17. Cruelly, two of them would die accidentally – a newborn, Frances, and a 10-year-old boy, Piripi.
SavingVivienne
At the morgue that day in 2016, aunt Marie apologised to her niece for not saving her, and told her that she wanted to take care of her baby, Vivienne.
“While she was lying on the slab, a tear trickled from her eye and ran down her face. I just bawled.”
Unable to get the image of a motherless little girl out of her head, aunt Marie drove to Whakatane the next day.
She first met Vivienne in a garage as the family gathered two days ahead of Marie’s tangi.
“She closed her eyes and wouldn’t look at me,” recalls the elder Marie. “She had the saddest little face I had ever seen. She was totally lost.”
Marie says the girl was grubby and small, and had two black eyes and greyish, scaly skin.
“Marie was so full of love for her kids, but so damaged,” says her aunt. “No-one ever showed her how to be a mum.”
Two days later, aunt Marie watched from afar as the clingy little girl was passed around at the tangi. “She was always on someone’s hip, but I never saw her fed or given a bottle,” she says.
Marie drove into town and bought bottles, food and a new outfit for the tot.
“I didn’t want Vivienne to look unloved at her mother’s funeral,” she says.
The following day, she put her hand up to take the little girl back home to Auckland, where she lives with three generations of her whanau, including the youngest two of her six children.
Although other family members also offered to take Vivienne, Child, Youth and Family made the final decision.
Seven days after seeing her mum murdered, Vivienne was driven north for a new life with her great-aunt.
She was quiet by day, but at night she seemed to relive the horror of her mother’s murder, screaming out in terror, “Mummy!”
“I have never seen that much fear in a child’s eyes,” admits her caregiver Marie, a grandmother of 10.
For a long time, Vivienne refused to accept any food, preferring instead to forage in the bottom of the freezer for spilt peas, on the lower shelf of the pantry or even in the rubbish.
And although she was close to two years old, the only word she uttered was ‘oi’. “Obviously, it was all anyone had said to her during her life.”
Slowly but surely, though,
‘We all grew up around domestic violence – but now it is stop’ time to
with patience and love, the little girl began to come out of her shell.
“Our major breakthrough happened after three months when Vivienne smiled for the first time,” says Marie.
Intergenerational domestic abuse is deep-rooted in the Harlick family.
“Part of the reason I lost contact with Mush was because I was in survival mode, trying to stay alive and protect my kids in my own domestic violence situation,” says Marie.
“My first beating was over a game of pool,” she recalls. “I won, so my first husband took me home and beat me to smithereens.”
It took 20 years for Marie to walk out, with her four oldest kids in tow.
Vicki too has been in relationships where she has feared for her safety and that of her children. “We all grew up around domestic violence – but now it is time to stop,” she declares.
Vivienne’s whanau has put together a scrapbook of clippings about Marie’s death and Hohua’s trial.
“We want Vivienne to grow up strong, to be educated, to make up her own mind,” says Vicki.
In December last year, Hohua was sentenced to serve at least 17 years of a life sentence for the murder of Marie. In the Tauranga High Court, one police officer described Marie’s injuries as being consistent with a high-impact car crash.
It took 19 months for her great-aunt Marie to become Vivienne’s legal guardian and the next fight is to get Hohua’s name off her birth certificate.
The little girl, who turns three this month, is slowly finding her way. Although Vivienne still experiences nightmares, she is seeing a play therapist who specialises in traumatised children.
She also goes to preschool, has made friends, and loves to sing and dance. She’s had a tough start, but her loving whanau is fighting hard to secure her future.
“Vivienne is a strong girl – all the women in our family are,” smiles her devoted greataunt Marie. “Our hope is that Vivienne will be the one to break the cycle of violence in our whanau.”