It’s time to man up on
Men are being encouraged to take leadership and help other men change, as the nation tries to tackle an endemic problem – domestic violence. Jared Nicoll reports.
JAMES Kirk wants to see a new type of house in the Hutt Valley. The kind where men can live if police order them to leave their homes because they’re a threat to their family’s safety.
In this house, Kirk hopes he can start a conversation about change.
The 49-year-old social worker, based at Orongomai Marae in Upper Hutt, believes a group of male counsellors offering to help in the right place at the right time could be the community’s answer to a national problem.
In New Zealand, police are called to an act of family violence every five minutes. Children are usually witness to that violence nearly two-thirds of the time. In an effort to stem the anger, Prime Minister John Key announced in September that there will be a $130 million overhaul of how the justice system faces up to family violence.
‘‘We’re not going to demonise or stigmatise men who use violence towards women,’’ Kirk says.
‘‘We’re going the other way. What I believe in is having strength in numbers to agree that it’s unacceptable. Rather than focussing on the negative, we come through on the positive.’’
Kirk’s tipping point came when he was 21.
‘‘I thought things were OK until I became a dad. Slowly but surely, my actions suggested to me that I was turning out like my dad. That the new cycle of violence was starting.
‘‘I yelled at my oldest son one day. When I looked at his facial features, it reminded me of how I responded when my dad used to treat me like that.
‘‘And, about the same time, Once Were Warriors came out and I went to watch that and I burst into tears. My upbringing was very similar to Once Were Warriors. Right down to a tee. Including sexual violence. All of it. Parties, alcohol, family violence. You name it. There was physical, psychological neglect, sexual. Emotional. The whole lot.
‘‘What was significant about Once Were Warriors was that it helped me understand that I wasn’t the only one. It was shattering that illusion that it was OK. It was actually confronting our communities and saying this is what’s happened. This is what’s happening. And this is whanau violence.’’
Kirk was not physically violent toward his family, but was emotionally and verbally abusive. His wife supported him through months of counselling, including cognitive behavioural therapy, and he went on to become a qualified social worker. He has been a foster caregiver for about 20 years with Child, Youth and Family, and nearly 30 years as a matua whangai (surrogate parent).
‘‘And the lessons I learned, I bring to my work. We’ve got to expose those things and show people what they look like because, like I said, if you see it all the time it becomes normal. It’s OK to yell and scream at your kids or throw things around the room or isolate your wife from everybody else.’’
He had to reconcile with his past and his dad, in order to grow and become an adult.
Knowledge is the key to unlocking family violence. Kirk speaks about the Maori urban drift, a topic he learned more about when studying social work.
‘‘I was lucky that I consider myself first-generation urban Maori because mymumand dad had moved from the East Cape down here in the 60s and I was born in Wellington.
‘‘So we saw two contrasting environments. There were pubs where Maori congregated and drank and then beat each other up. Uncles fighting uncles. Uncles beating aunties. All sorts of violence. But then we go back up home and it’s totally different. Alcohol was not such a priority up there.
‘‘What’s really important up there is doing day-to-day activities to make sure you survive. Taking care of the land. We were losing all those values because they were being replaced by fruit and veggie shops. Down here it was isolating us from our support.
‘‘Half the problem is people don’t actually realise that what they do is abuse. In fact, we run into the ongoing challenge that when we see a certain behaviour, whether it’s positive or negative, we normalise that behaviour.’’
Violence could become normalised if it is not challenged, Kirk says.
‘‘If we’re going to address whanau violence, it’s about recognising authority. In our whanau, in our community, out in our networks who are against whanau violence. So If we can identify more men in our community like that, then we go forward.’’
Deb Robinson, co-ordinator of Ahuru Mowai O Te Awakairangi (the Network for a Violence-Free Hutt Valley), has support from men at various agencies wanting to help, but she wants more men from within the community to fill out a Men’s Leadership Group to help run a PSO (police safety order) House in Hutt Valley.
The house will be a place where men served with such orders can stay temporarily while getting help.
Police attending a domestic incident can issue a PSO if they have reasonable grounds to believe that family violence has occurred, or might. The person must then leave the address, for up to five days, to cool down.
‘‘There are men out there with five or six protection orders against different women from their other families that he’s hurting,’’ Robinson says.
‘‘On average it takes seven years for families to change their culture.’’
Robinson’s plan is twopronged: one is for a group of men to support the establishment of the house, and the other is for a group of men who are willing to become ongoing mentors for other men.
‘‘There is a body of research that says unless men take an active role in ending family violence nothing will change . . . mateship or mentorship – whatever you like to call it – it is the most effective way to get change.’’
The latest figures produced by NZ Family Violence Clearinghouse showed the number of PSOs issued around the country rose from 7133 in 2011, the year after they were introduced, to 13,997 last year. The number of breaches grew slightly, from 6 per cent to 8 per cent.
Men breach PSOs for all sorts of reasons.
In June, a Timaru man who complained to police that he could not have breached a PSO by driving past the complainant’s house because his licence was suspended, was stopped by police shortly afterwards when he was seen driving away from the police station. He was charged with breaching a PSO.