The end of the line
Given full access to follow the work of Porirua’s Ma¯ori Women’s Refuge, reporter Virginia Fallon finds bravery and compassion but no happy ending.
Caroline Herewini is the face of Porirua’s Maori Women’s Refuge, dealing every day with a stream of hurt women. Reporter Virginia Fallon was given full access to the refuge’s work, finding bravery and compassion but no happy ending.
He is hunting her. Even as she sits, sobbing, finally telling her tale, he is searching.
He has her car, her phone, her money and he’s scouring the city for her.
‘‘He’s going to kill me. How will you stop him from killing me?’’
The first time I walked into Te Whare Tiaki Wa¯ hine, a sister agency to Women’s Refuge, I could feel the stories waiting for me.
I’d met the refuge’s kaiwhakahaere (manager) Caroline Herewini when, as a brand new reporter in Porirua City, I was sent to interview her on her recently-awarded Queen’s medal.
Grey-haired and wearing a moko kauae, Herewini is a nononsense straight-talker. Her presence as solid as a rock, her speech like poetry.
Over the years, I’ve written a series of small stories on the work she and her staff do: little pieces about fundraising, children’s parties, pleas for volunteers but I always knew there was another tale waiting.
Originally, I thought it might be about the refuge’s 24-hour helpline, their work in making women’s houses safer or the dire lack of government funding they receive so, when I turned up to tail them for a day, I had plenty of angles. What an idiot.
Within the modest hub that houses the refuge office is a kitchen, a huge table, cramped desks and staggering amounts of paperwork: the bane of the women working there.
This is usually the end of the line for the women who come seeking help, Herewini says.
‘‘By the time they’ve come here, everything else has failed, we’re the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.’’
Among the mountains of papers accompanying any woman’s entrance into the refuge is an induction form horrifying in its simplicity.
Tick what applies: punching, kicking, threatening the children, hurting the dog, rape, strangulation, possession of firearms, weapons. Tick, tick, tick.
I’m sitting on the couch in Herewini’s office as she works through the forms with a woman who is silently crying.
‘‘She’s writing about what really goes on,’’ Herewini has told her about me, ‘‘and she won’t tell anyone who you are.’’
And I won’t but I will tell what they are.
They are gang girls and professionals and church-goers. They are older women and women barely in their teens. They are women hit and burned and stalked by their sons, their brothers and their partners.
Some might be hard women but they cry like any other women. Tears – as women know – start one by one and can be wiped away, but after a while, they become a torrent and have to fall.
These are women raised not to tell, they don’t nark, they don’t trust the cops and they only trust me because Herewini says they can.
They come with their children in tow, with their grimfaced friend by their side, they come on their own because they already know the way.
Some will go to the safe house, some will go home, some will come back again and again.
‘‘We have a revolving door here,’’ Herewini says. ‘‘We don’t judge.’’
The induction takes an hour or so and Herewini apologises for the brutal questions but makes it clear why they’re important.
‘‘This becomes part of what the judge sees so you need to tell the truth even though it’s uncomfortable for you.’’
When it does get too uncomfortable – usually around the sexual questions – she has them point to the answer that applies.
Sometimes they look at me and I nod at them. I take no notes, I barely breathe.
Today, there is a steady stream of hurt women pouring into the office.
There’s the mother whose exboyfriend keeps hitting her, a teenager whose head was slammed onto concrete the night before, and a young woman so badly beaten months ago she is permanently disabled.
Some aren’t here because they want to leave their partners, some come just to talk to Herewini.
Most of their stories can’t be written about because someone, somewhere, would know them.
Those tales are so horrifying I can’t process them but I sit there and I hear them and I nod at the women when they look at me.
Two women are inducted today: their stories are widely different and heartbreakingly similar and the women who tell them turn up unannounced.
With a cup of tea and a sandwich, they’re taken into the office and a smooth dance begins.
As the talk starts, the refuge staff swing into motion, gliding around each other as Herewini issues commands: phone calls are made to lawyers, WINZ and sometimes – if the victim agrees – to police.
This is imperative work. The checklists reveal how much danger the woman is in, whether, basically, she’s likely to be murdered.
‘‘If we make a mistake, someone dies,’’ Herewini says. ‘‘If we’re having a bad day, someone can die.’’
When it comes to the danger of dying, it’s often not enough to make a woman leave. ‘‘It’s about who’s going to look after their kids.’’
‘‘They’re worried he’ll get them?’’ I ask.
‘‘No, they’re worried their
‘‘He’s going to kill me. How will you stop him from killing me?’’
A Te Whare Tiaki Wa¯ hine client
families will,’’ she replies.
Much later I ask Herewini if someone has ever died and she tells me ‘‘it was a long time ago’’ and then says no more.
Somewhere during one of the two inductions I sit through, I have to leave and do some crying of my own.
When I walk back in, Herewini nods at me then goes back to her questions.
Earlier that day, I had climbed into the refuge van and headed out to meet a woman the refuge was helping.
She’s been a regular at the service but now, she tells me, things have changed.
The team has organised a safe house of her own, her glass door has been changed to a solid one, stays have been put on the windows and she has a personal alarm.
A contractor is coming to create a safe room for her and her children so that when – if – her abuser comes for them, they have a safe space to run to.
Like most, her bathroom will become this place: its lack of windows makes it an obvious choice.
‘‘The refuge has changed my life. It’s like they put a big warm blanket around me.’’
I ask if she feels safe now with her new door and her safe room and her windows that can’t be fully opened.
‘‘Until they make windows that can stop a bullet, I won’t feel safe,’’ she has a broken smile, ‘‘but it’s better than before.’’
At first glance, the refuge’s safe house looks like any house. Sparkling clean – ‘‘it blimmin’ better be’’, Herewini says – only the window stays, security cameras and industrial locks give it away as anything other than a typical family home.
Today only one resident is home. There is nothing that can be written about her experience or background without potentially revealing her identity. ‘‘I was ready to give up until I met the aunties. Now I feel I can keep going.’’
Later that afternoon, back at the office, Herewini is cooking bacon.
Over the years, I’ve learned the one constant in these rundown offices is the food and while lunchtime might vary, the meal is always hot and hearty.
‘‘How are we meant to stop domestic violence?’’ I ask her.
‘‘How are we meant to stop human behaviour? Hands hurt just as much whether they’re holding a Gold Card or a Community Services Card.’’
When the bacon is cooked, the bread buttered and the table set, Herewini orders everyone to eat.
‘‘If I don’t make them stop and eat, they won’t. There’s no time for it so I have to make them.’’
Grace is said and Herewini sits down but before she can eat, another woman arrives.
This is the woman who is being hunted by the man who left bruises on her neck.
He doesn’t fear cops or jail, he has guns and money, and some of his most loyal friends are the family of the woman he has hurt so badly.
She weeps when she points to the umpteen unspeakable ways that he hurts her. How will they stop him from killing her? They will hide her.
Herewini is sending her to the safe house, do not go home, do not collect your things, tell nobody. She’ll be taken out the back door and he won’t see.
The woman asks whether the police need to know and is told it’s entirely up to her.
‘‘We don’t collude, we’ll be closed down before that happens.’’
As the women talk, I flee. It’s months later when I go back, I’ve stayed away because I can’t face Herewini, because I’ve failed her. We sit at the table and I tell her I can’t write the story, I don’t have the words.
‘‘Tell me,’’ she says, ‘‘tell me what’s made it so hard for you.’’
And I try. I try to tell her about tough women crying like little children, of their acceptance of me, of what their terror looked like, of the way their stories hurt me somewhere deep in my chest.
I try to tell her of their hopelessness and their bravery and the time my children and I hid in a bathroom of our own.
I tell her how stupid I feel, how I thought I knew everything and now, because I was wrong, I don’t know how to write the story.
And she smiles at me. ‘‘That’s how you write it. It’s your story now, so put yourself in it and tell all those others who think they know that they don’t know anything.’’
‘‘It’s not about me, though.’’ ‘‘Of course, it is, because you have to tell it.’’