ERIN JUDGE Rebel with a cause

Words: Tommy Livingston Image: Robert Kitchin

While she slept, Erin Judge was chased by witches. At night, the shadowy creatures crept into her dreams, and ran after her until she found a trusted adult.

But just when she thought she was out of harm’s way, the adult would turn into a witch and chase her again. Judge felt unsafe in her sleep perhaps because she wasn’t safe when she woke up.

Born and raised in Hawke’s Bay, she grew up in an environment in which gangs, drugs and alcohol were part of the tapestry of everyday life.

‘‘I think my destiny was to have a lot of children to a lot of different men, have some kind of addiction issue and muddle my way through life – until it ended.’’

Judge fought hard to take a radically different path. Now, at 37, she leads a team of 100 lawyers at Oranga Tamariki, who are tasked with protecting our most vulnerable children.

At night, Judge is no longer haunted by witches – instead, it’s the plight of 6400 children in state care.

She wants to help each of them. But Judge knows how hard it is to escape a nightmare. ‘‘I know where I should have ended up. And I know it is not here.’’

‘You don’t belong here’

Before she even left primary school, Judge believed she was worthless. Some adults in her life told her so. ‘‘If you speak badly to a child, they don’t hate you – they hate themselves. That is true. I loved my parents throughout my childhood, but I hated myself.’’

Feeling unloved and unsafe, Judge struggled with self-worth.

A little bit of light broke through the darkness when her five younger siblings arrived. When her brother was born, Judge remembers thinking: ‘‘I have got someone to love me back now.’’

For as long as she can remember, the family dynamic meant she had to help raise her brothers and sisters. At 16, it all became too much. Judge decided to run away from home, leaving behind the siblings.

That created a mountain of guilt which, even two decades later, casts a long shadow across her life.

For a few nights she was homeless, until a friend offered a garage for her to sleep in. Judge made it a temporary home for a few weeks until she was told to move on.

She moved in with another friend, and despite having no place to call her own, kept going to school and finished her final year at Havelock North High. She even held down a part-time job, earning just enough to pay for textbooks and board.

At 17, she left for Wellington to fulfill her dream of becoming a lawyer.

‘‘I always had a real sense of justice. I would get quite obsessed about things which were unfair, especially if people were disadvantaged or hurt.

‘‘Becoming a lawyer was a combination of being rebellious and also being able to fight the good fight.’’

Of those who went to law school at the same time as Judge, very few have any memory of her. That’s because she was hardly ever in class.

She worked fulltime selling cheap suits to pay for her rent, and spent the rest of her time catching up on course work. ‘‘I was in this [university] with all these posh people whose dads were judges, and brothers were judges. And I kind of got the ‘stink eye’ every day from people who were like, ‘I don’t know who you are, but you certainly don’t belong here’.’’

While some students had mentors high up in the legal world, Judge didn’t know any lawyers – even at the end of her degree.

To be admitted to the bar, she needed the support of a lawyer. She asked a friend of a friend . . . of a friend . . . to admit her.

The presiding justice told Judge that, as far as he knew, she was the youngest person to become a lawyer in New Zealand, at the age of 22.

‘Social workers have it harder’

Judge’s office on The Terrace in Wellington couldn’t be further from the Hawke’s Bay streets she once walked. The memories of that time, however, are never far from her mind.

That’s because of the confronting cases that come across her desk every day. Judge sees the very worst of the worst – files about children who will bear the scars of trauma for the rest of their lives. Then there are those who died before they had the chance to grow up.

A former police prosecutor, Judge is used to witnessing the darker side of life. In her police role, she was tasked with making complex and heartrending decisions – like whether a parent should be criminally charged for running over their own child.

Back then, she thought the toughest job in the world was being a cop. She has since changed her mind. ‘‘Social workers have it harder.’’

This year, Oranga Tamariki has been criticised for its practice of removing children from their parents. But despite the flurry of protests and negative publicity, Judge is sure she is in the right workplace.

‘‘The majority of the public don’t respect [social workers]. They don’t get the accolades teachers or nurses get.

‘‘The social workers I know are salt-of-the-earth

‘‘I always had a real sense of justice. I would get quite obsessed about things which were unfair, especially if people were disadvantaged or hurt.’’

people and do not want to take children unless they can’t see another way through.’’

At its core, Judge’s job is about keeping children safe within their own families. The challenge is to do that within the law, while ensuring the child is better off – not just right now, but in the long term.

‘‘There are decisions you can make to keep a child safe this afternoon, but how is that going to play out in 10 years’ time?’’

She is reticent when asked about the recent controversy over removing babies at birth. Judge says she is limited in what she can say, because multiple reviews are under way. But she accepts that Oranga Tamariki has more work to do.

‘‘There is no plan B for this work. The only thing we can do is strengthen wha¯ nau. Otherwise we are going to end up with more generations of brokenness and hurt.’’

Judge knows that hurt. Her childhood experiences still cut deep. And despite becoming a successful lawyer, she has never quite recovered from being told she was worthless as a child.

Hers is a very different story to those of other civil servants she now sits around the table with. Judge brings a unique perspective to those top-level conversations, and uses her own life experiences to provide a reality check when it’s needed.

In each case, she wants to put the child first. ‘‘I have empathy and understanding for what is going on for their wha¯ nau, and understanding of addiction and mental health troubles. I genuinely feel I can be part of the solution.’’

That solution, she says, requires communities to work together, and support the work of Oranga Tamariki.

Judge is adamant that no government agency could have single-handedly helped her when she was young. But she believes her childhood would have been different had her family had more support.

That’s what Oranga Tamariki claims it wants to do – intervene earlier in families that are struggling, and provide more resources for parents. But Judge say the agency’s transformation will take time.

‘‘What we are trying to do here is to rebuild the plane while we are flying it. We need to radically transform everything we are doing while still operating. That is challenging. There are 6400 children on board. Throwing stones at the plane is not helping anyone.’’

Finding her place

When Judge comes home from work, her own three children are ready for bed. As they sleep, she knows they aren’t being chased by witches.

She is proud to have started a family, and wants to give hers the opportunities she never had as a child.

Despite leaving home at 16, she never stopped caring for her younger siblings, either. Two of them have moved in with her family. She is in close contact with the others.

More recently she is discovering the missing pieces of her life story. Earlier this year, Judge, whose iwi is Ngati Tuwharetoa, learnt her hapu is Ngati Tutemohuta.

It was a daunting but exciting step, because Te Ao Maori was not part of her upbringing. She believes her childhood would have been different had her family been connected to their iwi.

‘‘It would have really made a difference if our hapu had known who we were and that we needed support.

‘‘There is something quite hard about not knowing your whakapapa. Knowing my iwi now means a lot to me.’’

Earlier this year, while she was on a marae visit, an elderly Maori man told her he could see the spirit of a woman standing behind her.

It was, he said, her great-great-grandmother, Te Paea Kiriwera. The man said Kiriwera wanted to tell Judge she was proud of her, and to keep going.

Judge later learned Kiriwera lost her life after being trapped in a house fire. At first, she fled the flames. But after realising her moko was still in the house, Kiriwera went back in to save him.

The two perished side by side.

‘‘I take a lot of strength from the fact that she lost her life while trying to keep a child safe,’’ says Judge. ‘‘I want to spend my life trying to keep as many children as safe as possible.’’