'I was a shell of a human': Why family violence victims don't just leave

Thursday, 20 August 2020

Just one in three victims who completed the survey had used family violence services for support.

It’s the question always asked of domestic violence victims – why don’t you leave? But a new study shows that even when women try to escape their abusers, the support they need isn’t there. Kirsty Johnston reports.

By the time Stacey’s ex-partner punched her so hard he perforated her eardrum, it was automatic to lie to her doctor, to say she’d accidentally hit her head on the floor.

“I was scared, of course,” she says. “But my ex used to hit me and then an hour later tell me it never happened. And so I started to doubt my own version of reality. At that point I was a shell of a human. I didn’t even know who I was any more.”

Stacey didn’t leave her partner after the eardrum incident. She didn’t leave for a long time after that. She wanted to, many times, but it never lasted.

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“I went to Women’s Refuge, and they taught me about power and control. I talked to friends and family, the police came, Oranga Tamariki came, and no matter what they said I just couldn’t do it. I would get away from him, and start getting strong, and then he’d end up back in my life. Because I loved him.”

The tipping point only came after Stacey’s three children were put in foster care. She went to Family Court, to get them back, but the judge ruled against her, saying he thought she’d exaggerated her abuse. Bereft, she began to go to counselling, funded through the sensitive claims process for sexual violence victims – her ex-partner had also raped her – funded by ACC.

“That’s when I realised I had trauma issues from the violence, and attachment issues, and he was a gaslighting narcissist. It was like a lightbulb moment, that it wasn’t me. It wouldn’t help if I was prettier or skinnier or kept the house cleaner – it was him,” Stacey said.

Deborah Mackenzie of the Backbone Collective undertook the study for the Ministry of Social Development.

“And now I just think – instead of blaming women and taking children – why don’t they give you psychological therapy to help you stay away from the abuse?”

Stacey – which is not her real name – was one of 528 women who took part in new research about family violence in New Zealand, designed to find out what kind of support would help abuse survivors recover, get safe and rebuild their lives long-term.

Among its major findings were that 85 per cent of victims wanted better access to expert counselling – for them alone, not couples therapy with the abuser.

It also found the majority of victims didn’t turn to the state system for support, instead relying on friends and family – or simply their own survival skills – to get safe.

Just one in three had used specialist family violence services, and while some of that was due to access issues, others also said they had previously found state agencies – like police or Oranga Tamariki or welfare services – to be unsafe, difficult, or had made their situation worse.

For some women, even turning to friends and family instead of formal agencies for help posed too much of a risk. One in five survivors said they asked no one for help because they thought they would be blamed or disbelieved.

“Women shared that their own internalisation of victim blaming myths had stopped them being able to talk…or that the abuser’s manipulative tactics were used to discredit her and charm the people around them into thinking she was lying,” the report said.

“These women described feeling isolated, abandoned and being forced to fend for themselves.”

The study, undertaken by the Backbone Collective and commissioned by the Ministry of Social Development, mostly included cases of intimate partner violence. In 96 per cent of cases the abusers were male. Most of the victims had children. Half suffered abuse for 10 years or more.

Shine spokeswoman Holly Carrington said women would go to those they trusted.

The women told how getting free from domestic abuse was a long, dangerous and difficult process in which victims had very little access to resources, and often found they were powerless to stop the abuse even when the relationship ended.

Women said they spent years after separation living in fear – only feeling truly safe once they were able to move cities, or go into hiding, or their abuser died, or was jailed.

In many cases, women were forced into ongoing contact with the abuser by orders made in the Family Court, such as custody arrangements which prevented women from relocating.

Even when the abuse stopped, women said they struggled. Just five per cent said they had completely recovered from their experience with violence.

While some victims described positive experiences with state agencies, 57 per cent said they lacked understanding of family violence, and described poor responses from support workers – including being unable to offer help – as a significant barrier.

This was particularly acute for Māori women when faced with services who were not culturally appropriate.

Caroline Herewini takes us through the Women's Refuge safe house.

“Other negative experiences include that service providers did not understand risk, used victim blaming, did not believe victim-survivors, judged them, put them down, or that the service made their situation worse,” the report said.

“Participants don’t want to have to prove they have experienced violence and abuse in order to be able to access services…[they] indicated that they don’t want to have to tell their story over and over again.”

Holly Carrington, from specialist domestic violence agency Shine, said it made sense that women would seek help from those they knew the best first.

“We are often the last people come for help because we are an unknown,” she said. “And if you have one bad experience, it makes sense to assume other services might give the same response. For these women, trust is so important – they think ‘will this come back and bite me?’ or ‘will they tell my partner?’”

Carrington said outside specialist organisations there was a serious lack of understanding about domestic violence even from agencies who should have better awareness.

“We see it particularly around safety. They say ‘just leave’ when we know that leaving doesn’t make you safe, and sometimes makes you in more danger. You can’t over-simplify solutions.”

The study made 13 recommendations, including about what services should be provided in the future.

Those were based on the women’s responses. 85 per cent of the survivors said they wanted free, ongoing counselling, and 79 per cent wanted better advocacy – experts to help them explain the dynamics of family violence to other agencies like Oranga Tamariki and the Family Court.

They also wanted more help for their children, and help for the abuser. But that did not mean couples’ counselling or mediation, which only 22 per cent wanted.

Unsurprisingly, they wanted the abuser to be made accountable for the harm they had caused.

Merran Lawler, head of the National Network of Family Violence Services, said she felt the survey results again highlighted the need for better long-term support, not just a crisis response.

“We see women repeating patterns of ending up in abusive relationships – and that’s because the system is set up to attempt to rescue the victim while always imposing upon her the burden of keeping herself safe and then expecting she should intrinsically avoid patterns of behaviour,” she said.

“We need the ability for victims to access the long term-counsellor or psychologist who can help women see the road ahead and how to avoid getting into the situation ever again.”

Better yet, she said, would be a system that focused on minimising the risk by perpetrators.

“Most victims will say, I love him, just want the violence to stop. And what they need is a system that makes the violence stop,” she said.

Report author Deborah Mackenzie said it was “brave” of MSD to do the research, and she hoped it would prevent agencies compounding trauma in the future.

“This report shows that women have to navigate this whole system where no one understands, alone. They have to work so hard to get safe. They shouldn’t have to hold that burden as well as the burden of abuse,” Mackenzie said.

“Many of the issues the women talked about were structural issues - such as the way the court forces them into going contact. And we should be able to help them with that - just like we should be able to provide counselling.”

The Ministry of Social Development said it would use the information to “further develop services and support our clients in the best way possible”.

For Stacey, her hope now is that she can carry on with therapy and continue her fight to have access to her children.

“It was a miserable 10 years - it feels like 10 years of my life that I’ve lost,” she said.

“I feel I've been branded as this person that I'm not. I just wish people had the awareness that I have now. That I didn't ask him to be abusive to me, that I couldn’t leave. But until you’ve lived it you’ve got no idea how complex it is.”