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Download AudioDomestic violence has reached epidemic levels with Women’s Refuge receiving an average of 71 crisis calls a day.
Chief executive Ang Jury says Māori women and children made up half of the 52,000 referrals received last year – and that could be the tip of the iceberg.
She says domestic violence doesn’t discriminate according to ethnicity but Maori have horrific rates of victimisation and are more disadvantaged than many tau iwi families in terms of places to live, kai to eat and the ability to have a dignified positin in the world.
“There are an awful lot of people working really hard to try to help people but getting those sorts of things under control and having people able to get a decent job and to feed their whanau and able to have a house, to put a roof over their whanau’s head, those aren’t the conditions that are going to make it easy unless we get those things fixed,” Dr Jury says.
She says there isn’t a quick fix, but the answer lies in talking to children not about domestic violence but about Maori values like empathy and kindness.
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