Series 1 David White
- Series 1 Episode 2
- 10 min
Abuse needs silence to thrive.
In this series, Simonne Butler, herself the survivor of a vicious attack that nearly took her life, meets those brave enough to break their silence.
These are their stories.
DAVID WHITE [speaking into a microphone]: So where did all of this start?
In about 2000, our daughter Helen rang me up and said, "I'm in trouble, Dad."
[Voice breaking with emotion]
And I knew she was.
Because Helen never called me Dad, and when she called me Dad, I knew the chips were well and truly down.
NARRATOR: David White's daughter Helen was murdered 10 years ago by her husband.
David now speaks publicly about it, but his pain never diminishes.
David speaks at marches and police stations, wherever he thinks he'll make a difference.
Even though it hurts every time.
DAVID: That line represents the second that Greg put the shotgun to Helen's throat and pulled the trigger.
Ten years down the track, there's this gap here.
And I'll never get back to what I was the day she was murdered because too much of me died with Helen.
I've had to do a hell of a lot, and the biggest thing for me was moving from the emotion of having my daughter murdered to trying to do something with it.
Helen wouldn't let me rest if I did nothing.
She's with me all the time because I'm not strong enough to do it on my own.
NARRATOR: On 23 September 2009, Greg Meads, a multi-millionaire horse breeder, shot his wife Helen after she said she was leaving.
DAVID: The sad and silly thing was that Pam and I didn't understand what family violence was.
We'd been in a loving relationship.
Our parents had no problems.
Never once, in all the years we were talking about this, did it occur to us that his behaviours were absolute indicators of control and abuse in a family violence situation.
Monitoring where Helen was.
"Going shopping? Who were you talking to?"
It's even checking the speedo on the car.
It's looking at the phone when your back's turned to see what messages you've got.
So many little things until it gets bigger and bigger, more confrontational.
To the point where Greg strangled Helen.
NARRATOR: This happened a full year before he murdered her.
If someone tries to strangle you, you're seven times more likely to be killed by that person later on.
Police make five strangulation arrests nationwide every single day, and those are just the arrests that are reported.
Shockingly, 80% of domestic violence incidents aren't.
DAVID: The Police talk about 20 percent of it.
My world is the other 80 percent.
They're the people that come to me for help.
They're the people that I work with, and the families I work with.
NARRATOR: And that's why David is here today sharing his insights on unreported domestic abuse with the Police.
DAVID: Really and truly, I want you to understand a really critical point.
Family violence, family harm, is not a Māori, low socio-economic problem.
It is all our problem.
Nobody escapes.
Greg was a multi-millionaire worth over 20 million dollars and he still shot his wife.
NARRATOR: From police stations to marches, David is committed to engaging with everyone.
MAN: Hi David, good to see you, man.
DAVID: Kia ora mate, kia ora. Thanks for coming along.
SIMONNE: How do you feel about the gangs turning up to support this?
DAVID: I think it's an indication of the level of the message we're getting across.
If we can't welcome them in and get things to work, why the hell are we bothering?
The last five events they've been along to, wearing mufti.
They never wear patches.
They come along.
We need to get men to stop being silent.
CROWD [chanting]: No way! It's not okay!
NARRATOR: David is a long-time campaigner for White Ribbon, a men's initiative to prevent violence against women.
To achieve that, he's realised that the real challenge is addressing the root causes of abuse.
DAVID: At some point in our lives, we have to stop pulling people out of the river.
We have to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.
We have to stop it happening.
NARRATOR: And there are some initiatives in place that give hope.
One of them is run by the Police.
Safety Assessment Meetings, or SAM tables, are a holistic response to domestic violence incidents.
DAVID: An incident goes before a group the next day.
Critical people that need to be there are Oranga Tamariki, WINZ, ACC, Health and DHBs.
People who are involved with that family in some other form.
They share information about the family involved.
It's not just perpetrator and victim.
It is everybody within that house.
It sometimes means that there is no prosecution because a solution can be found that unites and keeps a family together.
Because we're too bloody good in this country at splitting families up and taking children out.
We need to build families back together again.
The repeat offending after people have gone through the SAM process, of being on that table and having that accumulated knowledge and help directed toward the family, has dropped through the floor.
NARRATOR: But stopping offending before it even starts is the ultimate goal.
David's seen what that looks like, and he thinks it's a model for the rest of the country.
Three small towns near Ruapehu banded together to conduct a pioneering social experiment.
DAVID: They did something really clever.
Instead of saying, "We're going to stop family violence in this town," they did it backwards.
They went out and asked people, "What would change your lives in this town?"
They came up with 23 initiatives that they could solve.
Things that would directly affect what the people in town said mattered to them.
NARRATOR: Launched in 2013, the Ruapehu Whānau Transformation Plan laid out a blueprint for healthy and successful communities, targeting housing, employment, health, education and social issues.
DAVID: The first target was education.
The school was failing because Level 2 had only a 50 percent pass rate.
The headmaster said the first problem was that parents didn't understand NCEA.
They didn't understand what was available.
What they did to help the parents understand was hold pub quiz nights.
The subject was NCEA.
Everybody goes down to the pub and has a beer, but then you sit down and start answering the questions.
The parents finally started understanding what their kids could do at school.
Their pass rate has gone from 50 percent to 92.9 percent.
They achieved all 23 targets in a five-year timeframe.
Not a single one of those 23 targets was directed at family violence.
Yet at the end of the five years, family violence had dropped by 50 percent.
It halved.
NARRATOR: It will take decades until the rest of the country catches up to the Ruapehu Whānau Transformation model.
But for now, David continues his work.
DAVID: I was in a prison talking to some guys.
There was one guy who said straight out:
"Look, I'm going home. I'll be out of here in a few months. But I used to hit my girls.
How do I go into my house and what am I going to say to my four girls so they understand that I'm safe?
That I'm not going to hit them or be like I used to be?"
So I put my arms around him and hugged him.
I said, "Don't say anything when you go home.
Go in and give your wife a hug.
Then hug each of your girls and hold them until they hug you back.
Then tell them that you love them."
Then he started hugging me.
When he let me go, he'd been crying down my cheek.
I said to him, "Are you okay?"
And he said,
"Fuck no, man.
I'm 37 years old, and that's the first time I've been hugged in my life."
What are we doing to our kids?
That we don't hug our sons?
I said, "Will you be all right? Give me a call or something."
He said, "I'll be all right. I'll be right."
That Christmas we got a Christmas card signed by four girls.
It just said:
"Thank you for giving us back our dad."
PG
Description
In 2009 David White’s daughter, Helen, was shot dead by her husband Greg Meads. That murder became national news, largely, David believes, because Greg is a wealthy man. David has since become a staunch campaigner, fighting to end domestic abuse. He travels around New Zealand to spread his message of understanding and forgiveness.Up Next
Series 1
Episode 3
Diamonds in the Ring
Can boxing help domestic abuse survivors regain their self respect? Daniella Smith, a former world champion boxer, believes so. She runs Diamonds in the Ring, a boxing gym for women. And, many of the women who train there are former clients of women’s refuges.
Shonie is one of them. She survived horrific abuse at the hands of her former partner, who was jailed for his abuse. We follow her as she trains to fight in one of Diamonds in the Ring’s charity boxing matches. It’s the second time she’s doing it.
Shonie is one of them. She survived horrific abuse at the hands of her former partner, who was jailed for his abuse. We follow her as she trains to fight in one of Diamonds in the Ring’s charity boxing matches. It’s the second time she’s doing it.
Details & Info
PG
Parental Guidance Recommended for Younger Viewers.