Series 1 Jeremy Eparaima

Series 1 Episode 4
10 min

NARRATOR: New Zealand has the highest rate of domestic abuse per capita in the developed world.

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.

JEREMY EPARAIMA: I haven't seen this photo for a long, long time.

I look like quite a happy kid.

But I know I wasn't.

Brings back memories of that household.

I'm 54 years old now.

Up until my 40s, I was a perpetrator of domestic violence on multiple partners over the years.

A couple of children from one of those relationships were also dragged through the cycle.

I call it a bit of a curse that I've put on my family.

I would have protected my family with my life, my kids, from anybody else.

Never, ever did I think to myself, or look inwardly at myself, and think that maybe my family needed protection from me and my behaviour.

NARRATOR: To fully understand the dynamics of domestic abuse, it was crucial for Simonne to speak not only to victims, but also to a perpetrator.

SIMONNE: Kia ora Jeremy.

JEREMY: Kia ora Simonne. Pleased to meet you.

NARRATOR: So, with some trepidation, she visits Jeremy, a former abuser who now speaks openly about his past.

JEREMY: The thing about domestic violence is it starts with low-level stuff.

The verbal stuff.

It starts off once every two months, once a month, once every two weeks, once a week.

You know, once every second night.

Your family's walking around on eggshells.

My household got like that fairly quickly.

NARRATOR: In the beginning, Jeremy rationalised his behaviour.

JEREMY: The wankers were the guys that hit.

I would only raise my voice and stuff like that.

So I'm okay, as long as I'm not hitting anyone.

That slowly started to change.

I offended in all sorts of ways.

NARRATOR: But as he became more violent, he also became more adept at covering it up.

JEREMY: I've worked out that there was an element of calculation in everything that I was doing.

Hits around the legs and torso where it was going to be covered up.

My ex-wife never ever went to work with a fat lip or a black eye.

I had visits from Police over the years, family members, all this sort of stuff, but I have no convictions or anything like that.

So there were no consequences for my behaviour.

The thing is, the longer you're in this world, the better you get at it.

You know exactly what to say to hurt the most.

You know exactly what to do.

You know how far to push before that phone call to the Police gets made.

NARRATOR: As his abuse escalated, Jeremy managed to hide it from his colleagues and even those closest to him.

ALINIA: I've seen him from the time I was eight, growing up together, and I never knew that's what happened behind closed doors with Jeremy.

I had no idea.

NARRATOR: Alinia is now Jeremy's partner.

They got together a few years after he began to change.

SIMONNE: Have you ever seen signs of the old Jeremy in your relationship?

ALINIA: For sure.

When it first happened, not long after I first moved in here, like I was saying, that's eight years ago, and not long after Jeremy started on his journey.

There would be instances where he'd fire up over small things.

At first, I'm like, "What the fuck?"

I remember sitting on the floor right here one day in front of him and just saying, "Stop being so mean."

Because he would go into that survival mode, head pinging, "Fuck, fuck!"

And he'd have to go for a walk and calm himself down.

NARRATOR: Instead of lashing out, Jeremy's now learned to control his anger.

But in the past, it was anger that controlled him.

JEREMY: By 45, I was pretty resigned to the fact that I was going to be a lonely old drunk.

That I can't change.

This is me.

You just take me the way I am.

If you can't handle the heat of my kitchen, then piss off.

And they kept pissing off.

You know?

NARRATOR: But by chance, Jeremy went along to support a friend at an anger management course.

While there, he realised that it wasn't just his friend who desperately needed help.

JEREMY: When you're in this world, you live in a world of minimisation and denial.

Part of my minimisation was that I wasn't as bad as this guy.

NARRATOR: But doing the course turned his view of himself on its head.

JEREMY: It made me realise that what I was doing was fairly far removed from normal.

I did the course for 20 weeks.

Then I did another 20 weeks because it was particularly around the psychological abuse.

I slowly started to realise that pretty much everything I thought it was to be a man, a father and a partner was bullshit.

It was lies.

[birdsong]

SIMONNE: Do you really know where that anger came from that you directed at your partners?

JEREMY: I started getting turned as a kid.

I was subjected to a lot of verbal and physical abuse right up until I was a teenager.

To get away from that environment, I went to boarding school.

There was a particular incident at boarding school of a sexual nature that wasn't dealt with.

From then was where I lost trust in adults.

It's not what happens to you on the outside.

It's what it does to you on the inside.

Like I said, I didn't know what isolation was.

I didn't know what rejection was.

All that type of stuff slowly builds up and builds up.

It normally manifests itself in violence.

I left that place pretty mixed up.

Angry.

Revengeful.

With my beliefs and value systems well instilled in me that if you want to get anything in life, you yell and scream to start off with.

And if that doesn't work, then use your fists.

NARRATOR: These days, Jeremy gives public talks to at-risk men, using his past as a cautionary tale.

JEREMY: Every domestic violence incident has the chance that it could turn into a homicide.

Just with one push too hard.

One punch too hard one night.

It's only through good luck, and certainly not good management by me, that I didn't ever add to those statistics.

NARRATOR: What was it that saved Jeremy from descending down that path?

It was a flash of self-awareness he had while attending the anger management course.

JEREMY: We were asked to do a roleplay.

It was an abusive partner role.

I dropped into that role so very easily because that's the person I'd been for a long time.

The person I was roleplaying with was a female facilitator.

Quite an old lady.

I was yelling and screaming at her.

I made her make eye contact with me by touching her chin.

She said, "Stop. You're scaring me."

Then I could see tears in her eyes.

Something clicked in my head.

Over the years, my kids, when I was yelling and screaming at them and standing over them and all that, they'd go every once in a while:

"Dad, stop. You're scaring me."

And I'd be like:

"Don't be so stupid. I've never hurt you."

I looked at this woman and something just flooded over me.

I did something that I hadn't done since I was a kid.

I just burst into tears.

And I couldn't stop.

She sat down with me and then asked me a question that no one had ever asked me in my life.

Not the Police over the years.

Not my mates.

Not the few who knew what I was up to.

Nobody had ever asked me.

She said:

"What makes you tick, Jeremy?"

"Why are you so angry all the time?"

"Just tell me your story."

So I sat there and told her about my childhood and what I'd been doing.

Right up through boarding school and everything.

She didn't interrupt me.

She didn't butt in.

She just listened.

At the end of it, all she said was:

"Well, now we've got something to work with, eh?"

Description

In the field of domestic abuse Jeremy Eparaima is doing a lot of good these days. That’s directly because he used to do a lot of harm. He’s a reformed former perpetrator of violence against those he loved. Having successfully made radical changes to his own life and behaviours, changes he would never have believed possible, he’s now working hard to help other men realise they too can change.

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Details & Info

Parental Guidance Recommended for Younger Viewers.