Series 2 Jude Simpson
- Series 2 Episode 1
- 12 min
Abuse needs silence to thrive.
In this series, Simonne Butler, herself a survivor of a vicious attack by her ex partner, meets those brave enough to break their silence.
NARRATOR: This is Jude. Acting out a scene is part of her job with the Royal New Zealand Police College where she is the Family Harm Advisor and Trainer.
[Woman screaming] [Man yelling]
[Man yells]
Her training programme is designed to encourage understanding and empathy for those who work on the frontline of domestic abuse.
JUDE: If somebody had told me that I'd be doing the job I am now, and the influence that I'm having, it would have just been the most... it would have been laughable.
[Man yelling] "Look at me! Look at me!"
JUDE: I was asked to design and develop a training curriculum and programme for the recruits. That came about because there was this wonderful attitudinal change within the Police around our focus towards victims and family harm.
NARRATOR: On average, New Zealand Police attend a family violence incident every five and a half minutes.
JUDE: The wonderful thing was that the Police brought in a new core value, which was empathy. That never used to be one of our core values, but it is now, which is a wonderful core value to have.
So, I've built this whole training package around empathy and education.
Empathy is so important. Empathy. What is it though? Let's have a look.
NARRATOR: At a refresher presentation for those who attend family harm incidences, Jude shares her own very traumatic life story.
JUDE: So, I was born in Taranaki, born to a white middle upper-class family.
There is a myth alive and well in this country that says what? What is the myth that that contradicts?
Family harm only happens in poor, uneducated Pasifika/Māori families, if you want to get right down to the specifics.
That's absolute bollocks.
Look, one in four victims has a university degree.
NARRATOR: For Jude, the Police had once been the enemy. In her former life, she'd been going out with a gang member.
JUDE: When I was in the gang, we never called the Police.
SIMONNE: No, I couldn't bring the Police to the house.
JUDE: Society just weren't even... didn't even want to talk about family harm.
Even when I was a child, the neighbours could hear. Well, they could not not have heard me screaming.
NARRATOR: Jude started life in Taranaki where her dad owned a grocer's shop, but even before she was born, her mother resented her presence.
JUDE: She hated this thing growing inside of her.
When I was born, she handed me to my father and wanted nothing to do with me. End of.
So I knew rejection pre-birth, from the time I was born.
The wonderful thing and the saving grace that I got was that I got a father who did want me.
So my mother and my siblings were over here, me and Dad were here.
But you know what? I'm okay.
NARRATOR: When Jude was eight, her mother met someone else and left. Jude and her father moved to Napier.
JUDE: When Mum left, it changed things because the dynamics and everything changed. But not enough to distress me because I had my dad.
As long as I had my dad there, I was okay because he was my rock.
SIMONNE: And then your father got involved with another woman, who became your stepmother.
JUDE: He did.
We had this woman who was working in our shop, and she slowly became involved with my father.
SIMONNE: What was she like?
JUDE: She used to do horrific things to us. Like, she used to spit in my food and make me eat it.
My self-esteem took such a battering that I ended up believing all the words that had been spoken over me.
The power of the word.
She would tell me how fat I was, how ugly I was, how dumb I was, and then she'd throw that card at me: unlovable.
Because all mothers should love their babies. Your mother couldn't stand you. You should have died at birth.
All of this sort of stuff.
I started believing it. I started being it. Started walking it.
That's the power of verbal abuse. It can squash you.
I walked past her and ended up in a wall.
I thought I'd just got in her way, bumped into her.
I will never forget when I realised that I never bumped into her at all. She's now physically coming for me.
Now, what do you do with that as an eight or nine-year-old child? There's nowhere to go.
So you are in your home, which is supposed to be your safest place on earth, and you're in there with a predator, a monster, who can physically put their hands on you to cause harm anytime they choose.
By the time I was 14, she had convinced my father to send me back to my mother, which is what she wanted the whole way through.
She wanted my father to herself.
So I went back to my mum, but that was really hard because I never wanted to leave my dad.
Dad was the only person in the world that I felt safe with. He gave me my sense of belonging.
I have to say, in all fairness to my mother, that she provided very well for me.
We had a nice home. I went to a good school. So materially, she provided very well for me.
But you know what? That meant absolutely nothing.
What was missing? A connection.
So I go out onto the streets and I become promiscuous, and I start sleeping with boys, and I interpret sex for love because boys were nice to get what they wanted.
So that made me feel special.
The act of sex, being held... that's love, isn't it?
NARRATOR: It wasn't long before Jude became pregnant. Family pressure forced her to get married.
JUDE: A good old shotgun wedding, what we used to call it.
Society was starting to come around to a different way of thinking, but generally you didn't have babies unless you were married.
And if you did, that made you a certain type of person.
Put my age on there as well.
NARRATOR: It was not a marriage of love.
Jude was sixteen, four months pregnant, and married to an abusive partner.
Then tragedy struck. Her father was killed in a motorbike accident.
JUDE: I had this one man.
And now he's gone.
So, who have I got now?
Four months after he was killed, my mother died of cancer, and it all just got too much for me.
So I ended up taking my baby and I left my husband.
I started getting heavily involved in drugs and alcohol.
I started using every day. Every day.
Just so I could breathe a little bit easier. Just for a bit, you know.
What I've decided to do is what will help me in this world, make me feel better.
I'll find someone to replace my dad.
That's seventeen-year-old logic, isn't it? It's perfect.
But remember, I'm going to look for a partner, and I've got this belief system.
I'm trash. I'm fat. I'm ugly. I'm dumb.
I'm all those things. I believed that 100%.
So, when you walk with a belief like that, a gang member was perfect for me.
SIMONNE: What was that like?
JUDE: His beatings were really, really vicious.
I just got to a point where I hated him.
SIMONNE: But you were trapped.
JUDE: But how do you leave? And where do you go?
It is a world full of violence. It's a world full of crime.
We had weapons hidden in panels of the walls.
We had weapons hidden under floorboards.
We had drugs stashed everywhere.
We used to sleep with a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun in our bed.
It wasn't long before this partner ended up having me breathing the same air of terror that my previous partner and my stepmother had me breathing.
He took me into the world of sexual violence.
Can you have consensual sex one night, but be raped the following night by the same partner that you're living with?
We don't talk about sexual violence enough in the context of family harm.
It's just a whole other level of degradation and violation when you're sexually abused.
And it was really a message.
He was saying to me, after he'd beaten me physically, then he would rape me.
It was just letting me know that there are no parts of your body, your mind...
SIMONNE: ...that he doesn't own.
JUDE: That he doesn't own. He owns them all.
Can I just leave?
No.
No.
Where to?
I'm a gang girl.
I'm branded. I'm labelled.
I ended up getting pregnant to him.
And here's the horrible thing.
I don't want it.
[sighs deeply]
I've had a lot of stuff that I've had to work through as I've got out of this world.
And this is one of the hard things I've had to work through because how could I not want my child?
But I didn't.
NARRATOR: The abuse continued after the birth of their son. It reached a point where Jude knew she had to get away or be killed.
JUDE: He just about slit my throat.
My son was about nine months old by this stage.
I knew I was pretty close to death.
So I ran away.
NARRATOR: But with the real danger of being found on the street by rivals, Jude returned to the house, only to find the entire gang had gathered in her living room.
JUDE: The president of the gang got up and said to me, "You want to leave? You can go."
But there was a condition.
I couldn't take my son.
What do I do?
[audience member responds]
JUDE: No, I left.
What sort of mother would leave a nine-month-old child?
A bad mother.
My stepmother's voice is just loud in my ear.
I am absolutely a piece of friggin' scum.
Because what sort of woman would do that?
[Audience member] "A broken one."
JUDE: A broken one.
Thank you for that, but not many people would have seen me as that.
They would have seen a gang girl who walked out on her baby.
NARRATOR: Though Jude managed to get away from the gang, there were other abusive partners. And it would be many years before she managed to break the cycle.
She eventually shifted to Tauranga, and it was here, on a course, that she met someone who listened to her story.
JUDE: She looked past the bitterness and the ugliness and darkness that I carried with me.
And she knew that bitterness, and that ugliness and darkness, had come from somewhere.
She looked beyond that, and she helped me change my life.
But do you think it was an easy transition from that to this?
It took a long time.
You know what? I wanted better.
And I got there.
So change is possible, because you've seen it.
And I'm no better than anybody else, but I'm no less than anybody else either.
And if I can do this, others can do it as well.
[Audience member] "We needed that reminder."
[Audience member] "I'm not going to lie, there are so many victims out there who obviously don't want help at that point, where you front up, and it can be so frustrating."
JUDE: I can imagine.
[Audience member] "But this is a perfect reminder, so thank you."
PG
Description
On average, New Zealand police attend a family violence incident every 5.5 minutes.Jude works at the Royal New Zealand Police College.
The training program she implements is designed to encourage understanding and empathy for those who will work on the front line of family harm.
As part of Jude's training, she shares her own very traumatic life story.
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Series 2
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'Tina' (not her real name) was stalked by her ex-husband for more than 3 years. She shares her story in support of law change.
'Tina' (not her real name) was stalked by her ex-husband for more than 3 years. She shares her story in support of law change.
Details & Info
PG
Parental Guidance Recommended for Younger Viewers.