Series 1 Shakti

Series 1 Episode 5
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.

NARRATOR: While making this series, Simonne has discovered that abuse comes in many forms, and it affects people from all backgrounds.

Today she meets Farida Sultana.

FARIDA SULTANA: She took her last breath here.

He probably knew exactly where he wanted to stab her so that she wouldn't survive.

He didn't want her to leave. He wanted to finish her off.

NARRATOR: Farida and her colleagues are here today honouring the memory of a woman they'd worked hard to protect from harm.

FARIDA: I am very, very angry that it happened in broad daylight.

NARRATOR: They work for Shakti, an organisation which helps abused women from ethnic communities.

The woman who was killed was one of their clients.

For legal reasons, we can't share her real name, but we'll call her Angel, the name given to her by a good Samaritan who tried to save her life.

Angel was the second woman from the Chinese community to be killed by her partner within the last year.

FARIDA: We focused for the last 25 years on keeping women safe in the house.

Now it has extended. We have to make sure they're safe even on the street.

NARRATOR: Angel was waiting for a bus early one morning last year when she was attacked and stabbed to death.

Her ex-husband has been charged with that crime.

FARIDA: Every time we lose a woman it's hard. It's very hard.

And losing one of ours is harder.

[somber music]

SIMONNE: What does Shakti do that some of the other organisations don't?

FARIDA: Shakti focuses on immigrant and refugee women from Asia, Africa, and Middle Eastern countries.

Many of them do not understand what sort of support systems are out there. There are language barriers.

There are many issues like forced marriage, arranged marriage, dowry abuse, and FGM.

NARRATOR: FGM stands for Female Genital Mutilation.

[crowd chanting]

Shakti campaigns publicly to raise awareness of these issues.

Farida launched Shakti here in New Zealand over 25 years ago after having lived in the UK.

SIMONNE: Can you tell me a little bit about why you set up Shakti and how it all came together?

FARIDA: When I went through my own struggle with domestic violence, I went to Shakti UK.

I realised the assistance that I got, the support that I got, and that women need that kind of support to survive and come out of domestic violence.

NARRATOR: That experience later inspired her to start Shakti locally.

FARIDA: When I came to New Zealand, I didn't think of working in this area.

But I started volunteering with the local Refuge, and I didn't see any immigrant women coming through their refuge.

NARRATOR: One of the reasons for this is that less obvious forms of abuse are often ignored.

FARIDA: People will laugh if you say that I'm leaving my partner or husband because he's psychologically or emotionally abusive to me.

Yes, if you've got bruises or broken ribs or broken bones, then they will think, "Oh, that's really seriously bad. You should leave."

NARRATOR: So bad that Shakti's helpline fields more than 10,000 calls a year.

ADVOCATE [on phone]: Hello, I'm from Shakti. Can I speak to you now?

How are you going today?

NARRATOR: New Zealand's Asian population has grown dramatically in recent years and now numbers over 700,000 people.

But when things go wrong, women migrants can end up entirely isolated in their new country.

FARIDA: If you really look at migration trends, women come with their husbands.

In most cases, women don't have anyone else from their own surroundings or close family members.

They depend a lot on their cultural community where they speak the same language, or are from the same countries, or the same religious background.

When, because of domestic violence, you leave, they judge you and they put pressure on you.

They organise a community meeting to facilitate you going back to your husband.

The very husband that you had just obtained a permanent Protection Order against.

[somber music]

NARRATOR: But in Angel's case, even a Protection Order couldn't save her.

FARIDA: Legal protection, Police, none of these worked in this case.

NARRATOR: Angel was the second Chinese woman to be murdered in New Zealand in a domestic incident within the space of a year.

In December 2018, 34-year-old Xi Wang was stabbed to death by her former partner while she cradled their toddler in her arms.

That's why Shakti is planning a campaign to address domestic abuse in the Chinese community.

FARIDA: Jenny, how do we go about translating this into Mandarin and Cantonese?

We lost a number of women in the Chinese community last year.

JENNY: It could be difficult because the Chinese culture is different.

[group hums in agreement]

People don't want to talk about domestic violence at home.

NARRATOR: And even worse, entire communities can turn on a victim.

Shih-Ling experienced this firsthand when she left an unhappy marriage many years ago.

Now she's a Shakti counsellor.

SHIH-LING: I don't feel safe, so I leave my own community.

NARRATOR: For Shih-Ling, leaving everything she knew after migrating to a country she didn't know at all was deeply painful.

SIMONNE: How did that feel, to have to leave your own community?

SHIH-LING: I left the community because I was blamed.

There was lots of gossip.

I felt isolated.

FARIDA: Can you imagine the isolation?

If they were fluent in English, they could at least communicate with everyone else.

Who do you communicate with? Only with your children?

That's really hard.

I think a lot of people don't realise how difficult this process is.

SHIH-LING: If the woman suffers violence in the community...

SIMONNE: They won't accept her?

SHIH-LING: No.

SIMONNE: Do they blame her?

SHIH-LING: Yep.

NARRATOR: Simonne also knows a thing or two about blame.

It's one of the reasons she wrote a book, to reclaim her own story.

She's brought a copy of it to give to Shih-Ling today.

SIMONNE: We tried to write it really simply so it could almost be used as a textbook for people on the frontline.

That was a Christmas when I was still living in abuse.

Just trying to pretend that my life was okay when it wasn't.

Yeah, that's them trying to put me back together. That's the inside of my arm.

SHIH-LING: Back to order? Oh my goodness.

SIMONNE: Yeah.

I put my hands up to protect my head, and then there are some more photos later on of surgeries and things like that.

It was a long road, but I had amazing support.

[upbeat music]

NARRATOR: And that's what Shakti does.

It provides amazing support to migrant women, helping them move on and join new communities.

FARIDA: What is community?

Community is a group of people who love and care for you, who are there in good or bad times.

If your traditional community is going to cause further pain and agony for you, then you just need to move on and find people.

They might not be traditionally from your culture or your language background, but they might be the people who will not judge you and who will support you.

I saw Middle Eastern women making friends with Chinese women.

They are taking care of each other's children.

Or a Korean woman being part of an Indian woman's life.

Or a Māori woman who supports immigrant women.

SHIH-LING: I am absolutely grateful to Shakti.

I don't know where I would have been with my daughter without Shakti.

What kind of life I would have led.

Description

Farida Sultana immigrated to New Zealand from Bangladesh in the early 1990’s. Several years earlier she had experienced domestic abuse while living in the UK. She left her relationship and received help from Shakti, a women’s aid service for immigrant and refugee women. After arriving in New Zealand, and realising that immigrant women from Asia, the Middle East and Africa were not getting the support they needed, she founded Shakti New Zealand in 1995.

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Breaking Silence | Season 1 | Episode 6: Financial Abuse | RNZ

10:34

Sarah (not her real name) used to be a high functioning, well paid professional. When she thought of domestic abuse she pictured scenes from the movie Once Were Warriors.
But, what she didn’t realise is that she was slowly becoming subject to extreme financial and psychological abuse by her partner. After taking a break from her career to have children, her partner began withholding access to money. Over the course of several years, things went from bad to worse. Eventually, after briefly becoming homeless, Sarah fled to a women’s refuge with her children. Three years later she’s now in housing living on a benefit and rebuilding her life.

Details & Info

Parental Guidance Recommended for Younger Viewers.