Nothing should be safer than home and family. But for an alarming number of New Zealanders that's where the violence begins. DIANA MCCURDY reports


The trail of defendants through the dock in Waitakere District Court on Wednesday makes a depressing line-up.

The morning starts with a 55-year-old man pleading guilty to assaulting and threatening to kill his wife. One balmy evening last summer, he grabbed his wife around the throat, pushed her against the kitchen bench and threatened: "I'm going to kill you".

A 62-year-old faces charges of assault. After a drunken argument, he pulled his wife's hair, punching her several times in the face. When the woman's 15-year-old daughter heard her mother shouting 'Don't hit me, don't hit me', she rushed into the room and saw her mother lying on the ground. Her stepfather slapped her mother several times across the face, then kicked her leg.

As the morning wears into the afternoon, still the defendants come. A 20-year-old is charged with assaulting his sister. A mother, her daughter.

In the dock, the defendants' attitudes vary from remorse and embarrassment to belligerence and anger. One tells the judge: "It's all bullshit" as he is led back into custody.

These are not the cases you usually read about in the papers. They are too mundane. Dozens, if not hundreds, of similar incidents occur every day all over New Zealand.

In central Auckland alone, the Domestic Violence Centre deals with about 7500 call-outs a year. The victims are all ages and from all social strata - even pregnant women are not immune. Abuse often starts, or escalates, when a woman becomes pregnant. A Hamilton study found that 10 per cent of domestic violence is committed against pregnant women.

Only a fraction of incidents are reported to police and an even smaller percentage make it to the courts. According to the Domestic Violence Centre in Auckland, victims suffer through an average of 35 incidents before they contact the police.

At the Waitakere District Court, so many domestic violence cases pass through every year, that a special Family Violence Court has been established. Each Wednesday, courtroom one is reserved for domestic violence cases.

The special court is part of a pilot programme prompted by judges' frustration at long delays in processing family violence cases.

Though police have clamped down on domestic violence in recent years, the system falls down when the victims hit the drawn-out court process, Waitakere Court judge Philip Recordon says. More than 80 per cent of victims retract their charges if they are faced with the eight- to 12-week delays typical for defended fixtures.

"The shorter the period of time [delay] and the more they are still feeling the bruises, the more likely they are to say: 'I don't want you to get away with this'. Time dulls the pain."