Dr Ang Jury: My story as told to Elisabeth Easther

Dr Ang Jury is the chief executive officer at Women's Refuge.

Dr Ang Jury has worked within Women’s Refuge since the 1990s taking every role from volunteer to advocate, management to board and today she is chief executive.

I had a normal 1960s upbringing in a little Taranaki town called Waitara. I was a quiet child, more interested in reading than anything else. Dad was a clerk at the freezing works and later at the wool scourers. Mum worked in a plant nursery, but not because she was particularly green-fingered, it was just a job.

I was the eldest, my sister came along 18 months later and my parents adopted my two brothers who were 7 and 8 years younger than me. It wasn’t terribly altruistic, mum just wanted to build the perfect family of two boys and two girls.

Back then no one in my circle thought in terms of careers and no one in my family had ever been to university. At high school, the one time a teacher said something about university, he might as well have been talking a foreign language.

I turned 15 on the day school finished in 1975 when I was summoned to the principal’s office and told I could sign out that day and leave school, or come back in February and they’d expel me. So I signed out because I didn’t want to be at school. I was also doing dumb stuff, using alcohol and drugs, that sort of rubbish, so I understand why school didn’t want me and my parents weren’t terribly bothered.

Jobs were easy to get back then and the following Tuesday I was working in New Plymouth at a suit factory. I had no sewing ability. I was just operating a steam press. Up and down all bloody day. It was so tedious, and certainly not something I wanted to do forever. But I didn’t last, because after about six months I found out I was pregnant.

I was packed off to live with my nana in Hawke’s Bay before going to the Bethany Home for unwed mothers by the Napier cricket grounds. The baby was meant to be put up for adoption at 10 days, and even though I’d never seen her, I decided I was keeping her.

My daughter was born in September, and I turned 16 a few months later. Mum and dad had come around by that stage, and I lived with them for a few months before getting my own place. I thought I was very grown up. The father was still around and we married when I was 18. It was a bit chaotic at times, but it worked out.

My husband was an upholsterer and we lived in New Plymouth, Taumarunui and Waitara before moving to Tauranga, where our son was born. Tauranga was good to us, but I never had any intention of “finding myself”. Life was just about family, supporting my husband with his business and, when the kids were older, working in low-wage jobs.

I worked in kiwifruit and at a bakery where I became friends with the factory manager. We’d ice cakes and have good conversations. One day he suggested I should study. Because I admired him, I had a crack at an extramural paper through Waikato University, although it didn’t work out.

A couple of years later, after dad passed away, I left my husband and effectively turned my life upside down. My daughter stayed with her father and most weekends my son went there too. One Saturday I was at a friend’s place, we’d had a couple of vodkas and we were waxing philosophical when she said: “What are you doing picking f***ing kiwifruit? You should be doing more. Why haven’t you gone to university?” Being a bit lubricated, I said the first thing that came into head which was - “if I don’t try, I can’t fail”. She gave me such a lashing for that.

At the same time, a friend from Taumurunui, a train driver, had moved to Palmerston North after his marriage split up and enrolled at university. He said that if he could do it anyone could. I boxed myself into a corner by telling people I wanted to go to university, and I thought I’d look foolish if I didn’t go.

Dr Ang Jury says a lot of questions were answered for her when she learnt Māori history. Photo / Michael Craig

I rented a dodgy little house in Himatangi Beach and enrolled at Massey to study social work. I didn’t even know what an essay was when I got there. I didn’t know what a paper was. I didn’t know an adjective from an adverb. But for some reason, it came quite naturally, and I got an A+ for my first assignment.

I won a scholarship to do honours which meant I could afford to feed my son and get the car fixed. Honours went well and I got a scholarship to do my PhD, looking at the role of shame within abusive relationships. I went into university with this notion that I’d become a social worker, but it was sociology that spoke to me, and women’s studies, and I became a feminist sociologist.

When I started at Massey, I thought I was a relatively liberal well-informed person, and the first thing I learned was that I wasn’t. I was confronted with the history of Te Tiriti. I was confronted with feminism and sexuality politics, and a different version of New Zealand history. Coming from Waitara, we’d say we have no trouble with Māori. We’re all friends. We get along, but f*** me, Parihaka, the land wars, all those things. I knew nothing of that history. When I embraced that knowledge, a lot of my questions about the world were answered.

Coming from a small North Island town, I didn’t even know what being a lesbian meant, but at Massey I met several amazing women. They were successful and respected, building good lives with families in ways I hadn’t thought possible, so I came out. It had been in the back of my mind for a long time, that something didn’t feel quite right, but if you can’t see it you can’t be it.

I wanted to be an academic. They lead such privileged lives. You’re paid to read books you’re interested in and to write about stuff you’re interested in, and they’re well-paid. But there was a big restructure at Massey and all the junior lecturers and most of the tutors in my programme were made redundant.

What was I to do? I’d been institutionalised, and sociology doesn’t prepare you with vocational skills. You just know how to think and write. My partner couldn’t support me forever, so I hunted for a job. I knew I didn’t want to be involved with domestic violence, because I’d been studying it for the last nine years, but the only job l I could find was coordinating one of the Te Rito Family Violence Networks.

Over the years I’ve held various roles within Women’s Refuge, and when the chief executive job came up, people asked if I was applying, so I gave it a nudge. I’ve been in the role for eight years now. As chief executive, I’m insulated to a degree from the day-to-day horror of domestic violence. I’m grateful for that, as there is only so much nastiness you can cope with, and people aren’t getting any better which can be dispiriting

I do feel cynical sometimes. Particularly when I see the same old crap being trotted out by judges and politicians. I still get sad and angry when something tragic happens. Every time a woman gets beaten to death by her husband or partner, someone who is supposed to love them, which happens many times every year, people don’t march in the streets but we should.

I get angry about lots of things at work, but I have good friends and a lovely partner. That’s how I deal with the horrors, by making sure I have good people around me. I’m also quite introverted, so home is important, as is knowing when to go there and be kind to myself. The world won’t end if I’m not at my desk. I also collect orchids and they take a lot of looking after. I’d like to have more time for them.

When family violence happens, we work hard to ensure the response is healthy. A lot is happening around primary prevention. Stopping it before it happens. But if we’re serious about putting an end to this absolutely bloody scourge, I’d want more effort put into the children. To talk with them about empathy and compassion. How to be in a relationship that is kind and caring because it’s almost impossible to hurt somebody you feel empathy for.

We’re in the second year of a pilot programme working intensively with tamariki who come into our service. Even if it only makes a difference to 10 out of every hundred kids, that’s 10 kids who’ll be less likely to go on to abuse partners or become victims. And those 10 kids will have a better life as will their kids and it’ll grow exponentially to create healthy whānau.

Dad died just before I moved to Palmerston North which was a huge factor in the changes I made. I like to think he was looking down when I crossed the stage to get my doctorate and when I received the ONZM. I like to think that people who aren’t with us anymore, that they can see the good things.

Because family violence doesn’t take holidays, kind Kiwis are being asked to gift a $20 Summer Safe Night to women and children at risk of domestic violence. www.safenight.nz