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Kahira-Rata Olley founded Save Our Babies to help abuse survivors heal and access support.
The charity provides safe spaces, clothing, and school lunches, and runs programmes for both men and women.
Content warning: This article discusses domestic and sexual abuse.
For 25 years, all Kahira-Rata Olley knew was abuse.
She has since turned her pain into power, providing for others through Save Our Babies, the charitable trust she founded to help people in similar circumstances heal andaccess the help they need.
Her work has seen her named both a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit and a finalist for Kiwibank’s Local Hero of the Year award in recent years.
But for decades, Olley (Ngāti Rongomai, Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Toa) found herself trapped in a damaging cycle of pain.
“ I was brought up in a home where domestic violence was a part of my life,” she told Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night.
Kahira-Rata Olley founded Save Our Babies to help abuse survivors heal and access support. Photo / Michaela Pointon
“I was also raised in a family where sexual abuse was happening from the age of 5 and it came out when I was 10. When you’re brought up in a home where there’s abuse of all kinds – financial abuse, hunger, all that sort of thing – it’s really hard to see any light at the end of the tunnel ... And then I married my [now] ex-husband and we raised our three children in a home where domestic violence was also a part of their lives.”
Even in the midst of her deep pain, Olley “knew that there was more to life” – and she made the brave call to escape.
“I moved to Australia on the 8th of January, 1998 – myself and two of my three children moved there with nothing. We were homeless, we had three suitcases, three backpacks – but I had faith. That’s all I really relied on: faith.”
With the help of extended whānau across the Ditch who embraced them unconditionally – a type of love and protection Olley told Real Life she “hadn’t ever felt” before – things began to change.
“I removed myself from negative people, from negative environments ... I started to change how I was approaching people, my approach to myself. I started to accept what had happened to me and I even forgave. That’s not something I tell people to do, but for me, I had to.”
Olley says this experience restored and healed her – and has enabled her to help others in similar situations through Save Our Babies.
“All of the stuff that we do is because of my life experience,” she told Cowan.
“We provide safe spaces for both wāhine and tāne who have been through forms of abuse, we provide free clothing that is pre-loved and donated by the community, we provide school lunches for our tamariki [children] going to school with no lunches and we run different programmes and initiatives for our males and our females.
“It’s basically just a safe space for whānau that have gone, or are going through, some pretty traumatic stuff.”
Save Our Babies also caters to men who have abused, or are at danger of doing so, so they can break the cycle of abuse.
Olley recognises it was men who hurt her, men who were meant to love and protect her. But she told Cowan that if we want our men to be better, we need to provide spaces for them to heal, too.
“To be quite honest, the horrific stories that our men bring of abuse, it’s just heartbreaking,” she said.
“It’s always the men’s stories that make me very sad because what people see is the male, the man today ... [the 20- to 70-year-old man who] may have caused harm towards another, [but] I will see the 4-year-old child, the 8-year-old child, 13-, 17-year-old child that was sexually abused, raped even, beaten.”
“So for me it’s, it’s important to keep the balance. Don’t get me wrong, there are some people in this world that need to be dropped off on an island and left there. But there are also men who were hurt children – and it’s important to hold those spaces for them.”
Among all its initiatives, Save Our Babies also hosts the annual UnSilenced Runway Event to empower survivors of sexual abuse. Both men and women take part and Olley says participants describe it as “invigorating” and “powerful”.
“ How can we get the message out there that regardless of what we are going through or have been through, we can still unsilence ourselves and set ourselves free, and basically reclaim what was taken from us?
”If I can get to the toughest of people, and I’m talking both male and female, to set themselves free from the trauma, then what are we creating? We’re creating a better community for everybody.”
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
