Thrust into the limelight

To mark our 5th birthday, the Herald on Sunday revisits a few people from our front pages. This week, Tony Veitch's former partner Kristin Dunne-Powell recalls her experiences.

For me, Sunday mornings are a not-so-eclectic mix of sleeping in, church, walking the Labrador, brunch ... and of course, a thorough read of the Sunday papers. Folding back into bed, or sitting in the sun, with my husband reading the papers was a treasured part of our favourite day.

July 2008 saw my love affair with Sunday end - seemingly ruined by the Sunday papers.

Happily unknown till then, I was thrown into a media storm that raged for over 10 months.

Whoever said "any publicity is good publicity" was trying to be kind.

My former partner's PR adviser sought to use the media to engender public sympathy for her celebrity client - which in turn made me look like a bad sort.

One of my ongoing health issues is post-traumatic stress disorder and I developed an immense fear of Sundays. It would start about Thursday and it ravaged my body of sleep, food, peace and happiness.

My husband and I didn't do brunch, we barely opened the curtains or went outside, and food was of a liquid kind that I could ingest without being sick.

The dog didn't get walked. He and the cat never left my side, staying with me in my bedroom until the late afternoon when the tears would finally stop and an internal strength, backed by the truth, came through. It needed to be steel-reinforced.

I leave it to individuals to consider how they handled the story. I acknowledge that turning down a proffered angle in one of the most sensationalised stories last year would have been hard to resist.

Sundays now have a renewed pleasure. They are peaceful days spent with my husband, stepson and four-legged kids. The unconditional love of my husband, parents, family and true friends literally saved my life.

Also, the most amazing new friends reached out to me with their own violent experiences, and together bring inspiration and ideas to find a remedy to our biggest social problem.

If there is one thing this story showed, it was how far New Zealand has to go to understand domestic violence.

Is it a coincidence that most women who are violently attacked or murdered are painted by defence teams as bunny-boiling, unfaithful, charlatans who must have provoked the attack?

When I was 9, my nana gave me a book, Louis Pasteur's The Value of Believing in Yourself. Twenty-six years later I have finally understood it.