Karen Ritchie, of Pōkeno, was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in this year's New Year Honours.
For more than three decades, Karen Ritchiehas been a fierce advocate for LGBTQ+ communities, sex workers and those affected by Aids and HIV.
When asked why, Ritchie’s answer is simple: “Somebody had to step in and do something.”
Living on Auckland’s Karangahape Rd in the 1980s, Ritchie, now 73, witnessed daily violence against sex workers and saw HIV and Aids sweeping through the city, bringing fear and stigma to sex workers and LGBTQ+ communities, who were already facing discrimination.
Many who contracted the disease were being “disowned” by family, isolated and left to die alone, with no treatment available.
“Somebody had to step in and do something because, inevitably, they were going to die,” she told the Waikato Herald.
Ritchie, of Pōkeno and Auckland, held longstanding roles with the New Zealand Aids Foundation (NZAF), Body Positive Inc, and Positive Women.
She set up the Cartier Bereavement Charitable Trust to support those dying of Aids and was also a member of the Prostitutes Law Review Committee, advocating for the decriminalisation of sex work under the Prostitution Reform Act 2003.
That work has recently been recognised with her appointment as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year Honours.
Her work with the Cartier Bereavement Charitable Trust is particularly close to Ritchie’s heart.
The trust was named after her friend, Cartier, a drag queen who died of Aids.
“I remember so clearly sitting with her that night [she died] and saying to her, ‘Okay, darling, it’s time for you to go. Your mum and dad are waiting.’
“She ... died in my arms.”
Ritchie said she was someone who “can’t visualise people having to die alone or suffer” – something that was common for people with Aids as many of those infected were stigmatised, and their families didn’t want to have anything to do with them.
“[The trust] really helped us to give people a funeral with dignity, which they would not normally have. They would be body-bagged and just sent away.
“Because they were ostracised by their families ... somebody had to bury them with dignity.”
The trust had a board, but Ritchie said nobody got paid.
“Every single cent went to the cause, and I was adamant about that.”
Before the trust closed in 2023, because better treatment was available, it supported hundreds of people, she said.
Conditions for sex workers had “certainly got better” since the law change in 2003, but she described the years before that as “a horrible time”.
She said authorities were “so cruel to street workers” and she had seen a lot of “aggression towards the LGBTQ+ and gay community”.
“Trust me, I’ve cleaned it up a lot.
“It was just ridiculous how they were getting treated.
“Whether they’re gay, straight, whatever, I don’t care. They are somebody’s child, and that sort of treatment they were getting from straight people or guys was not acceptable.
“That had to stop.”
To help address the rising violence against LGBTQ+ communities and sex workers, she helped to set up the K’Rd Community Safety Group between 2016 and 2023.
When working on the safety group, she ensured “a lot of police [were] on the beat to clean it up”.
But Ritchie’s advocacy reached beyond New Zealand.
She was also a founding member of the Red Umbrella Fund, an international organisation dedicated to supporting the rights of sex workers.
She said it was a “wonderful privilege” to be a part of the fund.
The main purpose of the organisation was to ensure sex workers could legally get financial help in their countries for health reasons.
During her time with the fund, she heard many horror stories of the abuse sex workers would face all around the world.
“Some of them were killed by authorities, by people, some were beaten up.
“They couldn’t get any help health-wise ... so that was our main project.”
A couple of years later, when the fund took off, she resigned, and her last working stint was in the sexual health clinic at Greenlane Hospital.
Now retired, and reflecting on her career, she is proud to have been advocating for those communities.
She said she had been supporting the cause so loudly that she was given the nickname “The Mother of K Rd”.
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakatāne.