Editorial: Message not resonating despite wide coverage

EIGHT years ago this newspaper ran a campaign that threw the spotlight on domestic violence in our community.

We published story after story, statistic after statistic, highlighting the horrors being perpetrated in homes across Whanganui.

Only those living under a rock could not have been moved by the horror stories we published, about ordinary people brought up in extraordinary circumstances where violence was an everyday occurrence.

It's this cycle of violence that our series said needed to be broken if we were to have any hope of people leading normal lives.

We hoped it would make a difference, and perhaps in some isolated cases it may have.

Indeed domestic violence got a much more widespread airing, carried mainly by the annual white ribbon marches.

The tragedy is that despite our efforts and national campaigning, little has changed.

The latest hideousness involved the beating to death of 3-year-old Moko Rangitoheriri.

His killing matched that of Nia Glassie, another of the same age who died in August 2007.

So what has happened in those intervening years?

Nothing, except a lot of talk and hand-wringing.

What we do know is that people responsible for this brutality have survived their own personal hell.

But the ghosts of those unimaginable upbringings remain and those who once were victims are more likely to raise their children in the same manner, where violence begets violence.

Little Moko's mother doesn't want her son's death to be in vain. Nor do we. But the tragedy is that it will be.

There will be another Moko and another Nia because the message that this is not okay is not getting through.

But it must. And that's where Government's focus needs to be.

It could start by better resourcing police and social agencies so there are meaningful numbers of people in the field, finding the problem areas, intervening and effecting positive change.

It might just save the life of another 3-year-old.