Time is running out

I attended the Costs of Crime Conference yesterday in Wellington. I want to thank Rethinking Crime and Punishment for organising the day. It was brilliant. One of the key speakers was Simon Powell our Minister of Justice. As he spoke he talked about the importance of getting policy on crime ‘right’. This meant, government conducting sound ‘research’ and rigorous community consultation. Calls from the floor pointed out that there has been ‘sound’ research, and ‘rigorous’ community consultation that it is now time for action. However, Powell stated that this will take time as the national party want to get their policy on crime ‘right’ before implementing anything.

Sadly victims of homicide do not have time – many people in this country are running out of time. Only yesterday Sandra Rachel Brown’s time ran out. Sandra was murdered, while attempting to protect her daughter Kate from being attacked in her home in Tauranga early yesterday. A pity her killer couldn’t have held out until Powell had undertaken his sound research and rigorous community consultation to find out why, what and who murder. As one man from the alcohol and drug sector pointed out, sound and rigorous research on the interconnectedness of alcohol and crime had been undertaken. It findings called for the government to increase the age limit as well as other initiatives that would be able to address this issue.  

Calls for bipartisan approaches to crime were also proffered by people attending. I want to reiterate the point I made yesterday - people in this country are running out of time and some such as Jordan Herewini, Kaine Lewis, Pihema Cameron, Ranjeeta Sharma, Emma Agnew, Jane Young, Hannah Rossiter, Jhia Harmony Te Tua to name only a handful of people whose time has ran out need more than ideologically speak. Violent crime is political however the answers must be bipartisan and not quick speak or populist answers to complex issues.

Its election year people so let’s demand bipartisan approach to addressing all crime.

Pukeroa Found Guilty For The Murder Of Murupara Youth Jordan Herewini

Pukeroa Found Guilty For The Murder Of Murupara Youth Jordan Herewini

Dec 8 - Gang Warfare - Story Archive - 60 Minutes - Shows - TV3

Dec 8 - Gang Warfare - Story Archive - 60 Minutes - Shows - TV3

Victims of homicide

The following is an anonymous poem witten by a survivor of homicide:

Don’t look at me with pity: I need your strength

Don’t crowd me with words: Just let me talk

Don’t touch me: I will reach out when I’m ready

Don’t call me: I need time to think and work it through

Don’t tell me how I feel: Feelings are beyond my control at this point in time

Don’t stop my tears and screams: They are my path to release and healing

Don’t cross the road to avoid me: Just smile and say hello

Don’t say you understand: Just thank god that you can’t

Don’t be hurt by what I say and do: My pain is clouding my judgment

Don’t think I’m mad: I’m doing the best I can to retain my sanity

Don’t tell me I’ll forget: His memory is all I have left

And whatever you do…

Don’t think I don’t appreciate you being here.

consciousness raising groups

In the 1960’s feminists argued that:

“…women were isolated from each other, and as a result many problems in women's lives were misunderstood as "personal," or as the results of conflicts between the personalities of individual men and women, rather than systematic forms of oppression. Raising consciousness meant helping oneself and helping others to become ‘politically conscious’. Consciousness raising groups aimed to get a better understanding of women's oppression by bringing women together to discuss and analyze their lives, without interference from the presence of men…

Well I want consciousness raising groups to rise again. This time I want to set then up for those who must live with the eternal death of a loved one because of murder. They call us survivors – they call us victims…we are both and neither. Our loved ones are the real victims and many of us barely survive. The organizations set up to help and the professionals who talk with us run from a script, one based on the idea that talking to a ‘professional’ will eventually bring us closure.

                                                                                                   

I’ve talked to the professional’s people and whilst I learnt a few things, talking to another survivor/victim of homicide has been the most important and enlightening engagement since Jordan’s murder. I feel understood, politicisised and somewhat energized – it’s still one-day-at-a-time…but it’s a bloody brilliant starting point.

I feel less isolated, far more understood and I believe we the victims of these most horrendous crimes can build communities of awareness and political clout. So taking from our feminist history - bring on the consciousness raising/support groups and the building of communities that actually can help heal, support and care.

If we continue sitting in rooms with a professional we continue to be isolated and all that happens is we learn to look after ourselves. This people, is not building communities and it is in supportive communities that awareness and growth can occur. In turn people become stronger. Stronger people can take on systems that have kept them isolated within the professional script.

So it’s time to use my skills and education to bring some of this change. God for the first time in months I feel revitalized.

So any support - ideas etc much appreciated.

Leave comments and contacts pass on my site...lets build communities people!!!!!

Murder verdict relief for Murupara

I want to respond to Pem Birds statement made on the 11th December 2010 after a guilty verdict was handed down to Quentin Pukeroa for the murder of Jordan Herewini in 2009.

He states that the guilty verdict is a relief for the “...whole community...[and]...a huge weight off people's minds and hearts” the community can “...now begin to move on, remember Jordan clearly for what he was and celebrate him." Bird goes on to state that "...Jordan's death was a tragedy for the entire community."

Sadly these words are empty platitudes uttered by a man who only months after Jordan’s tangi heaped scorn on Jordan's mother, suggesting that she ‘abandoned’ her son and was negligent in her duty to him. The malice that surged from his hateful mouth was not the words of a leader but of a misogynist and a bigot.

Whilst he purports the positivity of this verdict for the community he and others from the Murupara community, have exacerbated the pain Jordan’s mother is and will continue to live with. If you truly believe that Jordan’s life can now be celebrated, then an apology to the women who gave Jordan ‘life’ might be a excellent place to begin.

Desperately finding closure

Closure: as defined in the dictionary…

·         The act of closing or the state of being closed: closure of an incision.

·         Something that closes or shuts.

·         A bringing to an end; a conclusion: finally brought the project to closure.

·         A feeling of finality or resolution, especially after a traumatic experience.

Pike River chief executive Peter Whittall said ‘the inquiry had been about getting some closure for the families.’  Police Association President Greg O’Connor “stated that the…sentencing of Stephen McDonald for the armed, P-fuelled rampage that led to the accidental killing of Halatau Naitoko on Auckland’s motorway brings those involved one step closer to closure…”. 

However, this ‘closure’ is far from the truth, as most people who have been affected by homicide will agree.

Sentencing, counseling, getting back to work, finding god, or some spiritual space within which to make sense of the sudden death of loved ones may be achievable in such cases as the Pike River Mine, however, I am sure that as the process unfolds and more questions are posed ‘closure’ might become somewhat elusive for some.

Closure is near impossible for many victims of homicide. A life has wantonly been erased and those left behind are faced with questions that are underpinned by guilt and anger. As Noelene Oliver stated when asked about the guilty verdict of Clayton Weatherston “…there was never any real closure for the family who were left with constant reminders of what had happened”. When asked about closure re: the killing of teacher Barbara Julian during a burglary attempt, Lyn Nelson and Celia Eastman stated that “…sentencing was not closure but another step in the process.” 

The process of living with homicide I believe is beyond what the average man, women or child will ever experience in their lifetime. As the Homicide Victims site from Australia points out the pain that families and friends will experience is unique. Having lived with the murder of my partner’s son I can add my voice to the growing numbers of angry survivors of homicide. Even then my experience is not comparable to that of Jordan’s mother. We have been expected to ‘get over’ his murder, move on, and find solace in the 15 year sentence of his killer Quentin Duane Pukeroa. Whilst the sentence is part and parcel to the justice process, which one is forced to undertake because of the actions of a killer, it is not closure – there is no closure.

There are only ‘attempts’ to learn to live with the trauma that homicide brings. These attempts can more often than not be undermined by the justice system, that writes family and friends out of the process, sentences that never reflect the pain and anguish felt by those close to the murdered victim, by family and friends who feel its been long enough and you should move on, by political figures who wish their small rural town wasn’t in the spot light, and by the media who are only there for the sensational story and have moved on to pastures greener.

Those left behind, the mothers, fathers, lovers, siblings, aunties, uncles and friends are left clutching their grief. Victim Support runs out, the murdered victim becomes a statistic, rent and bills demand to be paid and siblings require feeding and love. There is no closure, there is a chasm that will one day be filled with the humdrum of life, but this chasm remains open and can erupt at birthdays, or at the lose of a key, or wallet, or when the stress of gardening reminds you that the garden you are lovingly tending is only in existence because you needed a distraction from the pain of the murder that happened along time ago. The hardest part and I am only speaking from my personal experience, is the realisation that tomorrow somewhere in ‘GODZONE’ another life will be taken - another family will face the pain of trying to find ‘closure’.