FAQs

• Violence in an intimate relationship like marriage, domestic partnership, dating relationship or between exes
• Violence that extends to children, parents, grandchildren, grandparents, other whānau and people who are like family—family friends, guardians or caretakers
• Violence that includes unwanted sexual attitudes, touch or actions such as sexual assault, rape, sexual harassment, molestation, child sexual abuse
• Abuse against children
• Abuse against elderly people
• Violence within neighbourhoods, schools, organisations, workplaces, sports teams, churches and so on
• May be physical, emotional, sexual, economic or some other form (see Basics about violence).

Interpersonal violence is commonly used to gain power and control over another person.  It often takes advantage of unequal power.

By community, we mean any group of people—friends, co-workers, whānau, a sports club or team, a church, etc.  People with whom you connect, live, play, work, learn, organise, worship, etc.  We don’t mean the whole community will be involved.  Communities are often part of the problem, the solution is finding the people in the community to end and prevent violence.  Even if you feel like you have no-one you can ask for help, there may be someone who can support you.

Interpersonal violence happens among community, involving our fellow community members.  The answer to violence is in these same places, with these same people.  They are the people most affected by violence, who know the most about the people involved in violence, who understand the culture and resources of the community, and who ultimately have the most to lose from violence and the most to gain from ending it.

By involving community, we can:

• Respond to violence where it happens
• Confront violence when it first shows up
• Help people gather to respond to, end and prevent violence
• Make violence intervention an everyday skill, rather than something only for professionals (who most of us will never use).

People who are harmed usually turn first to people they know, not crisis lines, refuges, advocates, police or other professionals.  Whānau and friends are usually the ‘first responders’.

What we DON’T mean by community is police (even if they call it community policing) or the child welfare system.  Community can include anti-violence agencies IF they agree that everyday people are the best people to intervene and end violence (the Resources section has a list of agencies that may help).

By intervention, we mean the things you do to help.  It could mean intervening to stop violence from happening, to help someone who is being hurt, or to support someone to change their behaviour and stop harming.

• An attempt to respond to, end or prevent interpersonal violence (an intervention)
• Using community resources rather than relying on the police or social services
• Involving friends, whānau, co-workers, neighbours or community members (community)
• Possibly working with the person doing harm.

See Basics for more information.

Most common anti-violence approaches:

• Assume that people harmed want to separate from the people hurting them
• Tell people harmed that police and protection orders are the safest way to end violence
• Require reporting to child welfare if a professional believes a child is at risk
• Work only with the person harmed, rather than also working together with friends, whānau, neighbours, co-workers and community members
• Deal with the people doing harm through the police or criminal system.

Many people wanting to end violence aren’t safe or comfortable with these approaches, but they don’t know what else to do.

The approach on this website:

• Explores options based on what the person harmed wants. This could mean separating or staying together with the person who hurt them, or finding ways to co-exist in the same community
• Doesn’t rely on the police or other State systems, but uses friends, whānau, neighbours, co-workers and community members (community allies) to respond to, end and prevent violence
• Brings skills and knowledge to people harmed, friends, whānau, neighbours, co-workers and community members rather than relying on ‘experts’ in intervention and prevention
• Encourages the person doing harm to change through connection with what is important and meaningful, rather than through force, punishment and shaming
• Considers people doing harm as potential allies in ending violence.

“The people are our wealth”

The purpose of Te Wānanga o Raukawa is to contribute to the survival of Māori as a people.

Colonisation brought high rates of trauma and interpersonal violence, and the State has attacked Māori sources of safety and healing: tikanga and whānau (see He Whaipaanga Hou).  Interpersonal violence is now heartbreakingly common. 

When the State’s criminal system (police, courts and prisons) is the only way to respond to violence, there are a number of effects: 

• We lose faith in ourselves to solve problems
• Relying on the State makes it stronger, reinforcing colonisation and undermining tikanga
• People who are being hurt do nothing about the violence because reporting it doesn’t help them—it often makes things worse, by bringing the State into their lives, destroying the life of the person hurting them (who may be their parent, their partner, or someone else they rely on and care about), and taking away the support they get from that person as well as their whānau and friends
• People who are causing harm do nothing about their violence because the risks of admitting it (criminal conviction, risking job, access to children) are too great
• Communities do nothing about violence, or side with the person causing harm to protect them from the criminal system.

All of this makes our communities less safe, and makes it harder for people to get the support they need.

Communities can’t heal while violence is still common.  Healing and decolonisation in Māori communities means stopping violence, disentangling ourselves from the State and re-connecting with tikanga (see Transforming Whānau Violence).  We need ways to respond to violence that strengthen our communities.

As a product of Whakatupuranga Rua Mano, Te Wānanga o Raukawa is committed to the well-being of its people and to rangatiratanga (self-determination).  Te Kawa o te Ako has been Te Wānanga o Raukawa’s response to problems including interpersonal violence.

We hope this website will help your community find its own solutions.

Accountability is recognising, ending and taking responsibility for violence.  We usually think of the person doing harm as the one who needs to be accountable for violence, but communities are often responsible for ignoring, minimising or even encouraging violence (minimising violence means down-playing its effects, acting like it’s normal or not a big deal).  Community accountability means communities recognising, ending and taking responsibility for violence by becoming more knowledgeable, skilful and willing to take action—both to stop violence, and to grow a culture that prevents violence from happening in the first place.

Accountability is a process that includes listening, learning, taking responsibility and changing.  It means making opportunities in our whānau and communities for direct communication, for understanding and repairing harm, for sharing power, and for rebuilding relationships.

Our vision is positive, tied to responsibility and change, not to punishment and revenge, and can be driven by connection and care rather than fear and anger alone. 

Violence and abuse cause fear, anger and outrage, which are important emotions for change.  But change also needs to come from values we want to see.  Accountability is a way to keep our communities whole, safe and healthy, rather than a way to punish, separate and send away.

This does NOT mean that people who have been harmed need to forgive the people who hurt them or that relationships and families need to stay together.  The person hurt should never be pressured into forgiving, staying with or even working with the person who hurt them.  The person who was hurt is not responsible for re-connecting with, caring for or supporting the person who hurt them to change—that is the community’s responsibility.

It also doesn’t mean that an apology is enough.  Real accountability is a long and genuine process, that can be understood as a stairway to change.  Most interventions won’t achieve all of these steps, but even reaching Step 1 is meaningful success.

Stairway to change

Step 6 - Become a healthy member of your community

Step 5 - Change harmful attitudes and behaviours so that violence is not repeated

Step 4 - Make repairs for the harm

Step 3 - Recognise the consequences of violence without excuses, even if unintended

Step 2 - Recognise the violence

Step 1 - Stop immediate violence

We avoid labels like perpetrator, offender, abuser and rapist that reduce a person to their worst behaviour.  People who cause harm are still people, they have whakapapa.  When we use those labels we are telling people they will never change, that there is no point in trying.  When communities stop treating violence as normal and acceptable, take away opportunities for violence, and support people who are causing harm to change, there is the real possibility for changing the attitudes and behaviours of people who have done harm.  We want our language to reflect that.

See Key Words for more about the language on this website.

Vigilantism and mob-justice implies violence and retaliation.  We do not condone acts of violence meant as punishment, vengeance, a way to get even, to let them know how it feels, to hurt them for the sake of making them feel hurt or scared.  Our approach to violence and intervention includes compassion and connection to the person doing harm (many or all of the people involved in an intervention may feel angry or not want anything to do with the person causing harm, but someone may feel willing to support them to stop their violence and change, and this website has tools to help).  The person doing harm may be invited to be part of the process of accountability, to understand the benefits for themselves as well as others in their community.  At the beginning of an intervention, some use of pressure or even force may be needed to stop violence and address the harms. 

There is much more information about accountability in How can you support the person who caused harm to take accountability.

Feeling sorry, regret or shame may be natural feelings as someone becomes accountable for their harmful attitudes and actions.  This is different from ‘making’ them sorry through punishment, shaming and inflicting suffering.  Accountability and justice are often confused with revenge and punishment.  Anger and wanting revenge are understandable and common reactions, and they are often what makes us do something about the violence.  You don’t need to be forgiving.  You can feel angry and still find the tools on this website useful.  But our understanding of accountability is not punishing.  Our aim is ending violence, not turning it back on people who cause harm. 

Emotions can change quickly, but values stay important to you.  This website has tools for thinking about your values and for working out what you want based on those values. 

There are several reasons. 

The first is practical—people don’t contact crisis lines, Women’s Refuge or the police until they have run out of options, if at all.  When someone is hurt, the first people to know are usually whānau, friends, flatmates, co-workers or teachers.  People who need help turn to us, but we don’t always know what to do.  The purpose of this website is to bring knowledge and skills back to communities.  Everyone is safer if we grow our understanding, skills and confidence in responding to, ending and preventing violence.

If ordinary people like us get better at this, then we are more likely to respond to violence when it first happens, instead of waiting until serious harm has been done.  We can act with care and compassion for those we are closest to, including people who are causing harm.  We can more quickly help people we care about or share community with.  We are less likely to pretend nothing is happening, blame the victim or leave it to someone else.  We can make our homes, families and communities the healthy places that we want to live in.

Second, many people will not use anti-violence agencies or the police because they aren’t comfortable with them, don’t trust them, or have reason to fear them.  This is particularly true of people most at risk from State violence—Māori, beneficiaries, recent immigrants, gang affiliates, ‘working class’ people, people working against the State, people with disabilities, etc.  Many of the people most in need of support are unable to use agencies or the police.  Many people won’t use the criminal system because it is not “just.”  It is violent itself, and it takes away the possibility for change based on connection and care—instead relying more on punishment.

If agencies and stopping violence programmes work in ways that increase the risk of State violence, then we need a safer approach.  If people can’t turn to agencies and stopping violence programmes for support, then this website has tools that may support them ending violence.

Third, violence happens in communities—it is not a problem created by individuals, so it can’t be solved by fixing or punishing individuals.  Agencies and the police work only with people harmed and people who cause harm, while doing nothing to change the environment those people live in or will return to.  We can only end violence if we all take responsibility for the environment that allows it to happen.

The State and anti-violence agencies are new.  For generations, our communities found ways to be safe without them.  In order to grow strong, healthy and safe communities, we need to re-discover those skills.  The more we rely on outside agencies to make our communities safe, the less likely we are to grow the skills and understanding we need, and the more we expose our communities to State violence.  We want to make ending violence an everyday skill.  We hope to grow the desire and the ability to end and prevent violence for our communities, our children and future generations.  By making these skills normal again, we may prevent harm from happening in the first place.

Fourth, if these approaches become more well-known, agencies and stopping violence programmes may shift to supporting communities to work on their own problems.  At the moment, agencies take skills and resources out of communities and control that work themselves, so this would be a great improvement.

If you are thinking about safety, How do you stay safe has information and tools for working out risks and planning for safety.

You can’t end violence with violence.  When you use violence as punishment, vengeance, getting even, to show them how it feels, or to hurt them for the sake of making them feel hurt or scared, you are continuing a cycle of violence and disconnection.  Real accountability and change is driven by connection and care rather than fear and anger alone.  

Violence and abuse cause fear, anger and outrage, which are important emotions for change.  But change also needs to come from values we want to see.  Accountability is a way to keep our communities whole, safe and healthy.

Our approach to violence and intervention includes compassion and connection to the person doing harm.  The person doing harm may be invited to participate in the process of accountability, to understand the benefits for themselves as well as others in their community.  At the beginning of an intervention, some use of pressure or even force may be needed to stop violence and address the harms. 

See How can you support the person who caused harm to take accountability for more information on accountability.

If you aren’t sure who is causing harm in your relationship, ask yourself:

• Who is more afraid?
• Who starts the violence?
• Who ends up getting harmed?
• Who is changing and adapting to meet the other’s needs or moods?
• Who is more vulnerable?
• Who is using violence for power and control (abusive violence)? Who is using violence to try to get safety or integrity in a violent situation (self-defence)?
• Who always has to win?

Many of us know someone who can do a pretty good job as a facilitator.  They don’t need to know everything about violence—they don’t need to be professionals or have experience in anti-violence work.  Because they know you, they have a good chance of knowing what will work for you.  They will be an anchor for a process that can get complicated, emotional and lengthy.  They can help ask questions, think about how the tools on this website and other resources might be helpful, and help you remember what you have already decided.  If you cannot find a facilitator, this website can guide you to lead, organise or take part in a community-based intervention.

We hope that more people in the community can build up their skills as facilitators.  These might be the people you normally go to for help, or who naturally step in, leaders from your church, whānau, sports club or schools and people who are good at this but haven’t been leaders before.   

See Tips for facilitators for suggestions on how to facilitate your process.

The amount of reading on this website makes it hard for many people.  We hope you can find ways of using and sharing the tools and information that work for you.  Remember, you don’t need to read it all—find the bits that are most urgent or useful to you, and start there.

There are reasons this website is so large.  Responding to violence, unfortunately, can’t be written into a few easy steps.  Every situation of violence is different, people are different, many unexpected things can happen.  We’ve tried to cover the issues you might need support with, such as safety, making goals, communicating and working well together.  Because interventions can be dangerous, we have been careful to include everything that might help. 

People who do harm often feel threatened and like they are losing control of the situation when they are challenged.  This means that when you start responding to their violence, they can become more dangerous.  We want you to be prepared to deal with these situations, to plan and be careful.  Much of the information and tools are about taking action while thinking about safety and risks.

The tools are most meaningful when people are in danger, being harmed or harming others.  We expect that people will be relieved to find a section that addresses their particular situation or needs.

Ideally, you wouldn’t try to do this on your own. 

Smaller actions are important.  Working up the courage to tell one person about a situation of violence can be huge.  Gathering friends to stay at your home may not change the person doing harm, but it may provide a safe and healing environment for the person hurt.  Safely removing a gun or weapon from someone’s house may not stop a pattern of violence, but it reduces the possibility of serious or deadly harm.   

Small actions might break through isolation, shame and fear.  They may show the person doing harm that people are watching and that the person they are hurting is supported.  Small actions can also show that people care about the person doing harm and will support them to change.

This website can support small actions.  It can also support long interventions involving lots of people, and that take on a long-term process of change for the person doing harm.  Patterns of violence are the result of attitudes and behaviours that are built up over a long time, perhaps even many generations.  They are unlikely to change with a single event or action.

Not everyone will be able to gather community around them.  People may need to rely on crisis lines, refuges, counsellors, medical centres and criminal justice system responses.  Some of the tools on this website might help before you contact them (for example, What is going on? For person harmed and person causing harm; What do you want?  For person harmed and person causing harm).

Sometimes, if you think in a community-based way, you might come up with people who can help.  You might think of people who can help in unexpected places, maybe in small or short-term roles (in Confronting the person who raped me , a worker at an immigrants rights centre talks about helping a woman with no support work out what she wanted and how to safely get it, including asking a waiter at a restaurant for help with safety when she confronted the person who raped her).  The toolkit is called Creative Interventions because creativity is often what is needed. See Who can help?  For person harmed and person causing harm to think about what help you need and who can help.

There isn’t a ‘perfect victim’, and people don’t need to be perfect (or likeable) for you to help them.

• They may change their minds, they might not do what they said they would, they might not be grateful for your help
• They might have mixed feelings for the person hurting them, and go back and forth between fearing them and defending them
• The abuse and the difficulties of an intervention may mean they are scared, angry, disappointed, frustrated, confused and other emotions that are hard to be around
• People who have been harmed are often exhausted, they may not be the best versions of themselves
• Sometimes people who cause harm are charming, and they use their charm and social power to hide or excuse their abusive behaviour.

It is natural to have confusing feelings about what is happening, but they can mislead you into doubting the person hurt or siding with the person doing harm.

Learning about how interpersonal violence works can help you understand the behaviours of the person harmed and the person who hurt them.  Doing what is right to respond to and end violence doesn’t mean you have to like the person harmed or dislike the person doing harm.  It helps to be clear about your goals, and to understand that violence, and intervening to stop violence, can be complicated.

Basics about violence has information and support around these confusing feelings. Basics about violence interventions has information about what happens when we try to stop violence.

How can you support the person hurt has information about providing support for people who were harmed under many different conditions.

How can you support the person causing harm to take accountability has information about supporting accountability for people doing harm under many different conditions.

Sometimes you don’t know who is being harmed and who is causing harm.  Someone may be lying, the person harmed may also do things that are harmful, in rare cases the harm is mutual.  Usually harm happens behind closed doors.  We don’t see what happened, and may feel like it’s one person’s word against another’s.

We are looking at patterns of power and control—who has power that gives them more control, that means they can manipulate the other, that means their behaviour is excused, or they can hide their abuse.  Understanding how power and control affects relationships can help.

Think about these questions:

• Who is more afraid?
• Who starts the violence?
• Who ends up getting harmed?
• Who is changing and adapting to meet the other’s needs or moods?
• Who is more vulnerable?
• Who is using violence for power and control (abusive violence)? Who is using violence to try to get safety or integrity in a violent situation (self-defence)?
• Who always has to win?

Basics about violence has information and tools that might help you work out what is happening, including who is being harmed and who is doing harm.

What is going on and Distinguishing between Violence and Abuse (written by the Northwest Network) can also help work out what is going on and the dynamics of violence, including who is being harmed and who is the person doing harm.

This website supports working as a group, but each person in the group will have their own sense of what is right, what they believe and their own personal limits about how or if they want to take part in a process. 

Just because you want to help end the violence doesn’t mean you will agree with everyone on what needs to happen.  You might have different values or goals.  The emotions that violence brings up, fear, guilt and blame, can make you doubt what you are doing.  You may change your mind about what you think is happening and what is important.

We encourage you to take time to think about your own values, what you want the intervention to achieve and your personal limits (what we call “bottom-lines”).  We also encourage you to talk as a group, educate yourselves about violence and the potential of group action.  It is best to talk about this sooner than later so you all know from the start what you agree on.  Some people may choose not to be involved because they can’t agree, or they might find a specific role that suits them.

The tools and information in What do you want can help you to think about your goals as an individual, and about bringing them together with the rest of the group’s goals to make a set of goals that everyone can support.

Who can help has tools to help you think about what kinds of roles might be a good fit for you and others.

The tools and information in How do you work together as a team might help you to identify problems and figure out how to work together as a team.

Community members may have different values and goals from you.  There are tools on this website to help work out what you disagree on and still work together towards the goals you can agree on.  Sometimes talking about differences can lead to a better, more effective process.

Or it might be that some of the people you are working with do not understand how violence works, or are not listening to your experience of the violence, and what you need. 

If possible, we think the understanding and experiences of the person harmed should be at the centre of any intervention.  This doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will agree to everything you want.  You will need to work out how your group will make decisions.  It will help if everyone has a chance to talk about their values and goals.  Allies need to listen particularly well to your understanding and experiences, as the person who was harmed.  Your group may also make room for the goals, needs and well-being of the person who caused harm, without supporting or excusing what they did.

The tools and information in What do you want can help you to think about your goals as individuals, and how to bring them together as a group to make a set of goals that everyone can support.

What support do you need has tools and information for working out how people can support you.

The tools and information in How do you work together as a team might help you to work out what the problem is and how to work together as a team.

Good interventions are hard without some involvement from the person who was harmed.  You know better than anyone what happened and how it affected you.  You know better than anyone whether or not it will be safe to try something.

There are different ways to be involved.  You don’t need to make all the decisions, or any of them.  Even if you don’t want to make decisions, there may be things that you want to know about or to be able to say no to. 

What support do you need has tools and information that might help you think about and plan how you can be involved in a way that meets your needs.

Expect resistance.  Find ways so that resistance doesn’t cause more harm.  Find ways to reduce resistance over time.  Can you be flexible enough to outlast their attempts at getting out of accountability? 

Think about times you did something wrong and someone told you it wasn’t okay.  Did you resent it becoming a problem?  Did you make excuses?  It’s a normal reaction to look for a way out.  What made you take responsibility?

Think about how to connect with the values and well-being of the person doing harm.  How can you connect to what they care about?  Can you imagine keeping them in your communities without excusing or minimising the harm they have done?  What would it take?

It can help to think of accountability as a staircase.  The first step on that staircase is stopping violence, or stopping it enough to be able to take the next step.  That is an important step.

See How do you support the person doing harm to take accountability for more information on accountability.

Restorative justice, community accountability, community-based responses to violence and transformative justice have many overlapping principles and sometimes refer to the same types of responses. 

Restorative Justice has been around since about the 1970s and has been developed for many different types of harms especially in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.  It has been used less in looking at domestic violence or sexual assault, and it often works with the criminal justice system. 

The approach in this toolkit is smaller scale and does not connect with the criminal justice system. Many people won’t use the criminal justice system because it is not “just,” it is violent itself, and it takes away the possibility for change based on connection and care—instead relying more on punishment.

The approach in this toolkit is well aligned with the principles of Transformative Justice.  Creative Interventions promotes these alternatives in part because of its concern for social justice and the harms of the criminal justice system.

See the Creative Interventions website for more information and links to other organisations carrying out these discussions.