How can you support the person who was harmed?

Signs of immediate danger

There are a few signs of extreme danger.  You should check this list regularly, especially when something has changed, like if the person causing harm has been confronted, or the person being harmed has left the relationship or has a new partner.  The most dangerous times are when the person causing harm feels like they are losing control of the relationship.

Signs of extreme danger:

• Threats to kill or suicide
• Using weapons, threatening to use weapons, or talking about using weapons (like guns, knives, a car, poisons)
• Choking (strangulation or putting hands around a person’s neck)
• Using intimidation and fear (like threatening violence, punching holes in a wall, shouting in a person’s face, sharpening knives, cleaning a gun)
• Intense, violent possessiveness—like owning a person, controlling who they talk to, where they go, jealousy
• Other controlling behaviour to cause fear (like controlling what a person wears, who they can see, where they can go, controlling their money, keeping them away from friends or whānau)
• Forced sex or sexual violence
• Stalking or surveillance (including in person, by phone or social media, checking a person’s phone, emails or social media)
• The violence is getting worse or more often
• The person harmed feels scared or in danger (if they aren’t scared that doesn’t mean they aren’t in danger—sometimes people cope with extreme, ongoing stress by denying it, even to themselves)
• Others are worried that the person harmed is in danger.

Take these signs seriously.  If one or more of these are true, get help and act now. 

Think about the best way to get safer.  If you don’t already have good support, think about what you can do—there are organisations you can call anytime to help you with that and to help with safety (see Resources).

If you have good support, the fastest, safest path might be using that support with tools on this website (there are tools and information in How do you stay safe for the person harmed, person causing harm and allies).  You might feel safer with the help of an organisation—there are organisations you can call anytime for help (see Resources [link to Resources: helplines]).

If you are the person harmed, who can help you work out how to get safer (see Who can help?)?  If you don’t know who to turn to, there are numbers you can call anytime for help (see Resources).  See How do you stay safe for tools and information about safety.

If you are an ally, can you safely tell the person who is being hurt that you will support them if they need help?  Are there other people you can safely talk to about what you see happening (see Who can help?)?  Think very carefully before confronting the person causing harm, especially if you haven’t talked with the person they are hurting and don’t have a safety plan.  You may make things worse.  See How do you stay safe for tools and information about safety.

If you are the person causing harm, stop.  Get help (see Who can help?).  Call or text 1737 anytime to talk to a trained counsellor, or see Resources for organisations that can help.  Take responsibility for lowering the danger—get rid of any weapons, get yourself away from the situation, find people who can support you to be safer.  See How do you take accountability for tools and information about taking responsibility for the harm you are causing.

What does the person who has harmed need? Checklist

Supporting people who were harmed can look many different ways.  This tool has types of support that people who were harmed have said were helpful.

If you are the person harmed, this list is good to share with allies (add your own ideas too).

Ways to support someone who was harmed

• Making a human connection
• Letting them know someone cares
• Listening to their story
• Asking what they need
• Helping get what they need
• Reminding them that interpersonal violence happens to lots of people
• Praising them for everything they do about their situation of harm, including talking
• Letting them know they’re not alone
• Things you can offer:
  • Listening ear
  • Patience when they can’t make a decision, are confused, change their mind, repeat themselves
  • Someone to lean on, a hand to hold through fear, shame, confusion, depression, embarrassment
  • Sounding board—to listen and offer feedback, and only give advice if asked
  • Safety (See How do you stay safe)
  • Medical care
  • Mental health care or counselling
  • Spiritual support
  • Companionship
  • Supporting children or other dependents—childcare, child pick-up, activities with children, emotional support for children who may be going through a hard time too
  • Taking care of pets, plants or others they usually care for
  • Helping others to be good allies—trusted friends, family members, neighbours, co-workers, community members
  • Protecting them from people who bring risk or harm, and people who want to be helpful but aren’t
  • Supporting the person doing harm to take accountability, if you can (See How do we support accountability)
  • Taking accountability if you are the person who caused harm (See How can you take accountability)
  • Help finding and connecting them to resources
  • Help with housing or safe shelter
  • Help moving, storing things, packing, unpacking
  • Help with rides/transportation, access to telephone or internet
  • Help with other necessary things (clothes, food, money, transport, etc)
  • Help figuring out how they want to talk about what is happening, what they need, and what they want to prioritise
  • Help with translation, interpretation (for non-English or limited English speakers or hearing or visually impaired), and issues working with service providers
  • Help figuring out ways around systems like police, criminal justice, immigration, or child welfare
• Help them use this website
  • Become familiar with this website
  • Introduce them to the website in a way that is useful, like reading pieces, printing pages, translating useful information
  • Introduce other allies to the website in a way that is useful
  • Play a role as an ally (See Who can help)

What does the person who was harmed need? Guiding questions

If you have been harmed by violence and want support from others that you trust, these are some questions to think about:

Who can support you?

1. Who are the people you usually turn to?
2. Who has been helpful? What made them helpful?
3. Who do you think could help with your situation of violence?
4. If you aren’t sure you want to turn the people you usually turn to, why not?
5. When you think about people to support you with your situation of violence, what is important to you?
6. Who are some other trusted people you might be able to talk to?
7. If you can’t think of anybody right now, what sort of people could you look for to help?

What kind of support do you want?

1. What support do you want (make a list)?:
   (See What does the person who was harmed need?  Checklist [link to Tool E1] for ideas)
2. When you look at the list above, the most important are:
3. Are there things that you know you do NOT want?
4. Think about how to use this exercise to ask for help.  You can practise asking for these things.  You can meet with someone you trust and have them help you figure out how to find more support.  You can use these lists to write a letter about what you want (and don’t want).

Participation of the person who was harmed in an intervention

If the person who was harmed wants to be involved, interventions that include them work better and are safer.  This chart helps sort out what level of their involvement best describes your intervention process, or what you would like your process to be.

Chart. Participation levels of the person who was harmed

*What if the person who was harmed is not involved?

In the last three rows, the person who was harmed is not involved in the intervention.  For example, they may want to move on, they may be scared or in hiding.  The person harmed might not be connected or known, they may be too young to be involved, or unwell, they might have died. 

But the intervention goes ahead because others decide they have to respond to what happened.  For example, organisations often have policies about responding to abuse, a whānau might want to deal with a whanaunga’s behaviour, some people will feel like they either have to drop their friend or support them to change.  

Even though it’s better if the person harmed is involved, it is possible to respond to violence with little or no involvement from them.  The intervention still has responsibility to support them and try not to add to their harm.  This can include:

• Making sure they know how to join at any time, and the process to check in with them
• Including their goals or likely goals
• Offering support listed in What does the person who was harmed need? Checklist
• Someone representing them, like a partner, close friend, parent or other whanaunga
• Offering an updates on the intervention, like:
  • Things the person doing harm or the community that allowed harm have been asked to do
  • What kind of follow-up the person or community doing harm will do
  • Results of the intervention at agreed times (like weekly, monthly, after anything important happens or at the end of an intervention).

1. Read the Basics section

Interpersonal violence is complicated.  Many of us don’t really understand it or what to do about it.  Read the Basics about violence section for a clearer picture of what is going on.  The Basics about violence intervention section shares lessons Creative Interventions have learned from responding to violence.

Share this information with others who may be in a situation of violence and need resources to help them work out what to do.

2. Asking for support is hard

The person who was harmed may fear judgment from others, or more violence from the person doing harm.  They may blame themselves, they may feel ashamed.   They may have asked for help and been knocked back or ignored.  All of this makes it difficult to talk about violence and ask for help. 

Victim blaming is common.  Don’t blame the person who was harmed for not asking for what they need, for changing their minds or for asking for too much.  It is not their fault.  

Supporting people who have been harmed means being patient, forgiving and non-judgmental, and understanding the barriers to asking for help.

3. Don’t promise more than you can give

You may want to promise many things when you hear about violence.  Think about what you can do—your time, your energy, your ability, your own safety.  Work with others so that together you can give support that you couldn’t do alone.

If you promise something that you can’t follow through on, talk honestly and take responsibility.

If you start to blame the person harmed or others because you can’t do what you said, take a step back.  Be honest with yourself about how it feels to let somebody down.  Don’t cover up guilt or embarrassment with blame.

4. Think of support as a partnership

If you are asked to do something, you may want to refuse, stall or run away.  Or you might want to take over and be a hero.  Good support is a partnership where you are standing side-by-side, not running away or taking over.  If something is asked of you, think about whether you can do it, and try to do just that.

5. The person who was hurt knows what happened and how it affected them

The person who was harmed is the only person who knows the full extent and effect of the violence.  They understand how subtle threats and fear of past violence are used to control, isolate and silence them.  Hearing them name the violence can be an important step in taking action to repair the harm and stop future violence.  It may be an important goal of your intervention. 

They may choose to record their experience in some way so that they don’t have to keep repeating themselves and re-living the trauma (see What is going on). 

6. Community-based intervention works best when the person who was harmed is involved

Many interventions are started or led by the person who was harmed.  Other times, they may not want to be involved.  They may be too young, they may not want to be seen as victims, they may not want to risk their relationship.  Sometimes the person harmed wants something to happen, but doesn’t want to be involved—it might be too hard, they may be worn out, over it, or they may think that it will go better if they aren’t involved.

You might not want to work with the person who was harmed.  You might find them difficult, too emotional, unreasonable.  You might disagree with what they want, or you might want to protect them from the intervention.

Finding a way for the person harmed to be involved will help the intervention.  They may be:

1. Leading the intervention
2. Actively involved
3. Checking in regularly to get information and give feedback
4. Getting information infrequently about what has been done and how it’s going
5. Only hearing the final outcome.

They need to be included in these decisions, and whatever their level of involvement, it is important to have someone in your team connected to them or checking in with them. 

7. Supporting the person who was harmed keeps going throughout an intervention

Supporting the person who was harmed should be part of the plan, including who will check in with them throughout the process.  They will probably want to know what is going on, and they may need different support at different times.  If they aren’t actively involved, how can you make sure they aren’t neglected?  Especially when you focus on the person doing harm. 

Make sure at least one person is responsible for supporting or checking on their needs.  Make space for the person harmed to check in with you, to share their fears or concerns.  Make sure that they are safe, and that others connected to them (like children or other dependents) are also supported.

8. Offer honest support to the person harmed

You may not always agree with the values, opinions or goals of the person harmed, but try to keep your judgment, blame and frustration away from them.  Think about where your feelings are coming from.  Working with violence can bring up anger, fear, disappointment and shame, and turn people against the person harmed. 

It is okay to not like them, to find them difficult or frustrating.  Try to separate your feelings about them from your understanding of what has happened and what needs to happen.  As much as possible, step back and use the tools on this website to tackle differences and reach consensus, for example, when agreeing on values and goals, or when working out who is being harmed and who is causing harm (See Basics about violence).  Honesty with yourself is an important part of this.

9. Support is hard, make sure you have your own support

Offering support can be exhausting, frightening and disappointing.  It can bring up painful memories. 

At times, you will feel unacknowledged and unappreciated.  The person harmed may not want the support you offer.  You might make a mistake, your attitudes or actions may cause harm.  You might disappoint or anger the person harmed.  Disappointment and anger might be about the stress of violence and intervention, or it might be about the way you are giving support.

Learn from this.  Forgive yourself for mistakes you make.  Have your own support.  Try to build an intervention that gives time to step away, to think about and give feedback and support to everyone involved.

10. Support for the person harmed can be complicated if you have a relationship with the person who hurt them

You may want to support the person harmed, and also have a relationship with the person causing harm.  Having people who can support both of them can help the team act in a more holistic way.  But it can also cause conflict.  You might feel that supporting the person harmed is betraying the person doing harm.  You might feel protective of the person doing harm and see the intervention as unfair or overly harsh.  You might question your own loyalties and wonder whose side you are on.

Remember, if you care about the person who has caused harm, supporting the person they hurt is a way of helping them too.