A sister to lean on
Ruahine Albert was one of the founders of New Zealand’s first Māori Women’s Refuge. She has been breaking new ground ever since with a flexible, whānau-focused approach that excludes no-one who is willing to change.
People say Ruahine (Roni) Albert changes lives. Some even say she saves lives. But when you ask the leader and co-founder of Te Whakaruruhau Māori Women’s Refuge how she feels about what she has achieved, Roni says she thinks of a woman with “property of Leon” tattooed on her face.
And that’s when she is reminded, after more than 20 years of working around the clock to help Māori women, children and families be safe from abusive relationships, that there is still a long way to go.
Roni met Leone Newman when she came to Te Whakaruruhau Māori Women’s Refuge seeking help to escape an abusive relationship. That was the first time. Leone’s second partner tattooed his name on her face. She came back to Te Whakaruruhau for help. She wanted to change her life and that is what she was doing in 2006 when Leon Colin Wilson was released from prison and beat her to death.
Roni was profoundly affected. “I knew how much she had been through. She was strong, but not physically strong enough – not enough to look after herself with this man.”
Recently, Te Whakaruruhau Māori Women’s Refuge celebrated the opening of two new purpose-built safe houses in Hamilton for up to 30 women and children. That same week police were on the hunt for Leon Wilson for breaching his parole conditions. For Roni, as Te Whakaruruhau marked the realisation of a dream and years of effort, it was a stark reminder of why she does what she does.
New Zealand’s first Māori Women’s Refuge
It is 25 years since Roni and her friend Ariana Simpson opened Te Whakaruruhau Māori Women’s Refuge in Hamilton. It was New Zealand’s first refuge for Māori women, an answer to a call for a refuge that supported Māori women in a Māori way.
Roni has led Te Whakaruruhau for the past 20 years. In the beginning, it operated out of a four-bedroom Housing New Zealand home. Its three staff worked around the clock, dealing with around 30 cases of domestic violence a month. Demand for the service grew fast. At times there were up to 30 people staying in the house.
These days, Te Whakaruruhau’s work has grown far beyond emergency safe house accommodation. Its work extends into the community with post-crisis support and early intervention with families struggling with domestic violence. Now, a staff of 33 works with around 6,000 women, children and families every year, both in the safe house and in the community.
Te Whakaruruhau’s safe house is run like a marae, based on principles of whānaungatanga, kotahitanga, rangatiratanga, wairuatanga. The women share responsibility of the day-to-day running of the homes, with collective meals, housework and childcare. The new property includes two houses with four sleeping wings. A meeting house will be added in the future. Newcomers are welcomed and cared for as manuhiri. From that starting point, the work begins towards healing, strengthening and breaking the cycle of violence.
The new complex will provide programmes on life planning, cultural practices, cooking, positive parenting, emotional and psychological support and information, health, individual and whānau goal setting, to name a few.
“It is full on, but we want it to be real, with the skills they need to look after their kids and sort their lives out,” says Roni.
Te Whakaruruhau’s approach is very flexible. It is the unique needs and goals of each woman and her kids that shape the support she gets, both from services and extended whānau.
When the women are strong enough, Te Whakaruruhau advocates walk alongside them as they settle back into the community.
“It’s about supporting them towards where they want to go with their lives.”
Te Whakaruruhau has also taken the whānau-focused step of supporting men in families who are struggling with violence and want to change through mentoring, role models, stopping violence and parenting programmes, and drug and alcohol programmes.
“Not the men who have no willingness to change – that’s a waste of time. But those who are willing to work at breaking the cycle, to be consistent and to keep it up, because behaviour doesn’t change just like that. It’s about knowing that anger is all about you and no one else. You have to learn ways to manage that anger, and that takes time.”
Changing lives
Te Whakaruruhau has been a turning point in the lives of thousands of women, including Roni.
Twenty-five years ago, she was still working to break out of her own cycle of drinking and violence. Learning to manage her anger so that it does not affect others has been a long journey.
A ward of the state, raised in a Pakeha family with little connection to her Māori family, Roni says she had little sense of her own identity. Drug and alcohol use led to misbehaviour as a teenager, and grew into violence.
“I was in a girls’ home as a teenager. I was sent to Tokanui (psychiatric hospital) and I was in prison for three months. I had that kind of a lifestyle.”
Then she became involved with the Māori movement, and it was there she met Ariana Simpson who was working with Te Kakano o te Whānau, a Māori women’s sexual abuse network. At that time, in the mid 1980s, there was a growing feeling that mainstream Women’s Refuges were not meeting the needs of Māori women and their whānau. Roni and Ariana stepped up to the challenge.
Setting up Te Whakaruruhau was a turning point for me,” says Roni. “I was 25, trying to get off the drink and I’d lost a lot of friends. I could not reconcile my own behaviour with working in an area that was non-violent.
So Ariana ran the refuge, while Roni took care of the property and the practical side of things, went to counselling and broke her habit.
“After a while I started taking the women to lawyers, Work and Income, Housing New Zealand, the Courts. I got to know how hard it was for women to get help, and I got to know how the systems worked. During those early years I liked doing the detective work, finding the men and ringing the police and saying ‘I’ve found him’. I have a protective nature, I loved the energy of it and I got stuck in.”
Roni has been getting stuck in ever since then. She is paid for five working days a week, but is on call around the clock. A seven-day working week with some night work is usual.
“I don’t really have any other life,” she says. “But you just can’t say no. You can’t turn people away.”
She has always been one to stick up for what is right. “Mum raised me to follow my conscience and I will always be the one to speak up when something is wrong and keep trying until it is fixed.”
She says her own life journey has helped her “big time” in her work. As a Māori raised in a Pakeha family, she has insight into the difficulties of reintegrating with birth whānau. “That’s a problem faced by many who have grown up in social welfare care.”
It also means she can move comfortably in both cultures, and that has helped her form strong relationships between Te Whakaruruhau and government agencies and funders. As a result, Te Whakaruruhau can quickly get all sorts of help for their women, children and families – from housing and financial assistance to medical treatment or counselling.
“Our relationships with the Crown are crucial. We often need to work with the Police, Health, or Child, Youth and Family if there are children involved.”
Assistant Police Commissioner Allan Boreham says Roni and Te Whakaruruhau are always available for those needing help, and are highly trusted by the police. He says she is a rare type of leader, with “passion for improving safety of all women, selflessness of her own time, personal humility and respect for all people including offenders.”
Working with offenders
Six years ago Roni and her team began working with Te Ao Marama Māori Focus Unit in Waikeria Prison, focusing on family violence.
“The prison runs a tikanga programme which lines up to our own beliefs and values, and we could see potential in that.” It was the start of a highly unusual, but positive relationship between perpetrators of domestic violence, and those dealing with its effects. The men repair the houses of women who have had to flee from violence in their homes. Before that happened, Te Whakaruruhau staff had managed these tasks on their own.
“I remember the men went to one house that was blood splattered and smashed up. They spent two days there, and the guard said it was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop most of the time.
“Some of those men came back to us and said they had never realised the impact that some of them had left behind.”
But there is no judgement from the women of Te Whakaruruhau towards the men.
“We show our appreciation for their work by ensuring they are well fed and in how we treat them,” says Roni. “We honour these men for the work they do for us. They have helped so many of our families now.”
An outstanding woman
Roni was the Ministry of Social Development’s nomination for the 2011 Next Woman of the Year.
Backing the nomination, former Hamilton mayor and family violence expert Margaret Evans says “Ask anyone involved in family violence in the Waikato and you will be told that Roni is the heart and soul of ‘stopping’ efforts.
“She is the hands-on practitioner, at the frontline, stopping the violence when others might hold back, intent always on the immediate safety of the mother and children, and then working on the longer-term plan.
“Every day for almost three decades now this woman has saved lives and gifted new ones… she is the human ambulance, the sister to lean on, the one who understands.”
As for Roni, she says she was pretty daunted by the nomination and feels humbled next to the stories of the other women who have been nominated for the award. She also says there’s a long way to go. “We don’t always get it right. We are still learning.”
