Enough is enough

Domestic violence is not a Samoan issue, it is a universal issue.

So says Lemalu Sina Retzlaff, after taking out a protection order against a former partner, Muliagatele Brian Lima, who assaulted her – in public during the weekend.

A former Manu Samoa, Muliagatele was arrested on Friday, Assistant Commissioner, Fauono Talalelei confirmed yesterday.

“He will be remanded at large until his case is mentioned in Court on 13 January 2014,” he said.

Fauono said Muliagatele has been charged with causing actual bodily harm and being armed with a dangerous weapon.

Police have obtained his travel documents. He has also been ordered not to approach or have contact with Lemalu.

During an interview with the Samoa Observer yesterday, Lemalu said from her experience, it didn’t matter whether you were rich or poor, educated or not, if you lived in Apia or within the rural areas within the village council setting, women everywhere are being affected by it.

“It doesn’t have any boundaries in terms of culture or religion it can happen to anyone and I believe it does happen to women from all walks of life,” she said.

Lemalu is speaking now simply because she has had enough.

She has been divorced for two years, and recently her ex-partner assaulted her again – this time in public.

“I should have gotten a protection order earlier and I learnt that the hard way,” she said. “My face is saying you should have gotten a protection order. You feel that you have left and that is enough then you try and make it an amicable situation where you take the children to breakfast together once every one month or two months.

“That is where I thought we were at, we would go together and take the children.

“There was a concert for our children just a couple of weeks ago where yes you can sit apart but then you get together and say hello and you are there because your children have a concert.

“What I was trying to avoid by not getting a protection order earlier is a relationship that was mature and healthy, the fact that we had three children.

“I am now learning the hard way that we need to assess situations where we need to be strong and women need to get a protection order when they leave.

“The moment you leave then you get a protection order and maybe for at least the first three years until everybody is used to it.”

Why didn’t she get one earlier?

“I thought it would have angered him…it was the eggshell approach I thought that anything to keep the peace,” she said. “And the protection order might even trigger some violence towards me that was unnecessary.

“I didn’t fully understand that I really needed it.”

Thankfully, Lemalu had a support network that rallied around her to ensure that the protection order was in place.

“I have been very fortunate to have support, especially these last few days,” she said. “Yesterday (Monday) for the protection order – five different lawyers who were either close friends or cousins offered to put the protection order application together.

“However, in going through the process of the police pressing charges, and myself getting a protection order I really, really thought about women who don’t have this support.

“What about women who don’t have the access and the privilege to this support?

“I can say from my experience that I don’t believe that we have systems and processes in place that are enough,” she said.

“I said this to the Domestic Violence Unit yesterday that I would be saying publically that it is not enough.

“When I asked the Domestic Violence Unit does the new Family Safety Act automatically have you put this protection order in process they said no.

“I thought that we had lobbied for that process to be done by the police.”

Instead, she was told that the Samoa Victims Support Group (S.V.S.G.) could help her to arrange for the order to be put in place.

“The answer I learnt yesterday was that the policeman at the Domestic Violence Unit told me that I can do that through their partners S.V.S.G.”

She said that was fine, but she knew that this was a Non-Government Organisation with a finite budget.

“I didn’t visit the Samoa Victim Support Group office yesterday simply because I felt that that was an organisation with limited resources and the last thing they needed was somebody to come and take up those resources when I had access to my own,” she said.

“So I didn’t walk across but I was definitely advised by the police Domestic Violence Unit to go across to them if I wanted a protection order.

“If that is the process that we have in place then I would urge Pacific Prevention of Domestic Violence Programme (P.P.D.V.P.) who fund the Police D.V.D. that their funding is in the wrong place.

“That their funding should be then across the  road with Lina (Chang) because that is where I was referred to if I needed a protection order; those are the people who do it.”

She said to be fair to the Ministry of Justice, the process of getting a protection order has been made much more simple.

“It is a very simple process now,” she said.

But “that would have required that the woman had the courage like I did yesterday to walk in without sunglasses on and ask.

“I don’t imagine many women would think to walk into the M.J.C.A. office in the courts.

“But you can and they will help you and the staff members there will be able to get the protection order rolling. You can have access to lawyers who will do it very quickly.

“Yes the process is simpler in that by the end of yesterday a judge had signed off and my protection order was in place so that is good.

“But I still feel it should be as simple as a woman walking into the D.V.U. of the police department and not have to have access to any other.

“What if they didn’t have access to the other resources around them, to networks of people around them?”

Like most countries, most violence against women is not reported.

“Women that are going through it now and our statistics say that in reported cases this issue is heavily underreported,” she said.

“The reported cases is one in three in Samoa.

“The latest U.N. report states that close to half the women in Samoa have experienced some sort of violence towards them.

“In all of those cases the perpetrator is a family member.

“The intimate partner relationship is the area where women are most affected.

“And I use that term because you don’t have to be married in our culture you can be living together.”

She said what she hopes for is that there can be discussions around early signs where our young women are able to see the issue and then help to avoid it in that sense.

“I feel that generally in Samoa we need to talk about it a lot more.

“It exists but it is very much seen as a private family matter,” she said.

“I’d like to have our conversations both publically and privately reach a point where we accept that it is not a private matter.

“That it is very much a national issue that…affects mothers, of course, apart from affecting mothers, there are your aunties and your sisters.

“I have studied a case where in one incident a Samoan male killed his partner she - was a grandmother.

“So, low and behold, it’s affecting women right to the end of their marriages even when they have matured into grandmothers…the heart of the family.

“The statistics say you go back seven times before you actually leave.

“So again as a nation, as we talk about this as a national issue, I would like to think that we grow and develop as people who become more understanding.”

Lemalu wants young women to know, young women who have yet to choose their partner to think about whether their relationship is healthy.

“I am saying to young women out there check who chooses the movie you go to, check whose friends you are around.

“Do you still have your friends or are you always around his friends?

“Those are the little signs I would like to put out there for young women.

“Think about what you are doing together and are you making any of those decisions?

When was the last time you chose the restaurant?

“Just to make you think, hang on, I actually don’t choose the station in the car and that’s while you are dating.

“Then, after dating, of course the skirt you used to love that was short can’t be short anymore.

“Those kind of things but those are the early warning signs.

“I would like to think that we don’t talk about abusive relationships to our young people, that we talk to them about healthy relationships and say this is what a healthy relationship looks like.

“And then put in the early warning signs instead of being in people's faces about anti-abuse it would be really great to start a healthy relationship campaign."

Tomorrow: the full Lemalu story.