Enough is enough. As an adult if you have never confided to anyone what you suffered as a child – it is time, writes Ruta Mave.

Saying I told you so has no joyful celebration or feeling of winning when the abuser you tried to warn people about abuses again. Saying I’m sorry, after every time hitting or violating your partner or child does not carry any belief or sincerity when it doesn’t mean it will stop. Promises to never do it again are loaded lies to avoid punishment because it is often a habit.

People don’t want to hear about any more abuse. They don’t want to have their minds sullied with words and images that are despicable or unfathomable to comprehend, of what is happening to little girls here in Paradise.

Tough. If you can’t stomach it, spare a thought for the criminal detectives in our understaffed but dedicated police force who day in and day out are hearing the stories of what our men in our Christian community are doing to our precious vaine.

Think about the councillors in the school system who hear the cries of despair from victims and with that knowledge, have to carefully and skilfully guide them to a place they feel safe to report it to the police.

Understand. The hours of necessary questioning that poor, hurt and vulnerable girl has to endure reliving the horrors bestowed on her by someone she knows and someone she has been told to trust. Then when she is taken home, her very own mother, sister, aunty yell at her or beat her for speaking up and putting shame on the family name. 

When did the family name mean more than the life of the child? When they too were abused and they were beaten into submission never to tell and they never did tell.

When they found out that others in the family had suffered the same as them. When they accepted it as normal. This is how family life is.

Wrong. Rape and incest are not normal. Do these words make you wince? Abuse covers a lot of ground, hard and soft, it is easier to say than rape, sodomy, incest.

Back when the family law bill was circulating asking for public input, a mama in Matavera stood up and asked “what about incest. Will it be addressed in the family law bill?” The answer from the panel was convoluted and dismissive, it appeared to be swept under the carpet. If it was addressed, does it carry a heavier sentence than a crime of spontaneity? It should.

Incest requires manipulation, coercion and deceit. Men use their close contact to their advantage. As the adult they instruct, threaten and overpower the minds of the child with fear. They know what they are doing. They arrange themselves into a position of trust so they can take easy advantage of the child – regularly. Ninety-five (95) per cent of victims know their rapist.

There is a call out to always know where your children are. You do know where they are, you more often than not just arranged for the predator to pick them up from school. You accepted the predator’s offer to look after them while you go to church or sport. You let them travel alone, stay in the house alone with the predator. How can you blame the child.

In parts of India, they carry out honour killings of a girl child who has shamed the family after opening the door to the neighbour who then rapes her. He is not punished. The father, brother, uncle will kill the girl in honour of protecting the family name.

Is this where we are going to end up? Is your family name so precious that you will sacrifice a child to the family sexual deviant rather than have him put in jail where he will get distance from temptation?

Wake up. Your Christian movements, your Cook Islands passport, your celebration of 60 years independence is stained in shame with our domestic violence statistics. We have let the sanctity of the home become hell on earth for generations of women and children.

Enough is enough. As an adult if you have never confided to anyone what you suffered as a child – it is time. It is time to understand it was not your fault, you did not do anything wrong. What is wrong is letting him, them continue to do it, to your child.

It is time we put our children first and our men third. There are good men who don’t do it, but if they know someone who does and they do not say something or stop it by reporting them, then they allow a community where children including theirs, risk becoming prey. This is our reality.

Fourteen years in government, what are they doing to stop it?

Our children need protection. The police need your help. Stop protecting the predator. Report him – support her.