They say it takes a village to raise a child and when the village fails the innocent, and fails women, something very precious dies within us all, writes Thomas Tarurongo Wynne.

As we celebrated this week International Women’s Day, and the struggle that women globally face for equality, a Court room in Avarua found a 55-year-old man guilty of rape and other sexual offending against a 15-year-old girl following a three-day jury trial at the High Court. We can be thankful that in this case the young woman found the courage to speak up after such a horrendous act to a social worker, who then thankfully followed procedure with such a disclosure and disclosed this to the Police who acted upon this complaint and followed this through to trial and a conviction. Because more often than not, they say nothing and instead live with this violation.

I’m a 55-year-old man, and I thought, this man and I were born in the same year, we could have gone to the same schools, played in the same sports teams and worshiped maybe in the same Church. We could have lived in the same village, been teenagers at the same social and dances, and maybe we are even related. And yet his view of women, and mine are polar opposites, there is no common ground or shared experience, no sexist jokes, slurs on women or objectifying nor middle ground where we meet, when we consider his actions that have now come to fruit in a court of law. 

Victims of sexual abuse who are more often, though not always women, and young women, and despite an offender being convicted, are now also sentenced to live with the trauma of that violence, because it’s an act of violence not sex.

The fact that this violation appears in the paper the week we celebrate International Women’s Day is an irony not missed on many of us as we question men and women, have we really advanced the equity and safety of women be it in their homes, in schools, in social outings, in our families and while alone in their bedrooms.

And what about pay equity, as we consider the role and plight of women in our homes and communities, what about the question of equal pay for equal work? An article in Aotearoa this week highlighted that Pasifika women are now effectively working for no pay for the rest of the year compared with what men get paid, according to a public sector union, thanks to the size of the gap between them and Pākehā men.

Pasifika women earned on average 25.4 per cent less than Pākehā men, according to data from the Public Service Association, and drawn from Statistics NZ figures. That meant that in 272 days, or by September 29, the average Pākehā man had already earned what the average Pasifika woman had to work all year for with her effectively working for free from September to the end of December.

The question men, we need to ask ourselves, because it is us and those before us that constructed this system that has worked in our favour with regard to pay equality, and how do we dismantle it and work with women to reconstruct it again so these disparities no longer exist? And while we are at it, men, how do we dismantle the privilege and sexual, violence or the objectifying of women that has enabled these hideous acts for the most part to go unspoken, from one generation to the next, with predators weaving their way into the lives of those we as a village said we would raise. Because if we believe that it takes a village to raise a child then that village has failed. 

In the case of this brave young 15-year-old girl, the village has absolutely failed her. The village for whatever reason did not stop the actions when they first took place, and only when she mustered a deep sense of courage despite often a sense of shame; she spoke up, and the system then was able to come to her help. Courage, that we men, no matter where we may be or what we do, should take note of, because it will take this kind of courage to dismantle and change our hearts first, and then dismantle a system that continues to benefit us while preying upon those we were meant to honour, protect and serve, because when the village fails the innocent, and fails women, something very precious dies within us all.