Angry men defy protection orders to terrorise women

• Published date: 08 November 2021

“It was hideous, it was intrusive and I didn’t feel safe,” she told the Herald.

The woman, who is not being named to protect her identity, installed CCTV cameras to feel better protected, despite having gone through the “traumatising” experience of obtaining a final protection order against her former partner.

Sadly, hers is not an isolated case. A growing number of women say the system isn’t working well enough to protect them from violent partners.

A second woman told the Herald her ex-partner would wear her down by “constant contact”, despite there being an order in place.

“When you’re dealing with someone with an extensive criminal history, they don’t respect the law and they can continue to retraumatise you ... coming over and knocking on the door, saying ‘if you don’t f***ing let me in I’m gonna boot the door down’.

“A protection order does not protect me at all. It does not protect me from the person who has physically abused me in the past, beating my door down.”

These women are among thousands of people whose protection orders are breached every year.

Nearly 5000 protection-order offences come before the courts each year in New Zealand, according to police figures obtained under the Official Information Act.

In addition to that, the number of police safety orders — which are issued by officers and require a violent person to leave the home immediately during a family harm callout — have skyrocketed.

They have gone from 461 to almost 2000 a year in a decade and reported breaches jumped by more than 400 between 2018 and 2019 alone.

In the first half of this year, there were 2400 proceedings for protection-order breaches, and more than 1000 police safety orders were breached.

Auckland barrister Sheila McCabe said she was “gobsmacked” by the number.

“Breaches are not unheard of but I was surprised to see there were that many.”

Although she’s shocked at the figures, McCabe believes it shows the system is working.

“In my experience, if there are serious breaches, police deal with it and so they should because breaches need to not be tolerated,” she said.

Police say the high level of PSO breaches is a result of more being issued.

“We’ve had a whole lot more family harm reporting over the years. Police have done a lot of work to try and improve the way we investigate and solve family harm episodes,” said family harm manager Seema Kotecha.

Retired Family Court lawyer Gareth Bodle believes breaches that make it to court are only the tip of the iceberg.

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