Family harm is present in every community, and much still goes unreported. This may be because a victim of harm does not feel able to stand up to their aggressor, they are fearful of making the situation worse for themselves or don’t know which avenues to take.
Senior Constable Deb Hann – On the Beat
Last Thursday I was proud to be part of a presentation to survivors of family harm at week three of the inaugural running of the “I am Me” programme.
Together with a family court lawyer, I presented around the topics of police safety orders (PSOs), protection orders, parenting and associated occupancy orders.
We looked at the difference between a PSO and a protection order, how to recognise and report breaches and the processes that follow on from that.
The following day, I joined in as a facilitator for the “Loves Me Not” programme being delivered to Year 11 students from Cambridge High School.
The programme was originally developed by the Sophie Elliot Foundation to educate young people around consent, power and control and how to recognise a healthy and unhealthy relationship.
This year’s version was updated to focus on the Grace Millane story.
The course also looked at what we can do as bystanders, where we see unhealthy or harmful behaviour happening around us with students discussing ways that they could step in, to stop the harm from continuing or escalating.
Early education enables our rangatahi them to recognise harmful relationships in their own lives and also where those characteristics may be present in their friendships or others’ relationships.
The issue of consent is something that applies across all aspects of our day to day living. Knowledge definitely is power in that situation.
Crime never sleeps. Over the seven days prior to Tuesday this week in Cambridge, police responded to three family harm incidents, five burglaries, three car thefts/attempted car theft, recorded see7 bail breaches, trespass, 2 reports of wilful damage, fraud and traffic offending as well as fielding various queries over the public counter. In addition, the impairment prevention team caught 5 drunk drivers locally.
Te Awamutu police dealt with seven family harm incidents, four assaults including one serious, three incidents of threatening behaviour, fighting in a public place, six burglaries, two mental health incidents, fraud, three bail breaches, three thefts from cars, a traffic crash, drug offending and again, receiving stolen property, various front counter queries at the station.
