BERNADETTE

I was an advocate at Rotorua Refuge when we received a call from the hospital asking if we would take a young woman into our whare. She was running from her abuser who was also the father of her young son. 

This was in the early 1980’s and our Refuge had a collective of women running it. We brought Bernadette into the refuge and over the next few weeks and many cups of tea she told us the stories of how she got to be with us.  

The night Bernadette had been injured she was travelling towards Rotorua with her abuser. She was in fear for her life. Coming into the city boundary he slowed the car enough that she decided to jump out onto the gravel. Before he could get out of the car and to her, she got up and threw herself in front of an oncoming car. She believed in that moment that it was ‘ die at his hands or die under the wheels of the car’ - she chose the car and survived with a shattered pelvis. 

Bernadette was young maybe mid 20’s with an unbreakable spirit and passionate love for her son whom her abuser had taken from her.  She had left this man on numerous occasions and each time he found her and either persuaded or forced her to return.  Most times she returned because her son was young and to be with him also meant being with the father. 

Bernadette left our whare and over the years we followed her journey from Rotorua to Hawkes Bay, Gisborne, Whakatane, Poneke and Hamilton as she sought help from sister Refuges. The outcome was the same, he would find her but before leaving she would send her love and gratitude to her friends across our Refuges. 

One time, I was doing a tipi haere around the region and knocked on the door of Thames Refuge. The woman on the other side asked who I was and I replied that she wouldn’t know me but my name was Roma Balzer. Well, the door flew open and Bernadette leapt out and gave me the biggest hug. She dragged me inside and over another cup of tea she caught me up on her life. 

She had another son, only a few months old. She told me her older boy was completely under his father’s control, and she was grieving that loss deeply. But this time felt different. For this baby, she had made a decision, she was never going back.

For the first time in her life, she was not living in fear or being controlled by it. There was a lightness about her. She was joyful. She carried hope for her future in a way we hadn’t seen before however Bernadette was also a realist. She knew him well. She told us he would understand that she was no longer willing to be controlled, and that this would make him unpredictable.

That day she asked us to promise something — that if anything happened to her, we would keep her baby safe. And we promised.

Three weeks later Bernadette was grabbed off the street by her batterer who then drove his van up the side of a hill causing it to roll. Bernadette and another passenger were not wearing seat belts, she died of a broken neck. 

Lance Taiwhanga, the man who caused her death was jailed for reckless driving causing death and serious injure to another. He served less than 2 years and despite Refuges hardest efforts, he gained custody of both sons upon his release.

40 yeard later I talk about Bernadette often because in her own right, she deserved to be remembered for the dynamic, gentle, loving, sincere, heroine, survivor she was. Not a forgotten sister.