It happened when Delcelia was murdered.  Again, we became aware of the level of abuse and torture suffered by Lillybing preceding her murder.  We went there once more when we saw the battered and shattered lifeless body of James Whakaruru.  And we were horrified by the beating & death of Rocky Wano at the hands of his father when he disobeyed him and went to a school disco anyway.  We cried when Tangaroa Matiu was brutally beaten and killed, over time, by his step dad.  And twelve months ago we were a nation in mourning, shocked in disbelief at the brutal deaths of Chris and Cru Kahui.   And before anyone starts to spout off the familiar, ‘look, they’re all Māori kids’, let us not forget Amber Lundy, Holly, Claudia & Tiffany Bristol,  Olympia Jetson & Saliel Aplin, Kelly Gush and of course Coral-Ellen Burrows.  Sadly and tragically we don’t have the room here to name all the women and children, who have lost their lives due to family violence, there are THAT many. 

Worldwide, more women die from violence than are killed by cancer, road accidents or diseases.  According to Amnesty International, at least one in three women in the world will suffer serious violence in her lifetime.   In New Zealand, a woman is killed by her former or current partner every 2 ½ weeks.  Every year the Police attend approximately 11,000 instances of reported family violence.  This equates to one incident every eight minutes. Fifty percent of all homicides in 2000, were family violence related (NZ Police Internal Report, 2003).  And shamefully, New Zealand has one of the highest recorded incidences of violence towards women and children in the western world. 

Improving community and institutional responses to women and children are key objectives for any programme aimed at reducing the impacts of family violence.  As a nation, we face the challenge of developing service interventions and community action strategies that work towards providing safety and security for women and children who are victims of family violence.  We need a Government who is seriously committed to ‘zero tolerance’ to violence. And more importantly we need a ‘legal’ system that enforces ‘justice’.

Roma has had 25 years experience in the battered women’s movement, her work spanning local, national and international levels.  At a local level, Roma is a member of Te Whakaruruhau Māori Women’s Refuge.  Roma was instrumental in initiating an interagency collaborative approach for responding to family violence in Hamilton through the inception of the Hamilton Abuse Intervention Project in 1991, which she then managed for 12 years.  The project, a comprehensive community initiative is aimed at enhancing institutional responsiveness to battered women and their children, has since been replicated throughout the country.  The Family Violence Technical Assistance Unit was also set up, by Roma, in 2006 to provide frontline agencies with resources, training opportunities and research.  The Silent Witness project within this unit, gathers and collates data on domestic homicides is the first of its nature in Aotearoa.  Roma has served on the Care and Protection Resource Panel of the Hamilton District Office the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Service and the Hamilton Safer Communities Council.

At the national level, Roma has had two terms as national coordinator of the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges and one term as a member of the National Core Group (Executive Committee of Women’s Refuges). She has served on the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Family Violence and the Women’s Refuge Foundation Trust. She has been a regular contributor to working groups overseeing the implementation of Te Rito, the Government’s Family Violence Strategy.  Roma was recognised in 2006 and awarded a QSO for her outstanding efforts and achievements in the family violence field.

Internationally, Roma has provided training, consultancy and key note addresses to various domestic violence organisations. She has been particularly active in supporting indigenous women’s efforts to combat domestic violence in the United States and Australia.

In addition to her community, policy and advocacy work, Roma has produced various publications, including training manuals and was the lead author on Te Puni Kokiri’s Māori Family Violence in Aotearoa.