Today feels better than yesterday.



Yesterday my interview with the NZ Herald was published, talking about the sexual abuse I experienced as a child. Something I’d never really talked about. Something I never even told my family.

Sexual violence is rampant in our families and communities – in every community. We all know someone who’s been affected by it – but we may not know who they are. Because it’s so incredibly difficult to talk about it. Even for me, a politician, a party co-leader, someone with a lot of privileges and confidence, it took being approached for an interview to realise I could tell my story. And I had to.

'You just shut down': New Zealand politician talks about being sexually abused Read more

Because it’s the silence and the shame that allows sexual abuse to continue. It’s the fear of what might happen when you tell someone. I felt protective of my family, and didn’t want to upset them.

It’s not having the words to describe what’s happening to you, especially if you’re a young child. I didn’t know what to call it, just that it felt icky. I felt embarrassed.

It’s feeling that you’re the only one going through this. But you aren’t. After my interview was published, I had family contact me. “Were you talking about ...?” The person who hurt me had hurt other people in my whānau [family]. Sexual abuse is really insidious.

This is literally #MeToo. It just takes one person to speak out – and then others join them. “I’ve gone through that, too.” “That person did the same thing to me.” “This is still happening now.”

I knew that being where I am in life – being someone with a lot of support, and a profile and a big platform to speak from, I had to be one of the ones who breaks the silence and makes space for others to follow.

And since my story came out, I’ve had many, many messages from people telling me that they don’t feel isolated any more. They’ve been reminded not to blame themselves. They’ve been able to take my words to describe what happened to them because they’ve never been able to articulate it themselves. One message in particular will stay with me forever, from someone who had also been sexually abused. She said “You vocalised some thoughts I had not yet formed.”

People of all genders, all ages, all backgrounds have been coming through to me saying they’ve lived with this shame their whole lives, and having me – someone who seems to have her stuff together, someone who is seemingly strong and successful – share my story has empowered them to talk about it, has helped them to start feeling human again.

This can happen to anyone. And it doesn’t have to destroy our lives.

And that’s what I wanted to achieve. The awkwardness and discomfort and pain of the past day is 100% worth it if it helps other people who’ve experienced abuse, and especially if it helps people who are currently experiencing abuse to know that they can reach out, they can tell someone, they can say it’s not OK.

We’re doing a lot of work with this new government to address family and sexual violence, and it’s all incredibly important. Just last night, my colleague Jan Logie got her bill to introduce domestic violence leave one step closer to becoming law.

But what’s crucial, what our laws and policies depend on, is the work we do outside parliament, making it safe for victims to talk about what’s been done to them and to call out abusive behaviour in our families and communities.

We need to give everyone, and especially children who don’t understand concepts like abuse, or even sex, the tools to stop it. We need to send the message that each of us, even littlies, have control over our own bodies, and when something makes us uncomfortable or unsafe, we can say no. We can tell someone we trust that something’s wrong, even if we don’t have words for it.

Our kids have to be able to trust us to listen to them and take them seriously.

I have a daughter the same age I was when this happened to me. I need her to know that there is nothing she could say to me that would hurt me or make me angry if she was feeling unsafe, or if someone we know was hurting her. That her safety and her wellbeing are the most important thing in the world to me.

I need every child to feel like that, so tomorrow can be better than today.

• Marama Davidson is co-leader of the Green party in New Zealand

• Comments on this article have been premoderated given the highly sensitive topics raised