This week I stood in the New Zealand House of Representatives and disclosed publicly for the first time that I was once the victim of a sexual assault.

I am the co-leader of the Green party of New Zealand, the third largest party in our parliament, and I’ve been an MP for 13 years. I stare down the fiercest of opponents every day in this job, but bringing that dark memory into the full public glare was one of the most difficult moments of my career.

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I was one of several women MPs from the Green party and the Labour party who stood in parliament yesterday to reveal, several of us for the first time, that we were survivors of sexual abuse. One by one we rose to our feet to explain how, as survivors of sexual violence, we’d been offended when the prime minister, John Key, had accused us of “backing rapists” during a heated question time the day before. And one by one, after I was heard, each of the other women was cut off before she had finished, and either ordered to leave the house, or told to be quiet and resume her seat.

Silenced.

Sexual violence is at epidemic levels in New Zealand and too many people suffer their pain in silence. It is normalised and joked about and “rape culture” is engrained in almost every aspect of our lives.

So we took a stand against it.

As my brave colleague Catherine Delahunty told the media after leaving the House yesterday: “We’ve walked out because every woman in this country needs to know that women parliamentarians will not put up with this.”

If not us, women with power and influence, then who?

The day before, the prime minister had attacked members of the opposition for “backing rapists” because we had questioned him about his refusal to take Australia to task for locking up New Zealand citizens in an offshore detention centre on Christmas Island.

The truth is, about 50 New Zealand citizens have been detained under a policy that revokes the visas of anyone of “bad character” or who has been sentenced to crimes that carry a tariff of one year or more in prison.

Many of the detainees are people with minor historical convictions, people who have lived their entire lives in Australia, who have families, who have paid taxes there and been good Aussies. Some, however, do have serious convictions for abhorrent crimes.

But not one of the detainees has been convicted of rape or murder.

Australians and New Zealanders pride ourselves on a culture of fairness. We believe in justice and in holding offenders to account while retaining their, and therefore our, human dignity. We also really value the mateship we share with Australia, our close and enduring friendship.

But what we’ve seen in the case of the Kiwi detainees is our prime minister putting the interests of his mateship with the Australian prime minister ahead of his obligation to protect the human rights of all New Zealand citizens. Challenging our prime minister, as is our job in an open and healthy democracy, should not lead to him accusing victims of sexual violence of backing rapists, and neither should it excuse him from using rape as a political weapon.

Rape is not an abstraction for thousands of New Zealand men, women and children. It is not a political tool

Rape is not a distraction. It is certainly not an abstraction for thousands of New Zealand men, women and children. It is not a political tool.

This week the speaker of the House excused the prime minister. He did not require him to apologise for the offence he caused the parliament or the country. And so, because the speaker would not, the women MPs from Labour and the Greens took that leadership and held the prime minister to account ourselves.

After 13 years in parliament I stood, alongside many women colleagues, in the New Zealand House of Representatives and announced that I, too, have been a victim. And I was proud to do so.