This is my story.

Hey Hollaback friends,

My name is Liv Hall. I’m eighteen years old, a second year Law, Politics and English student at Vic, debater, Harry Potter fanatic and musical theatre lover. I’m also now lucky enough to be part of this amazing project known as Hollaback. Last night I met with some of the wonderful women who have put together the Wellington branch of this international effort to support those who experience street harassment, and as a result I will now be contributing to the blog and website when possible. But I wanted to start by sharing my own story of street harassment and how I came to discover the Hollaback service.

As a first point of reference, if you look slightly further down on the home page you will see “Olivia’s Story”, which is a post I put in to Hollaback a few months ago after an unpleasant experience on Lambton Quay. While I had previously experienced the far too common ordeal of being yelled at or verbally abused on the streets, I’d never had someone invade my personal space in that physical way before, and if I’m honest, it scared me. I felt less safe walking around at night and I became far more aware of the fact that I was a woman on the streets of Wellington, and what that can mean. It took a bit of thinking about to realize that being made to feel that way is really not okay. The problem is it happens so often and is so under-reported that people come to expect it, assuming that it is just one of those things we are supposed to take and roll with. But let me assure you, it’s not.

Then, over Summer, I was in Auckland and had another unpleasant encounter. I was waiting at a large bus stop for my brother. Slightly further down the bench from me was an older man, and on his other side a boy I took to be about my age. I could feel the older man staring at me and while it made me a bit uncomfortable, I tried to ignore it and focus on the email I was reading. He was harder to ignore when he began speaking. From what I recall, his words were “Oi missy, those are some grade A tits you’ve got there. I’d love to put my head between those.” And then he laughed. I had no idea how to react, essentially shocked into silence. The teenage boy on his other side also laughed, and while I appreciate he may not have known how to intervene or how to respond, that hurt me as much as the man’s comment. I felt like I was being ridiculed for my gender, judged based on my body and objectified in a way that I couldn’t stand. However, unable to think of an appropriate response, I chose instead to simply stand up and leave.

Having been pointed to the Hollaback website, I shared the first of those two stories. I received encouraging comments and I was able to read other people’s stories and comment on those as well. I found a community who agreed that what had happened to me was a form of abuse and were willing to stand by me and support me. I’m often asked what Hollaback provides, and that is exactly it. We are a community, a family of people who, while we may not be brought together in the most pleasant of circumstances, are there to make people feel less alone and show them people and organisations who can provide further guidance when necessary. I would encourage you to share the website with friends and family members, whether it be to share a story or simply read others. For now, that is my story. Thank you for giving me a place to share it.

Wellington Police investigating Newtown indecent assault

Wellington Police are investigating the indecent assault of a young woman on
Hutchison Road in Newtown on Wednesday night (1 February 2012).

Acting Detective Sergeant Sam Mercer of the Wellington Crime Squad says the
victim was walking on Hutchison Road around 10pm, by the bus stop adjacent to
John Street, when she was approached by three men.

“The men made lewd remarks to her, before one of them assaulted her. Luckily,
the victim was able to defend herself and run to safety.”

Sam Mercer says the main offender is described as being olive skinned, with
short spiky black hair and around six feet tall. He was wearing a baggy, dark
grey hooded top. The other two men are described as wearing dark jeans and
beanies.

“We believe the three men had been consuming alcohol, and may have been
carrying some with them.”

He says Police are interested in hearing from anyone who was in the area of
Hutchison Rd between 9pm and 11pm on Wednesday night or who might have seen
the men walking in the Newtown or Mt Cook areas.

Anyone with information should phone the Wellington Crime Squad on (04) 802
3606 or phone Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

11 New Hollaback! Sites Launch Today!

Welcome to Hollaback! December 2011 from Chad Sniffen on Vimeo.

The movement to end street harassment takes another giant leap forward today as an additional 11 Hollaback! sites launch internationally, adding to an already vibrant network of 34 sites across four continents. Each site is run by a team of local advocates who are deeply committed to working on-line and off-line to end street harassment in their communities.

“I decided to start a Hollaback! because I wanted to be a part of a collective of dedicated and passionate activists fighting to make the streets safe for women all over the world,” said Hollaback! Palo Alto Founder Viviana Arcia.  The organization expected to only launch in five cities this year, but is now in 45 cities across 16 countries, with leaders speaking more than nine different languages — each with the same message: street harassment must be put to a stop.  New locations include Bogota, Colombia; Boston, MA; San Luis Obispo, CA; Chennai, India; Dusseldorf, Germany; Minneapolis, MN; Montreal, Quebec; Palo Alto, CA; Portland, ME; Santiago, Chile; and Winnipeg, Canada.

“What we tend to forget is that preventing sexual harassment in the long run is about changing our attitudes, not just ensuring physical safety. This is where we come in with Hollaback!” said Hamsini Ravi, Project Coordinator Hollaback! Chennai.

Local Hollaback! site leaders run their local blogs and organize their communities through advocacy, community partnerships, and direct action. Site leaders are as diverse in their backgrounds as they are in their experiences of harassment. Hollaback! reports that 44% lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer, 26% identify as people of color, 76% are under the age of 30, and 90% are women.

“Women and members of the LGBTQ community have always been taught that street harassment is inevitable and something that we need to accept, smile at, or ignore,” says Cara Courchesne, Director of Hollaback! Portland, Maine. “Hollaback! changes that storyline.”

Hollaback!’s international sites are already having an impact. In Querétaro, Mexico, site leaders have developed a workshop to promote cities free of harassment for all people. In the last two months, 600 young people have taken part. In Baltimore, MD, the site leader has organized several successful events, including an Anti-hate Prom and the Baltimore SlutWalk. In Croatia, site leaders are creating a survey that will allow them to collect data on street harassment that will then be used across the Hollaback! network, giving Hollaback! an ability to compare street harassment across cultures.

Zac Guildford

This is a link to an article about Zac Guildford returning home and apologising for some his inappropriate behaviour while in Rarotonga.

I think Zac Guildford’s apology regarding assaulting two men is a very good one, and I am really pleased to see that he is open about needing to put steps in place to get well.

However, I really wish while publicly apologising for his first inappropriate incident, he had also apologised for harassing a female athlete – other than just mentioning he “tried” to meet with her and “she declined”. I’m hugely disappointed that this incident is seen as being less worthy of apology than him punching two men.

The woman who reported being harassed has talked about fearing for her safety after she asked Guildford to stop yelling sexual obscenities and comments about her body while he followed her in his car as she went for a run. She has talked about how he became aggressive, and how she hid in a shop until he left.

Since then not only has she been pressured to meet with him by his manager (really empathetic move to try and push someone to meet with the person who harassed them and made them feel unsafe, thanks All Blacks management), but she has been pressured to drop the charges by All Blacks management and had Acting Police Commissioner Akatauira Matapo refer to her complaint as a waste of police time.

It seems to me that Guildford is a clever guy who understands that he’s in a bad place (especially in regards to his relationship with alcohol) and that he has let a lot of people down with his actions. I’m not sure whether not specifically apologising for acting in a deplorable way toward this woman is due to a decision by All Blacks management or Zac Guildford himself, but I hope that her refusal to meet with him, compared with the men he assaulted agreeing to meet with him, is not the reason why she has not received a public apology and they have.

I also have to question the mentality behind All Blacks management pressuring the victim of harassment to meet with her harasser. In the interests of wanting to deal with this in a tidy, private way, they have effectively attempted to erase her right to lay a complaint and let the police deal with it. They have ignored the (fairly common sense) need for distance from the person that made her feel unsafe, and THEN publicly discussed her refusal to do what they asked, which is a judgement on her ‘willingness to cooperate’ regardless of whether they frame it as such.

All Blacks management pressuring her to drop the complaint is further harassment as far as I’m concerned. It’s the big boys vs one lone woman, whose own police commissioner thinks her grievance is not worthy of anyone’s time.

People with power trying to silence women who have experienced harassment or abuse is not new, but frankly I feel that Zac’s attitude is new. In the hyper-masculine culture of Rugby Union in New Zealand, it’s rare to see someone mess up and talk frankly about needing to put steps in place, draw on his support systems and take one step at a time to get better.

So I hope with all my might that Zac will realise he has every young rugby fan watching him. He has office workers discussing him over the water cooler, and radio commentators filling their inane timeslots with every juicy detail of his fall from grace.

I hope he realises his lack of apology makes women who get harassed on the street every day feel like even if their harasser is famous no one will care. And that his comments about her refusing to meet with him make women feel like we are obligated to face the people who make us feel unsafe or else we’re not ‘moving on’ or ‘being fair’.

All Blacks management might continue to throw their clout around and try and nip ‘problems’ like this in the bud while denying victims justice or due process, but Zac actually has the power here. If he apologises as openly and genuinely for harassment as he has done for assault, then people might actually start to see that harassment is violence.

Electioneering!

As you may know, we have a national election coming up in about 2 weeks here in New Zealand and the press has been talking of nothing else!

Our sister organisation, the Wellington Young Feminists’ Collective has organised a candidates’ forum with a feminist flavour for the local wellington electorate candidates.

If you’d like to come along to hear about the various party policies on issues that matter to women and LGBTQ folk please join us tonight at the Wellington Central Library, Public meeting room 1 at 6pm. Koha for refreshments. We have some great questions lined up and look forward to having some healthy discussions!

Rugby World Cup fever in Wellington!

It seems like the Rugby World Cup has been the only topic of conversation around here lately!

With Quarter-Finals coming up this weekend in Wellington between South Africa and Australia and Ireland and Wales you can bet there will be a lot of people out on the street this weekend having a good time.

But if you’re feeling unsafe when you’re out in town don’t forget that there are the Walkwise ambasadors who can walk you within a short distance of the town centre or to transport.

We’d also like to hear people’s experiences of the RWC so far – what has it been like? Good? bad? Ugly? What’s the energy like in Wellington at the moment? If you would like to, please share your story in the comments below. If you have something that’s specifically street harassment related, feel free to post it using the “Share Your Story” form.

Arohanui and have a great weekend if you’re going to one of the games!

Wellington Sexual Assault Crime Statistics 10-11

Each year the New Zealand Police publishes a set of Fiscal Year 2010-2011 Crime Statistics, and the most recent set were made public on Monday, 3rd October 2011.

There are some interesting things to note in this data, particulary concerning the sexual assault and related offences statistics. Firstly that the number of offences has either been increasing, or reporting rates have increased over the last 3 fiscal years, but it’s hard to know why this trend is occurring without more research…

But I was actually most interested in the apprehension rates and the resolution rates for cases.

Marking a case as resolved means that the offender has ben identified by the police, but not necessarily that action has been taken (for example, an offender may be dead, or out of the country). The resolution rate for sexual assault cases in Wellington for the fiscal yeat 10-11 was 49.3%, so basically a 1 in 2 resolution rate. 

The apprehension rate for these cases is the number of cases where action is taken against the offender, for example; giving them a warning, prosecuting them, whatever. The apprehension rate for cases was slightly lower, at 45.6%. There’s definetly room for improvement there, but I would also be interested in seeing how that stacks up against other regions and even other countries. May do a bit more analysis and report back.

But the really interesting statistic is that in cases where the offender is identified, for 92.5% of those cases the offender is apprehended – which means that the police are doing stuff with the information they gain from survivors and their own subsequent investigations.

I think this is a positive statistic, and hopefully we can improve on it and the other figures next year. It’s important to show to survivors that if they wish to report their assault and identify the offender(s), that this information is treated seriously and used appropriately to apprehend offenders.

One thing I would really like to see in the stats is a break-down of the type of apprehension that was handed down to offenders. It would be interesting to see the numbers on diversion, prosecutions, warning and the other types of apprehension.

The satistics are published on Statistics New Zealand and the Police also publish a separate report with key findings.

http://www.stats.govt.nz/tools_and_services/tools/TableBuilder/recorded-crime-statistics.aspx
http://www.police.govt.nz/sites/default/files/resources/crime-statistics/09_wellington_official_stats_10-11_final.pdf

Women’s Self-Defence Class

Saturday 1 October from 4pm – 6pm at Aro Valley Community Centre

The Wellington Young Feminists’ Collective and Hollaback! Wellington are holding a women’s self-defence class!

Suggested koha $5

Women’s self-defence is designed to teach information, skills and techniques to increase confidence in a variety of situations and give a good understanding of the strengths we all possess. The class won’t be physically demanding and doesn’t require a high level of fitness. There will be a physical element to the class though, so comfortable clothes are good. It’s not necessary to wear gym clothes, just something that you can move around in.

Bring your ladyfriends! (We’re also going to go for drinks at the Southern Cross afterwards if people are keen. Dudes welcome and encouraged to come to the drinks).

RSVP at our Facebook event

Who Are You? A new bystander intervention campaign for the Rugby World Cup

Trigger warning for sexual assault.

Watch video

What are people’s thoughts on the video? Has anyone heard the radio adverts which accompany it?

Campus safety, experiences and ideas

At the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia there is a man who volunteers there every night between about 8pm and Midnight, driving a shuttle van around the campus from the student residences to the faculty buildings and back again, getting students where they need to go safely. The reason he does this is because his daughter was raped on campus one night while walking back to her resdience. It’s a really valuable service, but it also is a reminder that university campuses are not always safe places.

So I read today in the news about a young woman who was attacked last night while walking through the Massey University Wellington Campus at about 10pm and it brought back a lot of memories from my experiences at Uni in Wellington and getting to and from it, which I’m sure many others can relate to. I did a degree that was pretty time intensive and often meant that I was on campus into the wee hours of the morning. Walking home from uni in the middle of the night was something that filled me with anxiety.

When I was at Victoria University there was the Campus Angels service, which I found really useful. It operated between about 8pm and 11pm, and the Angels would walk with you to your bus stop or down into town to ensure you were safe and got home ok. I certainly think Massey could benefit from a service like this. But as it was run out of the Student Union at Vic, and the unions are likely to have even less money next year, the possibility of getting funding for this seems slim. Perhaps we could turn this into a volunteer service of some sort? Something to think about…

I also take a bit of an issue with the ‘Ivory Tower’ aspect of university. I think course coordinators themselves have an ethical responsibility to ensure that the time commitment required for a course is reasonable and that due dates for major hand in times fall within business hours. I regularly had to submit assigments and projects on campus between 12 and 1 am, which lead to an issue of safe transport home. This issue was really a massive piece of beef that I had with my Computer Science Department, but I’m sure could also be applied to the Design School for example. I don’t think it’s fair on students to set deadlines that late at night.

More needs to be done to make university campuses safe for everyone. I think there are several ways we could approach this, and I know we are not helped by Univerisity budgets already being tight and the recent passing of the VSM bill will be extremely damaging to the ability of our student unions to provide additional services.

Hollaback International is currently working on a concept paper to think about a system similar to the hollaback sites for University campuses, and any ideas or experience that you can contribute to this will be most welcome! Leave any thoughts you have in the comments or email us at wellington@ihollaback.org