White Ribbon Week

I didn’t wear a white ribbon last week, for that matter I have not worn any sort of ribbon, not because I lack empathy - I’m just not inclined to display. Even when I donate, I don’t wear those little sticker-badge things, (actually when I go to conferences or place where I’m given a name label, I don’t wear them). Perhaps I’m just contrary.

There is plenty of evidence of violence against women and girls, the statistics are pretty alarming! One in three, we are told, experiences some form of abuse! Personally, I have seen none of it – within my extended family, at work nor with friends and associates. Apparently that’s not unusual because abusers can be discreet.

I wonder if I did witness something, would I react like most, and do nothing? It’s hard to say, but hopefully I would be at least empathetic.

In a remote village, I once gave a lift to a Maasai woman who had been badly beaten by her husband and took her to a nearby clinic – I tried to convince her that hospital would be a better option but she refused because it would mean that she could not cook for her husband that night. She had facial bruising and damage to her ribs caused breathing difficulties.

Sanawari is really a suburb of Arusha, not that you think so at first. Most Friday and weekend nights we would be woken by a scream somewhere in the vicinity, of a woman being beaten by a booze-fuelled man.

In both these cases, it was not within my capability to intervene.

So perhaps I have nothing to contribute to White Ribbon Week that could help vulnerable women and girls other than relate to an episode that still haunts me about violence meted out to two brothers:

The Easterly end of my property was bounded by the main road – altered slightly today – and across the road, on a small area of flat land stood the first school in North Otago. The area was known as Otepopo. Nobody seems to know exactly where the school stood but it was roughly there.

In conversation about its possible location, a friend showed me a copy of an article written by one of the brothers that had attended the school.

I only had the opportunity to read the article once and the following is from memory.

Mid-1850’s the colony was far from established and the pioneers needed to be resourceful and hardy. The ferryman at the mighty Waitaki River wanted to educate his sons so they made to difficult journey to Otepopo where Mr. Robertson had his boarding school – the two brothers were to be the only boarders.

This guy Robertson turned out to violent and sadistic and although the article did not say so, he was undoubted a paedophile.

He apparently picked on the older brother most, though not sparing the younger. Most of the beatings were with supplejack, a vine that early fishermen used to make crayfish pots and eel traps, but a short length would be much like a cane.

For perceived or no reason, Robertson would strip the boy naked and thrash his back until it bled, then took delight in picking off the scabs, while the boy bathed; the wounds would remain unhealed for longer.

The need for firewood was constant and Robertson regularly took the boys foraging for wood up in the Otepopo Bush, often threatening them about how easy it would be to murder them up there and hide their bodies. One day Robertson’s victim did something wrong, so the lad was forced to lay his finger down and man bashed it with a hammer!

Robertson was a pious man and conducted services in the school, one freezing day, during the service he had the lad stand naked in an adjacent room, ordered not to make a peep, while the hymns and prayers were going on just through the wall!

The article didn’t elaborate, only saying that Robinson often took them to his bed and they were made to do awful things.

The boys planned to escape but remoteness was their constraint – they were not yet ten! Robinson’s last and incriminating act was to demonstrate what Hell was like, by taking the boy’s finger and holding it over a candle flame!

Shortly after, the boys’ father arrived and rescued them.

The primary court in Oamaru had no jail, so the man was fined £5, which he easily paid.

These were awful things for those young boys to endure and the warning is, such evil people do exist and persist – as bad as that? Maybe not, but you can bet there are still instances.

Look for the signs, speak up, and offer a non-judgmental ear.

Abuse is not ok.