Tickets are now available to purchase to just attend the buffet meal on Thursday 21st March 2024.
Guest speaker will be Alison Mau who will be speaking about her new venture : TIKA
Ali Mau has been a journalist and broadcaster for 40 years, a familiar face as one of TVNZ’s stars across several high-profile shows (including Fair Go) for a good two decades, before she launched, in early 2018, a national #metoo investigation into sexual harassment, supported by Stuff.
Over the following five years, she and others brought to account a number of perpetators. The work was substantial and recognised – in 2021, Mau was named Reporter of the Year at the annual Voyager Media Awards. The judges described her work as “fearless, determined pursuits that deserve the highest commendation”.
She left Stuff last July but her passion for helping survivors has not dissipated. Over the past eight months, working with another #metoo campaigner, Zoë Lawton, Mau has been developing a new venture, Tika.
Tika (tika.org.nz) “is a non-profit organisation that will provide an innovative legal service to people who have experienced sexual harm”.
That support includes free legal advice and representation and special technology to identify alleged, repeat perpetrators.
The backdrop – and a motivating factor for Mau – is what she describes as New Zealand’s “appallingly low” reportage of sexual harm. According to official figures cited in a launch document for Tika, 92 per cent of sexual harm is unreported.
“That’s because of the barriers that survivors still face, which is fear of not being believed or they’re nervous about trying to negotiate the legal space alone,”
“Many, many people don’t know for sure whether what’s happened to them is illegal.”
Tika – translated from te reo Māori as truth, justice and fairness – will be a platform for people to report their experiences, including the name of their alleged perpetrator. Tika will then crosscheck its database for any other registered clients who have been harmed by the same person.
The site will be secure and private and follow-up discussions with Lawton, a barrister, would be legally protected.
“We’ve focused initially on groups because we know that group reporting has a number of advantages, including safety and comfort in numbers,” says Mau.
From her own experience as a reporter, survivors found “great comfort” in knowing they weren’t alone. Quite often a group approach meant a stronger legal case.
Tika will be “heavily survivor-focused”, says Mau.
A big motivating factor for survivors coming forward is a desire to ensure that what happened to them did not happen to anyone else.
“Survivors will be in a group and will be given their legal options along a range of pathways – criminal, civil, regulatory body or mediation. They can all decide individually and they can pull out whenever they want if they feel that they’ve gone as far along the process as they want to.”
Mau and Lawton have enlisted Maria Dew KC to help on civil cases and have been working closely with specialist police on their plans for when criminal complaints need to be laid.
“It’s not just for women in the workplace. It’s for men. It’s especially for Māori and Pasifika, LGBTQI+, disabled communities and migrant communities who are disproportionately affected by this issue of sexual harm. We need to be ready to go from zero to 100 at launch.”
Ultimately, they say, their mission lies in lifting reporting rates; eliminating guilt, shame, self-blame and isolation; opening up legal remedies for survivors and holding perpetrators