Free legal advice in Cooks hopes to empower women

Transcript

A Cook Islands counselling centre says it hopes to empower victims of domestic violence, by giving them access to free legal advice.

The Punanga Tauturu group has launched a pilot programme which focuses on mediation services and early intervention for female domestic abuse victims.

Leilani Momoisea reports.

In 2013 a major health survey on violence against women revealed that 32 percent of women in the Cook Islands have experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.  The secretary of Internal Affairs, Bredina Drollet, says the survey also revealed that there were limited services available for women who may be in a domestic violence relationship.

BREDINA DROLLET:  The Cook Islands government has a national policy on gender equity and women's empowerment, and one of the key priorities is about eliminating violence against women. And through that sort of study we knew that there were limited services, and legal services could help shift and change cultural behaviours around domestic violence.

Funding from Australia Aid allowed the Ministry of Internal Affairs to negotiate with the women's counselling centre,  Punanga Tauturu, to set up a free legal service.  Punanga Tauturu's in-court manager and legal officer, Nga Teinangaro, says women who have suffered domestic violence often do not have the means to seek legal advice.  She says women need to know there's support in the community, and that they can tap into it.

NGA TEINANGARO:  We're aiming to actually reduce violence against women and children, that's the whole aim. Sometimes the mediation and the early intervention actually becomes successful, and learning to compromise about those things, and each partner learning their individual rights as well.

Bredina Drollet says apart from financial barriers, some women have a fear and sense of shame of speaking outside of their normal family networks.

BREDINA DROLLET:  So legal services will help women that are facing financial constraints in taking a case through. I'm hoping that it might start shifting those broader social norms to enable women to also overcome some of that perceived personal shame that might prevent them going to courts as well. And hopefully going to Punanga Tauturu as a counseling service as well will help overcome that.

Wilkie Rasmussen is the first lawyer to have lent his services to the pilot programme, and had just finished his first day helping out at Punanga Tauturu.

WILKIE RASMUSSEN:  The atmosphere created by the women that runs the scheme is warm, it makes the women that come forward seeking help feel included into the process. I found it to be exciting in the sense that these women feels a little bit empowered and they can speak and they can tell us what the problem is.

He says women are advised that everything talked about there is confidential, and they're able to bring in family or friends for support when they get advice.  Mr Rasmussen says currently there are two hours set aside each week for free legal help.  But he says after seeing the demand from the first session he will be recommending more sessions are made available to women each week.

WILKIE RASMUSSEN:  It's enabling these women to come forward. When I ask them questions, why don't you go and see a lawyer directly, they seem to hesitate with that direct approach. So I think in this way, it gives them a bit of a cushion, and therefore makes them encouraged to come forward and say, look, I've got a problem and I need some help.

The pilot programme is for five weeks, but Punanga Tauturu says it hopes it can work towards making the free legal advice a long term service.  Apart from helping domestic violence victims, it will also provide more general legal services for all types of family law.