Violence in the Home
It isn’t always intimate partner violence.
Warning: This article contains details of violent incidents and mentions suicide.
I grew up in a violent home, but it wasn’t my father being violent to my mother. It was my brother being violent to my sister and I. My brother was six years older than me, very tall and strong and loved nothing more than tormenting my sister and I. He was almost impossible to escape from.
I took to spending lots of time outside to put as much distance between myself and my brother. But when we would come in for dinner he liked nothing more than to slap me around the head and belittle me. It was just one his many favourite ways of tormenting and shaming me.
My parents once talked about sending my brother to boarding school but my mother worried that it might tip my brother over the edge, so my sister and I became collateral damage.
Fast forward to adulthood
I had many years where I had nothing to do with my brother. I mean why would I? I left small town, rural New Zealand and went off to do a social work degree at university and never returned to live in my home town.
It probably wouldn’t surprise anyone that I ended up working in the Family Violence/Violence Against Women sector doing everything from being a women’s advocate to…
