Tough on Crime, Except When It’s Me

Ali Cook

TW: SA, Violent Threats, Mental Illness, Disordered Eating, and Substance Abuse 

Editor's note: the below personal essay contains detailed descriptions of sexual assault, mental illness, and the response by both the police and government. It is a heavy read, but it is an exceptionally important one. I personally have never read an essay like it, and working with Ali to put it together over the past month has been one of the biggest privileges of my life. But please, continue carefully and continue kindly. 

On March 4, 2024, I was sexually assaulted by members of a visiting Vietnamese delegation. I was an international student from the U.S., far from home but trying to build a life in Aotearoa, a place I believed could be safe for me. The officials—members of Vietnam’s Public Security Ministry, a police agency in their country—were in New Zealand visiting the Royal New Zealand Police College. That same year, in the same delegation, one of the men was later arrested for sexual assault in Chile. 

This isn’t just about me. It’s about the legacy of the Ministry of Public Security, a system that shields abusers and leaves survivors to piece themselves back together in silence.

In the months since, I have found myself on the news, my name attached to a case where the ability to even give a statement was constrained by diplomatic ties and political interests. Even the former editor of Salient published a half-ass article about my case without ever consulting me—despite the fact that I am a student at Te Herenga Waka, and this is my life. 

So why write this now? Why here? Because until now, I have only shared the full weight of this experience with my therapist. Because even though Stuff reported on my case with care and integrity, mainstream outlets rarely give survivors the room to be vulnerable, to show the messy, painful reality of what comes after. Salient—with the support of its new editor—has given me that platform. This is a wake-up call. The way sexual assault victims are treated is unacceptable.

I write this not just to recount what happened, but to ask you—the reader—to listen differently, to sit with discomfort, to reconsider how you respond to sexual assault allegations in the future. What follows is not polished, not linear. It is my attempt to show you what this has done to me. It’s hard to describe what that time was like, so I’ll give it a shot.

I knew I had to go to the police when the assault happened. For me, it wasn't a question—it was a promise. This wasn’t my first experience with sexual assault, and years earlier I had vowed to never let it happen without consequences again. Now, it was time to keep that promise. 

But this case carried an extra layer of fury. The men who assaulted me were politicians, visiting on official business. Around the world, there’s a pattern: powerful men exploit women and walk away untouched. Too often, those accused—or even charged—remain in office, unscathed. Reporting the assault wasn't just an act of self-protection; it was a refusal to silently accept the status quo.  

On March 6, I walked into the Wellington Central Police Station. I felt as though I were watching myself from a distance—dissociated, yet clinging to a fragile thread of hope. I carried a small paper bag of evidence: my clothes, and the neatly folded bills from the night of my assault. The bag weighed more than it should have, as if it held not just fabric and money but the unbearable weight of everything I could not set down—the shame, the fear, the terror. 

The waiting room was empty, oppressively quiet—the kind of silence that presses into your ears until it becomes its own sound. I tried to fill it with small, meaningless jokes, forcing out laughter that sounded hollow even to me. Every attempt dissolved into the stillness, leaving only the hum of fluorescent lights and the relentless thud of my heart.

I sank into the hard plastic chair as if I carried two bodies: one, the corpse of the girl I had been; the other, the bruised, breathing shell that remained. The weight was unbearable. An  ache no posture could relieve. On my lap, the paper bag lay like an accusation—silent, damning, proof that I could neither forget nor explain. I looped the night in my mind again and again, desperate to locate the single mistake, the invisible choice, that might have spared me.

But the past wouldn’t budge. I stood under the shower until the tiles steamed and the water turned cold, scrubbing at my skin until it blistered in patches. I screamed into a towel, into the walls, into the drain—until my throat gave out and all that remained was a rasp. Still, the memory stayed lodged in my body, like a second skin. 

Reporting felt like the only thing left tethering me to a sense of control—a final, trembling attempt to be heard. I clung to a fragile hope: that someone, anyone, might see me, clearly believe me fully, and act. 

An officer led me to a small interview room. I sat across from him, fidgeting as he began to ask questions—each one a scalpel. The hours stretched endlessly. I drew diagrams. I recounted the assault again and again. I handed over every scrap of evidence I had. Each repetition felt like both survival and surrender. I needed to be believed. I needed to matter.

But my memory was fractured. I tried to piece it together for the detective: a room thick with alcohol and sweat. Hands where they shouldn’t have been. My voice swallowed by noise. Time bent strangley—seconds folding into themselves, stretching into endless loops. My body froze, unresponsive, while my mind screamed. And then: blankness. A void so deep it felt like falling through air, endlessly, with nothing to grasp.

When I left the station, I felt a fragile sense of relief. Maybe now something will happen. Maybe justice. Maybe I could reclaim a fragment of the life that had been taken from me. 

A week later, the phone rang: The men who assaulted me had already left the country. I was told that action would be taken domestically, and that I can expect regular updates. 

By November, nothing had changed. My case was dismissed. 

I hadn’t heard from the police in weeks. No domestic punishments were being enforced. The silence was deafening—not just bureaucratic, but moral. I began to see my case not only as a personal struggle, but as part of a larger, systemic failure. Why do men—especially men with political power—get away so easily? 

In New Zealand, the numbers are stacked against us. Between 2017 and 2023, just 42 percent of the 55,786 reported sexual violence cases progressed to court, and only 12 percent resulted in conviction. Meanwhile, 89.9 percent of sexual assaults went unreported. That means only 4.2 percent of victimisations led to charges, and just 1.2 percent ended in conviction. These figures didn’t just feel systemic—they felt personal. I refused to let my case become another statistic, another instance of a politician escaping accountability. I wanted to shift the narrative—to show that no one, not even a diplomat, is above justice.

So, I reached out to Stuff. If nothing else, I could make my allegations public. I knew that publicity often sparks action, but more importantly, it offered exposure. Maybe prosecution wasn’t possible. But I could still make sure my story was heard. 

I sat outside the Kelburn Library and typed an email, the subject line stark and deliberate: “My Story of Diplomatic Misconduct in NZ.” Not long after, I was connected with a journalist named Olivia. 

Olivia and I planned to meet on November 5. The night before, I stayed up watching the U.S. presidential election unfold. I watched the votes being counted, state by state, and when the result was announced, I wept. A man found liable for sexual assault had been re-elected as president. Again, I was brought to the same question: Why do men get away so easily—especially men with political power? 

The next morning, I woke with red, puffy eyes. My mind reeled, trying to make sense of how half a country—my country—could still support him. But I had no choice but to get ready. Olivia was on her way. The moment of sharing my story had finally come. 

Olivia sat with me for a long time. She didn’t rush. She asked questions gently, listened carefully and made sure I felt safe. But inevitably the moment arrived. I told her what happened. 

The next step was to secure my police file under the Privacy Act—to have documented evidence of the assault before the story went public. I submitted the request on November 8. Under protocol, the police had twenty working days to respond. 

In the weeks that followed, I relocated to Auckland to begin my summer internship. The move also brought me into contact with Paula, another journalist at Stuff. We arranged a meeting. Like others before her, she asked about my story—but unlike most, she first made sure I felt safe. It was a small courtesy, but one I rarely received. I was grateful. 

Paula explained the next steps: the story was moving forward, but we were still waiting on the police file. 

By December 9, the statutory response period had lapsed. Still, I’d heard nothing. Frustrated, I rang 555 to follow up. To my disbelief, the dispatcher couldn't even locate my request—despite the confirmation I’d received weeks earlier. 

The next day was Flatmas. After a Secret Santa exchange and a backyard sausage sizzle, my phone buzzed. It was Paula. She wanted to come over—with a camera. I knew instantly what that meant. I’d been bracing for this moment for weeks. 

I tipped back the last of my prosecco and ran upstairs. My flatmate followed, helping me choose an outfit and checking every detail. Twenty minutes later, Paula was at the door—with a camera crew.  

We turned the lounge into a makeshift studio. Lights of every shape and hue filled the room. A microphone was clipped to my collar, its cord snaking down my blouse; the prosecco wore off immediately. 

It was time. 

Paula began with questions about my assault. I recounted the story as best I could. Then, she told me something I hadn’t heard before. In a statement to Stuff, the Police said they had “no doubt” the crime occurred. They didn't question it. They believed me. 

I froze. 

This was the first I’d heard of it—news about my own case, shared with the public before it was shared with me. The police should have told me first. That kind of affirmation, that kind of belief, should have come directly. 

When the interview wrapped, the photographer took portraits around the flat. I asked, half-joking, if I should smile. 

“No,” came the immediate reply. 

But smiling is my default—a reflex, a mask I wear without thinking. I paused, swallowed the instinct, and let the corners of my mouth fall flat. I could turn it off, at least for the camera. 

Once the gear was packed and Paula had left, I tried to rejoin Flatmas. But something had shifted. I excused myself and went upstairs, spending the rest of the day alone, turning over the same thought: what will happen when this goes public? 

Night gave way to December 11. Paula had told me the story would run the next day. I woke up with a single sentence in my head: Welcome to your last day of freedom. I knew the risk of coming forward. I knew how easily I could be torn apart. 

All I wanted was to move through the world one last time, unremarkable and unseen. I wandered the mall, ate lunch alone, and sat for hours in a café. It felt like a farewell to being ordinary—a final day of existing without a headline attached to my name. 

The next morning, December 12, my alarm buzzed at 5:30. My heart was already racing before I opened my eyes. I reached for my phone. The screen flared to life, flooded with messages—people recognising me from the article. The story had been live for just thirty minutes, and already, I was being seen. 

Later that morning, Christopher Luxon was discussing my case in a press conference. Winston Peters dodged questions about me. The police had reopened the investigation. Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said that extradition was now being actively pursued. 

Something was finally happening. 

By December 13, under mounting pressure from the press, police located my privacy request—the very one they had previously claimed couldn’t be found. But none of my files were released. The investigation was now “open', and that meant access was denied. 

The only option offered was to view the CCTV footage from the police station. Once again, I felt powerless. I couldn’t freely read my own statements, nor watch the footage of my own assault on my terms. 

Not long after the story broke, I went to a flat party. A guy approached me—I didn't recognise him, though he insisted we’d met before. Within seconds, he was probing into my trauma, demanding details I had chosen not to share. I managed to slip away before he could push further. 

Relief was short-lived. Soon after, an old friend cornered me, led me to a bathroom, and locked the door behind us. She, too, pressed for answers. 

I left the party feeling deflated. Conversations that should have been light—our summers, new jobs, the small victories of life—never happened. Instead, people saw only my trauma, as if it had eclipsed every other part of me. 

Journalists from all over the world began calling relentlessly. One night, around 1 a.m., I was on the couch, drunkenly devouring McDonald’s, when my phone rang. I glanced at the screen and thought: Really? Now? But I answered anyway. I felt like I had no choice. Giving a statement felt like the only way to reclaim a fraction of control over a story that was otherwise ruining my life.

Slowly, my days were consumed by interviews and endless retellings—from journalists on the phone to strangers in the street. My trauma became inescapable. There was no refuge. I was a trauma-filled girl in the headlines, nothing else.

Leaving the house became impossible. Glances from strangers no longer felt neutral—they felt like accusations. Everywhere I went, I sensed it: people weren't seeing me. They were seeing my trauma. 

Eventually, I stopped going out. I developed agorophobia—an anxiety disorder marked by an intense fear of people and public spaces (or so my therapist told me). I ordered groceries to my door, worked from home, and lived off endless Uber Eats. I invented excuses to avoid socialising. Still, a part of me craved control. 

So, reluctantly, I did what I’d promised myself I never would: I looked at what people were saying about me online. 

I was alone in a Wellington hotel room the first time I checked. Perched at the edge of the bed—laptop on my lap, phone in hand, iPad beside me—it was a full-scale, multi-device operation. The MTV Music Video Channel played in the background, a surreal soundtrack to the moment. A bottle of red wine was on its way, a small comfort for what came next. 

I opened my laptop and logged onto Twitter. Tweets about my story had appeared from all over the world. My hands shook so violently I could barely type. My heart pounded, every beat loud in my ears. I clicked open the comments, bracing myself—wishing I could look away, but unable to.

The first comment hit like a fist: “Damn. I don’t get this chick who looks like she’s pushing 40, claiming to be a 19-year-old student, looking like she’s had four kids. Nobody is that desperate for someone like you.”

My chest froze. My lungs wouldn’t expand. My fingers, hovering over the trackpad, trembled so violently I felt detached from my own body. My mind went blank, then flooded with nausea, panic and shame. A tear slipped down my face and burned; something in my stomach felt hollowed out, as if it had been ripped away. 

I kept scrolling. I couldn’t stop. Each new message was a blade along the raw edges of myself: “Too ugly to have been assaulted.” “A pig.” “No one would ever want someone like you.” My body flinched with every word.

There was doubt, and there were accusations that I was lying for attention or politics—but threaded through that chorus were the other, darker voices. A small number defended the men who had assaulted me; one comment that still sticks is, “It's what we do, rape someone without talent or virtue like you.”

Others praised the supposed irresistibility of “curvy Western women,” saying they would have done the same. Those messages, many of them coming from accounts based in Vietnam, felt like a different kind of violence. And then a few people went further, fantasizing about capturing me into sex slavery, posting sick, detailed plans. 

Then the terror escalated. I was cast as an evil American capitalist, a phantom blamed for wars I never fought and histories I had no part in. My body shrank; my breaths came in sharp, shallow bursts. I would dig my nails into my palms, desperate for something to hold onto. 

It’s hard to describe what that time was like, so I’ll give it a shot with loose and fragmented moments: 

In the months that followed, messages flooded my personal accounts—graphic, unrelenting, clawing at me. Every ping of my phone made me jump. Sweat pricked my scalp; my teeth clenched until my jaw ached. I pressed my forehead to the cold desk and rocked, trying to make sense, but sense had abandoned me. The world had become a predator: patient, cruel and endless. 

The ACC process required a four-hour psychological evaluation—how fucking lame. But buried inside the clinical language was something unexpected: a record, a mirror: “Ali’s independence has been shattered,” it read, “by the sexual assault that occurred on the other side of the world in a place she was trying to make safe for herself.” Reading that, I saw myself. My thinking destabilized by any trigger, my mood sliding from sadness, to helplessness, to hopelessness. The report called it “depressive symptoms.” I called it trying to stay alive inside my skin.

I closed my laptop and slid to the floor; the carpet was rough against my knees. The screen went dark, but the words burned behind my eyes. I grabbed the nearest bottle and drank until the walls swayed. I swallowed whatever pills I could find, chasing the fantasy that one might contain an answer, or a cure. I scoured the bottom of every glass and capsule for logic—anything that could explain how strangers could slice me open with a sentence and walk away unbothered. The more I reached, the emptier it became. Only the slow, relentless thrum of doubt remained.

“Ali describes holding an enduring sense of ‘what’s the point in life’ since the recent assault,” the notes continued. 

Maybe they were right. Maybe I was too ugly. I replayed the comments until they fused with my own thoughts and their contempt sounded like my reflection. The idea took root: if I could change my body, my face, my voice, my mind—maybe I could change their judgment. Maybe if I were different, the world would finally believe me.

I stopped eating. Hunger hollowed me until even breathing scraped like sandpaper, but I welcomed the ache. I wanted a body beyond doubt—thin, beautiful enough to make the violence undeniable. I understood hunger might kill me. I didn’t mind. I only hoped my corpse would be perfect enough to be believed.

“There has been little criminal outcome from either assault,” the report stated. I reread that line until the words blurred. No outcome. No justice. Just me—developing “features of traumatic anxiety.” Hypervigilant, the notes called it. Fearful of being harmed by anyone: the public, peers, even people I thought I should trust. The report noted that I had installed cameras in my flat, that I slept with the lights on. It was true. I lived in a permanent state of startle.

I poured every ounce of attention into my appearance—tracing the shadows under my eyes, the tremor in my hands—sculpting myself into something the world might call worthy. I rehearsed answers in the dark, sharpening every sentence until it bled precision. If I spoke smarter, cleaner, without a stutter, maybe they would take me seriously.

Months blurred into a ritual of self-erasure. I stood in front of the mirror until my legs shook, cataloguing flaws like evidence, peeling myself apart for a version of me that might be believed. Each time I stepped away, the verdict from the glass was the same: too ugly, too undeserving, too insignificant to matter.

As Christmas approached, the media attention that had once forced movement began to fade. And so with it, so did any sense of progress. 

On January 23, 2025, the detective on my case called with an update—the first I’d received directly, as promised. Extradition, once a possibility when my case was in the headlines, was no longer on the table. The reason: the crimes, he said, were “not serious enough.” 

The words gutted me. How could something be dismissed as “not serious” when it had shattered my life entirely? 

I broke down crying, right there on the phone. The detective sounded puzzled, almost uneasy. He offered no comfort—just flat finality that left me feeling completely powerless. 

I hung up with the detective and texted Paula and Olivia immediately. 

I was inconsolable. 

On February 4, I was finally summoned to Auckland Central Police Station. The police had promised me back in mid-December that I would be allowed to view the CCTV footage of my assault, and now—nearly two months later—they were making good on that promise. It was the only access I was granted. My case file remained sealed. The investigation, they insisted, was still “open.”

I was permitted to bring one support person. I chose Paula. And because I knew this was the only chance I had to prove to the world that my accusations were real, I agreed to let the viewing be filmed and eventually published. But the thought of actually watching what had been done to me filled me with dread. I knew exactly what I was about to see, and I knew the images would burn themselves into my memory forever.

The detective who led us into the small viewing room explained that most of the clips we were about to watch had been taken on the night of the assault, but one had been recorded the following day. Then he looked at me and asked if I was ready.

“Not really,” I said. “But I doubt I’ll ever be.”

He pressed play.

My memories of that night had always been patchy. Alcohol had been forced down my throat, and I’d become intoxicated frighteningly quickly. The hangover that followed was so brutal, so unlike anything I’d ever experienced, that I suspected my drink had been spiked. Still, fragments had stayed with me. I remembered my hair being pulled back as men poured whiskey into my mouth. I remembered an official shoving himself against me. I remembered, the next day, the confusion of discovering unexplained cuts on my nipples.

“I have no idea what happened,” I’d told Stuff at the time. “I know something bad happened.”

Now, here I was, being forced to watch it unfold.

The police had obtained around two and a half hours of relevant footage—fifteen separate videos in total, some captured by CCTV cameras, others filmed on a mobile phone. Eight clips, about forty minutes altogether, directly concerned me. They weren’t time-stamped, so it was impossible to know exactly when in the evening each clip occurred. Still, it quickly became clear why police later said they had “no doubt” that I had been assaulted.

I sat in silence, gripping the edge of my chair, hating that what I was seeing matched everything I had feared. Eventually, I asked the detective if I could take a break. When he left the room, I turned to Paula and whispered that I hated being right.

The detective returned with water and tissues. He offered me a blanket, even a stress ball to squeeze. Small comforts against an unbearable truth.

The final videos were taken on a mobile phone inside a karaoke room, away from the CCTV cameras. A man sang, badly, in Vietnamese. The bright lights, his oblivious performance, created a jarring backdrop for what was really happening in that room, most of it just out of sight.

By the end of the footage, the evidence of repeated indecent assault was overwhelming. 

I asked the detective if I could have another minute. My chest was heaving, my pulse hammering visibly through my blouse. My body remembered the trauma even more fiercely than my mind did.

When it was finally over, Paula and I stepped outside into the heavy Auckland air. The cameras were waiting, just as I’d agreed, and this time I couldn’t hold it back. For the first time, I cried on camera. 

I’d kept myself composed for months. Every interview, every public appearance, every statement—I had forced myself into a posture of strength, determined to look unbreakable. I thought that was what it meant to lead, to advocate, to fight. But as the sobs shook through me, I realised something else: strength isn’t the absence of tears. Crying doesn't make you weak. It makes you human. And in that moment, I felt painfully, undeniably human. 

Through tears, I tried to explain what I had just seen. “It was like watching a horror movie,” I said. “In one sense, it’s almost affirming—I know now I was telling the truth, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes. But at the same time, it’s traumatising. It’s disgusting. I feel like every day I’m living in a mental prison. And they’ll never be in one.”

What makes it even harder is that I don’t actually remember any of it. My mind locked the memories away, probably as a way to protect me, so the footage is the only version I’ll ever have. Watching it was disorienting—I could see myself, and yet it felt like looking at a stranger’s life. My body reacted instantly—heart pounding, hands shaking—even when my brain struggled to connect with what I was seeing. It’s a strange kind of betrayal, when your body remembers what your mind refuses to.

That gap—between memory and evidence—has been one of the most difficult parts to live with. I have to carry the knowledge of what happened without the memories that would make it real in the usual way. Instead, I’m left with fragments: the weight in my chest, the panic that surfaces without warning, the girl in the video whose pain is frozen on screen. She is me, and she isn’t.

Within a few days, the interview aired. For once, the reaction felt different. On Twitter, in messages, in conversations, people seemed to respond with genuine sympathy. Maybe it was the tears that did it. Maybe, for the first time, they saw me not as a symbol, not as a headline, not as a case file, but simply as a person. 

Three days later, February 7, I was hungover and making slime with a friend when Paula called. 

An extradition file was being prepared. 

What the fuck? 

The day passed with a blur of whiplash and cautious relief. Finally, my sacrifices were pushing something forward. 

But the call hadn’t come from the police. They hadn't told me a thing. 

In fact, I had to call my detective a week later to confirm that the extradition file was being prepared. He’d had a week to reach out. He never did. 

It was a brutal reminder of their priorities. Information that shatters a victim goes straight to them, but when it benefits police optics, the press can have the story—just not the person at the center of it. 

That was the last time I heard about extradition. 

When Christopher Luxon broke his silence, it wasn’t to me. It was to the media. On February 27, speaking to media in Ho Chi Mihn City, and reported on by NZ Herald, he claimed he couldn’t “make public comments” for fear of prejudicing the investigation. He reassured the country he was “comfortable we have good levels of engagement between both systems,” that police “had some work to do” but were “actively meeting” in Vietnam. Comfort. Engagement. Work to do. Not justice. Not urgency. Not accountability.

I read those words over and over, searching for any indication that my life—my safety—was the priority. But it wasn’t about me. It was about optics, about maintaining diplomatic smoothness, about keeping headlines quiet. He didn’t say he’d raised my case with Vietnam’s officials, despite traveling there multiple times. He didn’t say extradition was a priority. He didn’t say my life mattered enough to disturb the fragile politeness of international relations.

Only weeks earlier, he had announced what he called a “major upgrade” to Aotearoa’s relationship with Vietnam—elevating ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and promising a “shared ambition to expand cooperation and to do more together across a wide range of priorities.” That public pledge of closer, higher-level cooperation makes the silence on extradition feel sharper: if this partnership truly includes deeper political and law-enforcement ties, where does pressing for the return of alleged offenders fit into those “priorities”?

Is extradition of the officials in question one of these priorities? If not, how can this be reconciled with the Government’s repeated promise to be “tough on crime”? The contradiction is not abstract to me—it is the difference between being a constituency to be courted. and being a person whose safety requires urgent, uncompromised action. The government has a very large hand in extradition. And in my opinion, they’re doing a terrible job. My case crystallized what disenfranchisement means: not just silencing, but erasure. I was useful as a headline, a symbol, a line in a press release. But when real confrontation was required—when someone in power had to demand action—my existence became inconvenient. Disposable.

And yet, I couldn’t speak out. I needed the government. Strategically, I couldn’t afford to be cynical about someone I was dependent on. It’s now September, and I have no idea what’s happening with my case. 

I tried not to be political. But that became impossible. I am political—it’s who I am. 

This is what disenfranchisement feels like—not just in the abstract, but in the daily, grounding reality of being silenced by systems that claim to protect you. I live here. I contribute here. I rebuilt my life here. But when it comes to decisions that shape my future, I am voiceless. 

I came to Aotearoa to start over. I moved to Wellington at 17, it felt like a chance to reclaim my life after an earlier assault. And for a time, it worked. From April 2022 until March 2024, Wellington was a kind of utopia. I rebuilt myself here. 

Then it happened again. And everything I’d worked so hard to restore was shattered. 

But I never considered leaving. Not once. 

Aotearoa is my home. I won’t let anyone take that away from me. I fought to be here. I stayed because I love living here. 

And yet, the cruel unfairness of it all still twists inside me. While I’m left scraping for control—remaking myself in the faint hope that someone might believe me—the men who assaulted me have faced no punishment. None. 

They continue to live normal lives. They go to work, maintain their high status, and navigate the world with ease. They have families—wives and children who love them, who trust them, and who see them as whole and good. They are able to build relationships, to be seen as human, and to exist without the weight of what they did pressing down on them. According to Radio Free Asia, even media coverage of my assault was blocked in Vietnam. 

And me? I have lost my life entirely. My freedom, my trust, my sense of safety, and every feature of my identity—all stolen. I am left in the endless echo of what was taken from me and what could have been.  

People love to warn that a false accusation of sexual assault can destroy a man’s life. The far uglier, far more frequent reality is this: when a victim reports a real assault, the world begins to dismantle their existence piece by piece. It wasn’t the assault that broke me the most—it was everything that came after, sanctioned and applauded by the very people who swore to protect me. 

They call it justice; I call it a slow, public execution. 

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, here’s some resources that you can go to: 

Safe to Talk Kōrero mai, ka ora 

National Sexual Harm Helpline

0800 044 334 

Text: 4334

Mauri Ora—Student Health and Counselling

For counselling and same-day student counselling 

 +64 4 463 5308

Wellington Rape Crisis 

(04) 801 8973

support@wellingtonrapecrisis.org.nz

Women’s Refuge 

0800 733 843

info@refuge.org.nz 

NZPC 

04-382 8791 

Level 4, 204 Willis St, Te Aro, Wellington 6011