About me

I am mother of Wonder, 龙龙 Baby Dragon murdered at 11 years and 10 months in domestic violence in September 2002 in Birkenhead Auckland New Zealand. I was doing my PhD research in Second Language Acquisition. It is now changed to "Singing out loud as my tangi-the lived experience of bereaved parents of children murdered in intimate partner violence in Aotearoa New Zealand."

I have been an educator at Higher Education for over 40 years. I know from lived experience what education did not teach me or support me to learn to keep me safe, and know this is applicable to other women and girls whose lives are endangered by the innocence and naivety guaranteed in the educational process that we go through. We were not encouraged to trust our own judgement, our intuition, the inner voice that is our divine prompt. We are taught to rely on our thinking and reasoning to be successful in the academic world. We continue to rely on our thinking and reasoning t when living in the world. Ignoring our feelings or our intuitions, as taught at school and by society, places us in great danger when we try reasoning or making sense of the unreliable and untrustworthy behavior of the men we live with.  Coercive control is a set of tacit that men use to keep women under control. When women try to leave the relationship, they risk murder by men who do not want to lose control.