The Power of Lived Experience - Father of Helen Meads brings Select Committee hearing on the stalking Bill to tears

ECLISPE fully support the criminalisation of stalking in Aotearoa New Zealand. Thank you to all who have pushed so very hard, advocated, and battled to have the voices of those we have lost heard. 

Thank you also to Te Puna Aonui for your support of this action in your new Te Aorerekura Action Plan Version 2, although this is not a family violence specific law, it will without a doubt increase the safety of primary victims and victim survivors of family and sexual violence.

It was day one of public submissions on the new stalking legislation, and David White had travelled from Matamata to Parliament to present a simple message to gathered MPs: “the new law has to be strong and firm from the start”.

In September 2009, White’s daughter, Helen Meads, was shot in the throat by her husband Gregory Meads just days after she’d told him she was leaving him.

In November, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced his intention to introduce legislation that will make stalking illegal in New Zealand for the first time.

The Government proposes that the new law carried a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment, and would capture patterns of behaviour - that is, three specified acts occurring within a 12-month period.

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