I have just had to endure that revolting tv add campaign its not ok, check out my blog, my poetry and lyrics will tell you the real story.

This advert is just taking all the blame away from ‘the system’ and putting it back on people and the community (who don’t know how to deal with it.

Since I was raped and the guy was found not guilty in 2002 my life/I disintigrated. At the time I was studying law at Victoria, I owned a Hire a Hubby franchise, etc, all gone.

I havn’t worked in six years, I live destitute in a cold rental accommodation at 43 years old. With my two kids.

When my treatment, care and rehabilitation were woefully inadequate and I could not get the help I was legally entitled to under ACC or Mental Health (in fact they made things much much worse), and I was begging repeatedly. It is worse because they were the people who were supposed to help me not persecute me, victimize me or discriminate against me!

But they didn’t count on someone like me, you see the more dysfunctional I became the more I studied what was happening with me. I have a disorder called Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have a saying on my wall Knowledge is Power but Action is Vital.

I studied everything I could about trauma, abuse, PTSD, rehabilitation, anthropology, psychology, sociology, health, journalism, mental health, the system of care for abused and traumatised people and of course ACC. I needed to know why things were so bad for people like me and I just have to fix it.

What I discovered has seen me in a six year battle with ACC, Mental Health, Politicians, social agencies, DHB, the media, etc etc.

Currently ACC are not providing abused and traumatised people with rehabilitation!!! If abused children are not getting rehabilitation then who’s fault is it if they go on to be abusive adults (eg the man who raped me). Please note Counselling IS NOT REHABILITATION!

Nobody will take responsibility for this terrible injustice. Everybody puts their head in the sand.

We shut down our mental health system until it is almost non-existent. We espouse the long term impacts of abuse on babies and children’s brains, and yet the mental health system treats these mentally injured people as if they have no value at all. We traumatise them more in foster care that is often rejection after rejection. Then at 17 we tell them to piss off and make their own life.

Then if they become violent and destructive we punish them, we judge them and we usually put them in jail. Even Mental Health put violent people in jail -- that is batant discrimination. I can assure you if Mental Health were doing their job, people would not get violent, they would not need to because they would be heard and treated with respect.

I want to talk to those people in the advert, those average New Zealanders and tell them the truth. Those adverts are about the Government refusing to take responsibility for the mental health care of abused and traumatised people and blaming the entire community for violence.

Please hear me, please give me a voice. If people got the mental health care they needed after trauma indiscriminate violence would be non-existent in our communities!!!!

JR