Vine Quick Reads: 5 September 2025

Vine Quick Reads: 5 September 2025

Welcome to our Quick Reads format. Each week we share selected news bites relevant to family violence and sexual violence in Aotearoa.

Backbone Collective survey of victim-survivors on stopping violence programmes and interventions

The Backbone Collective is running a new anonymous survey to capture women victim-survivors' experiences of stopping violence programmes and interventions. The survey results will help Backbone ensure a victim-survivor voice is present in the stopping-violence conversation. The survey asks questions about what behaviours victim-survivors would like to see changed as a result of stopping violence programmes and interventions and how these programmes and interventions should interact with victim-survivors. The survey also asks those can speak to the experience whether behaviour change programmes and initiatives have made themselves and their families safer. Opportunities are also available for Māori and Pacific women to wānanga and talanoa about this topic. Information on how can be found in the survey. The survey is open to all women victim-survivors aged 16 and over who live in Aotearoa and will remain open until 14 September 2025.

3 new articles published from He Koiora Matapopore | 2019 New Zealand Family Violence Study

Three open-access articles on violence in Aotearoa have been published using data sourced from He Koiora Matapopore | 2019 New Zealand Family Violence Study:

• Help-seeking by women and men after experiencing any IPV, including physical, sexual, and psychological IPV, controlling behaviors, or economic abuse: a population-based study from New Zealand (2025)
• Women’s lifetime interpersonal violence exposure and associations with hospitalization at the national level: results from a New Zealand population-based study (2025)
• Men’s lifetime interpersonal violence exposure and associations with hospitalization at the national level: results from a New Zealand population-based study (2025)

The latter 2 articles also drew from the National Minimum Dataset (hospital events). For an overview of the Interpersonal violence and hospitalisation research, see Interpersonal violence in NZ is a public health crisis, not just a social one – new research. See here for more from He Koiora Matapopore | 2019 New Zealand Family Violence Study.

Reports from the South Australia Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence

The South Australia Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence released its final report, With courage: South Australia's vision beyond violence (2025). The report includes the voices of more than 1,300 people with lived and living experience and makes 136 recommendations to end domestic, family and sexual violence in South Australia. The report, Silence and inaction: children and young people’s experiences of violence and systemic failure in South Australia (2025) was prepared for the Royal Commission and has also now been published. For an overview, see the Conversation’s coverage of With Courage and their coverage of Silence and inaction. For additional research on the impacts of verbal abuse on children, see Childhood verbal abuse shows similar impact on adult mental health as physical abuse.

Kotahitanga: Understanding identities through intersectionality (2025), new resource from Ara Taiohi

Ara Taiohi have published Kaiparahuarahi (Vol.2 No.3), Kotahitanga: Understanding identities through intersectionality (2025).This edition of Kaiparahuarahi explores the implications of intersectionality for Youth Work in Aotearoa. The entries in this edition are grouped into six core perspectives:

• Tāngata Whenua
• Tagata o le Moana
• Ethnic Communities
• Rainbow Communities
• Tāngata Whaikaha
• Te Whakapono me te Wairuatanga.

2025 New Zealand Security Intelligence Services (NZSIS) Security Threat Environment report

The NZSIS has released New Zealand's security threat environment 2025: an assessment by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (2025). This is the third annual Security Threat Environment report to be published, and it outlines the NZSIS’s assessment of foreign interference, espionage and violent extremism, including online radicalisation, in Aotearoa. These reports are published with the aim of spurring mature conversations within government, organisations and communities about how these threats might manifest and what can be done to identify and mitigate them. For more, see NZSIS’s media release and RNZ coverage.

UN experts reaffirm central role of gender in advancing human rights and equality

Experts from the UN have issued a joint statement reaffirming the centrality of gender, and its understanding, in the project of advancing substantive equality and human rights for all. They expressed deep concern about attempts to reassert rigid, binary conceptions of sex, which minimise the social, historical and cultural factors that shape gender. The experts go on to warn that the entrenchment of these beliefs risk reinforcing, rather than dismantling, structural inequalities.

The Ministry of Justice released the latest findings from the New Zealand Crime and Victims Survey

Te Tāhū o te Ture | Ministry of Justice has released Violent crime May 2025: NZCVS year-to-May 2025 update (2025). The report provides estimates of the number of victims of violent offences for the 12-month period leading up to May 2025. For more, see TOAH-NNEST’s response: Crime & Victim Survey Shows Sexual Violence Climbing, Government’s Approach Falling Behind.