00:00
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00:30
I'm Gemma Bath, host of True Crime Conversations, and welcome to part two of this episode, revisiting a domestic violence crime with both the victim and perpetrator 26 years after the fact. If you haven't listened to Elena's story, head there first. In her late 20s, Elena was threatened with a knife by a man she'd recently broken up with. The incident left her terrified, and it took a year-long decline in her mental health for her to finally be diagnosed with PTSD.
01:00
Agora, nós estamos ouvindo de Kai, não o seu nome real. Nós estamos keeping ele anônimo ao seu request. Mas em nosso chat, ele não se sentia de cair de cair de cair para o seu actions. A lembrar que isso é apenas uma história. E se você tem sido a vítima de um crime de violência, não take a história de Elena e Kai como instrução. In most cases, women should never reconnect with their abuser. Cutting them out of your life is essential in the majority of cases, and as far as we're concerned, encouraged.
01:31
Kai and Elena's story is very unique, and because they have reconnected, we've been given a chance to really examine the crime that shaped them, from all angles, to hear about how it affected them in the aftermath, and what path their lives took for the nearly three decades after. Just a warning, Kai does delve into suicidal ideation and there is some strong language used in one section of our chat. Here's Kai.
01:56
Thank you for joining us on True Crime Conversations. Why are you here? Why have you decided to tell your side of the story?
02:04
I'm here to assist everybody to understand the details of what happened with me and how I got there and then, you know, the tragedies that was, you know, that came from everything. And generally, yeah, I truly, genuinely would like to share my side of the story for the embeddement of women.
02:37
And I know that, you know, men need to take responsibility and they need to, you know, do work on themselves and most don't know how to. E então, porque eu fui para o rock-bottom e comido crimes e crime contra as mulheres, eu acho que é muito importante para turnar e contar a história toda a história, para que todos possam olhar para isso e, você sabe, tem algo de isso, se você sabe, você sabe, Problems in this type of space are caused by men.
03:26
So it's only natural that men should come up to turn up for the women and atone, if that's the word, or to do more in their lives because men need help.
03:43
It's a really heartening answer to hear, actually. Thank you for being here and for saying that.
03:48
That's my pleasure. It's an honour.
03:51
Before we get to that night in 2000 and everything that happened, tell us a bit about how you grew up, your childhood, what kind of influenced you?
04:02
I come from a very big family and I come from a family, a Samoan family and I We had a really good upbringing. We were working class, and parents worked really hard, made all the sacrifices. And at that time, a lot of Pacific Island parents couldn't afford to put their children into private schools. In our case, we were put into a private school that had turned public.
04:39
and they took in big numbers of Māori and Pacific Island students, guys' school.
04:48
And yeah, so I went to that sort of setup. I didn't do well at all linguistically, language-wise. We were always like five years behind everybody, you know, so if we're, you know, we were still all at that time speaking Samoan from the ages of five. So, you know, that we carried into our older years. If you didn't, you know, work things out fast enough, you would take that right through your whole career.
05:19
And generally speaking, you would need to go back to school again or, you know, get lower jobs, et cetera, or go to college. But my family upbringing was really, really good. My parents were really hardworking and they put us in a good position.
05:42
What about things like drugs, alcohol, violence? When did they start appearing in your life?
05:49
For me, it was... Even my brothers didn't even know that...
05:56
Você sabe, eu estava assistindo eles. Eu era, você sabe, o segundo-youngest. E quando eu era um pequeno, você sabe, era normal. Era só irmãos e, você sabe, uma hierarquia entre os irmãos e então, você sabe, It wasn't until it was about 11 or 12 that I started seeing things, like we could look out the window and in the park and we would see other Pacific Island kids. We knew, you know, that they had lost their way already and so they were in the park.
06:33
sniffing glue and that so we were christian um you know samoans and um we went to church and that so that's all we knew really was church and our culture but then when we looked out the window into the park we would always see that i could never thought that i had would graduate to something like that so essentially um I was copying what they were doing from watching from afar and I started petrol sniffing in the garage around about 12, 13 and then... So young.
07:11
Yep. But the kids that were out there doing that, Māori and Pacific kids, they happened to be doing that, you know, so... So, it was kind of like two worlds, clearly we're in two worlds, and then there was a world in the park that I could see, and I gravitated to that, and as I got older, my older brothers got older, and then they started So it was casual, working and drinking. And then what they didn't know, as I was gradually getting older and older, that I was hiding a lot behind there.
07:48
And so when they would have their drinking parties, or their 21st parties, oh, we would be the barmen. And so we would take like about 76 cases of beer, me and my best friend, we would hide about 10 of them under the house. We would, you know, rip them off at the party and then During the following weeks, we would have our own party and then we would go to school and hide some of them at the school. And yeah, so we lived double lives very early.
08:21
Yeah, it was normalized. We hid it so well from our parents who, you know, they didn't even know.
08:31
Can you tell me a bit about how your culture or your family treated women? Was respect and equality for women something that was demonstrated to you?
08:43
From what I had seen generally, and this is my experience, women were treated good but Men and women, if they stepped out of line, you'd get the same punishment, which is severe. Like, you know, yeah, you would just...
09:09
What is stepping out of line? What would stepping out of line look like for a woman?
09:16
Um, for women, um, you know, not doing what people are told, this is a general thing, you know, and, um, if you don't do what you're told, then it is reinforced by, uh, violence. Right. And, and so that was the kind of like, um, irony or the paradox, you know, our parents loved us and they, people can meter it out, you know, properly as it should be. Mas há casos que... E eu vi também, que minha mãe sempre ia subir e impedir meu pai se estava fora do controle, e então vice-versa.
10:02
Se minha mãe estava fora do controle, então meu pai sempre ia subir. But generally speaking, in Samoa culture, there's a film coming out, and it's called Tena. And it talks of a Tena guy, and he talks about it. He openly talks about it. It's going around. He'll be in Sydney Festival coming out. And, you know, he talks about the severity of the punishment, you know, and that they also talk about the metering out of punishment.
10:35
And yeah, so you would get it very badly if you continue to be disruptive. So women, I couldn't really say that.
10:52
I didn't see purposeful things in my life, in my family, because it was male-dominated. But I can understand from seeing things going wrong when men grow up and then they take it out on their women.
11:13
Yeah.
11:14
And their kids, yeah, that's what I can see. They don't hold back in terms of their using their frustration of their situations and overstepping the load on a person, which is in most Samoans or Pacific Islands can tell you about that situation, that it's Sometimes it's completely over the top.
11:45
Did you experience a lot of violence against you?
11:48
Yes, I did. I experienced, you know, violence from just, you know, boys being boys and then violence outside of our family. Yeah, early youth gangs. So the next thing we progressed into was we were Catholic gangs. Um, boys, good private school boys, but then we were in organized street, uh, youth gangs and, um, violence was a big part of that.
12:21
Um, and we used to train like in every martial art form because we know we're, we're going to be going on the street and that other, those other gangs down the road, you know, if we, if we clash, it's all on.
12:37
O outro parte da sua filha que eu quero touchar é que você foi forcedida a lot de tristeza em sua filha. Can você toucha sobre isso? Porque você perdeu muitas famílias.
12:47
Yeah, I lost two of my brothers in a car accident, so given that I was already on all of these things, a very young alcoholic, you know, I guess that was by 13, by, you know, by 16, 17, 18 it was all on.
13:10
Mas eu acho, você sabe, foi quando eu estava 21 anos. E como um homem, você sabe, com tudo isso, foi muito difícil.
13:24
And I didn't have many people to really talk about it. You know, if I had known, you know, about Louise Hay, then, you know, then that would have been great. But I only found out 10 years later.
13:39
Yeah.
13:40
You know, so I started to look at other, you know, forms of new age and all of that.
13:49
Sim, quando meu irmãos died, foi muito difícil para mim, porque eu estava assistindo, você sabe, com a família, com a família também, eu estava ainda na igreja, você sabe, E, sim, foi muito difícil, porque foi um dia que eu estava em uma festa de um dia de um dia de um dia de uma festa de um dia.
14:22
Sim, so, you know, losing them started, you know, a massive decline for me. And I started getting into hitting the drugs and alcohol, you know, that whole front that everything was okay, you know, I'm really strong, you know, big boys don't cry and all of that sort of stuff.
14:45
But in hindsight, looking back at it, I started to get into... I just didn't care. I just, you know, I actually wanted to die. You know, when I look back at it now, I really wanted to die. I hated myself. You know, I didn't know I hated myself, but in everything that I did after, it definitely shows that, you know, I had lost respect for myself and then got into, you know, drugs and alcohol.
15:19
And, you know, that smiling face in the front, but behind there was a massive tsunami of pain, anger, frustration. It all hit. And, yeah, so I used to...
15:36
Um, you know, most of the people that I hang around with were all related, um, in gangs, etc., and was working on the doors. Um, you know, there was a lot of drugs in the nightclubs and all of that sort of stuff, you know, so there would be nights where I would take, like, 20 ecstasy pills and, um... Did you survive that? Well, I'm still here. I'm still going. I used to drink. You know, I didn't know I was a real full-blown alcoholic when I was with one of my friends who was a meth dealer.
16:12
And he was a nice guy. He seemed like a nice guy.
16:16
A nice meth dealer.
16:17
Yeah, he was actually a nice guy. He was very civil to me. And I understand what he was doing. But one night we were Ele disse, oh, yeah, come over, you know, and we came over. And then I wasn't a type to buy meth at all, but by hanging around with these guys all the time, I said, oh, try this, and next thing I'm trying this.
16:41
And then about in a few hours, I say, how are you feeling? Are you feeling all right? Is everything? I said, yeah, yeah, no, I'm fine. Yeah, nothing, actually. And then another three hours, then they say... Como você está feeling agora? Eu disse, sim, o mesmo, nada, eu não acho. E então eles me disseram, você deve estar feeling agora, porque você tem uma caseira de beer, uma bota de JDs, e nós temos que ir para a bota shop. And I remember that night, right? And that's when in my mind a pause, within that dark time, that's, I'm just trying to show that that's the level of danger that I was doing to myself and I didn't care.
17:30
It also shows the tolerance that you'd built up, that you could handle that much alcohol and drugs.
17:36
Oh, yeah. I'm not proud of it because in reality now is although I have given up all of those things, the damage does not, you know, go away just because you've stopped drinking and taking cocaine and all of that. Like 4 to 5 years ago, the damage from 20 years, 5 years is coming right now.
17:58
Yeah.
17:58
So I'm off everything. I don't do that anymore. But I do recognise that the damage of all of that is hitting me now.
18:08
Up next, Kai tells me about the day he first met Elena.
18:16
Let's go to the year 2000 when you met Elena. Yeah. Who were you then? Was this all happening then?
18:23
At that time, I was still on my way down.
18:28
And by the time I met Elena, you know, we were just hanging out and friends. And then, yeah, that's what happened. And we were together. But, you know... I do know that when we were staying together, I was still at that point where I was at the nightclubs working and taking 10 to 15, 20 pills and coming home and trying to act straight.
19:03
Right.
19:03
You know what I mean? Yeah. So...
19:07
What do you remember of that relationship? Do you remember it being a good, healthy relationship?
19:13
Well, it was a...
19:17
Okay relationship, given what I've just said, you know, because I was still living a lie myself, and I was hiding the fact that I was taking a lot of drugs and hanging around with a lot of people. The relationship, from what I can remember, because it was a long time, was, you know, it was a normal, loving relationship, young people trying to find their way. And, um, unfortunately, you know, the weight of everything, it had to, um, you know, it had to blow up in, in a sense.
19:56
And, um, that's where it all fell apart was because, um, you know, a lot of the drug taking and that, um, I had never, um, at that point in a relationship really Given how bad it was threatened her in a way, I was just normal. She was living with me and one of my friends and she moved in. And yeah, and so it kind of like at that same time, the demise was coming really big and fast for me because of the alcohol and drug taking.
20:38
When she broke up with you, she told us that you kept coming around a lot and she kind of witnessed or watched you decline, as you say. She was watching you getting more and more distressed and upset. Do you remember that? Is that how you remember that time?
20:55
I kind of blocked a lot of it out, and it was only when I was just talking to Elena, you know, about the podcast, that listening to her, I was just going, oh my God, please, no wonder I blocked this out.
21:11
You know, oh, I'm such an idiot. And so, yeah, I really, in honesty, blocked it out of my head because... Você sabe, é uma lembra do tempo e de como estúpido eu estava.
21:31
E é uma coisa estranha também porque, você sabe, Mas, em hindsight, olhando para trás, Elayna went off into her world, mas ela estava obviamente não bem. E eu estava, no momento em que aconteceu, eu estava tentando salvar myself. E eu não podia nem ter a coragem de pensar sobre Elayna, honestamente. Eu estava tentando pensar, como eu vou ficar vivo?
22:01
e um, que é um, que é um, que é um, que é um, que é um, que é um, que é um, que é um, que é um, que é um, I was on drugs again.
22:19
And I was drinking, which was even worse. I was drinking and drugs and alcohol was very bad. And, yeah, so all I remember was being at the house and something happened and I got upset. You know, I was feeling, you know, so down and that I think at that time, I kind of lost complete control of myself.
22:52
And I felt like just dying right there or then. Or having any excuse to feel that way. So it was almost like I was... I was almost showing myself, tempting myself to these opportunities to either kill yourself or do something bad so you can get shot by the coppers and it's a fast way out of here. That's how bad, you know.
23:19
So when you grabbed the knife, were you thinking of yourself not hurting her?
23:25
That's right. In my mind, I wasn't really, you know, that's what I'm saying. That's all I know. You don't remember that. I don't remember, but I do know that I hated myself and that I would rather kill myself, you know. So I'm not sure on that night because I maybe had like five to seven pills and drank cases of beers and bottles of Jack Daniels was my weekly start the night off.
23:54
Do you even, do you have any memory of her that night? Because she was terrified. Can you picture her face or her reactions?
24:04
I can picture her face and her reactions and, you know, it's disappointing, you know. Even to this day, it is still disappointing. Although my life has changed, although I have done this, It is disappointing that I did that, you know, with Elena, you know, of course she would have been scared, you know, and that I would be enraged, you know, from everything of the past, all just put into one, you know, and it's like it's just come out of me, you know.
24:45
That night, Elena was powerless. You were a much bigger person than her.
24:52
She was terrified. What is that like for you to think about a woman, Elena, being in that position where she feels so unsafe and she can't kind of get away?
25:07
Now that you said that, it's like I'm walking back in that moment now, and I realise now that I locked the doors and trapped her in. I think I said something along the lines, I want to kill myself, or I may, like I said, have threatened her.
25:31
I think her ability...
25:34
To disarm me was a major turning point of the moment.
25:41
She was able to do that because she was trained, you know, in martial arts and that, and it happened so quick. So in that particular situation, she was, although vulnerable, also strong mentally enough to To do that, to engage in that. Because I remember there was a tussle to get the knife.
26:11
I obviously didn't win that tussle.
26:14
She disarmed me.
26:16
So she was brave enough to use her combat skills to disarm me from hurting anybody.
26:27
But there are so many women who don't win that tussle. Men are usually physically stronger than women and we see time and time again that women are dying.
26:36
Yeah.
26:37
Is that a sobering fact for you to understand and realise? Yeah. That could have happened.
26:41
Exactly. That's why I'm so ashamed, you know. I was probably in denial about... that happening to me, that that could have happened to me. But you know what? It did.
26:57
And so on that night, I never dreamed that that would happen to me. It happened. The reality is that she was able to disarm me. And if she didn't disarm me, I probably, one thing is I wouldn't be here. I don't, you know, she may have not been here. The fact is that she was able to do that.
27:23
E, você sabe, você sabe, ambos de nós.
27:27
Do você lembra de ser capazes de sentir remorso para ela em que momento, ou é isso algo que vem depois?
27:32
Yeah, that was not around because I was like gone.
27:37
Okay.
27:37
But I do remember something happened and I kind of like dazed off or passed out and then I looked up and I could see some blue and red lights bouncing off the wall and I went, oh my God, what the hell? And so I realized, oh my God, O que aconteceu aqui? E aí eu fui para o outro lado da sala, e eu consegui vermelho e azul, porque nós estamos no terceiro, em um lugar em Bondi, e eu olhava e eu vi tantos policiais, e então eu começava a adicionar um e um, e então, você sabe...
28:17
E então eu olhou e eu consegui ver os policiais. E então eu vi Alainia e disse, oh meu Deus, algo aconteceu. E então eu percebi, você sabe, porque do alcohol e que algo ruim estava acontecendo. E então eu tinha que falar com eles de fora do window para perguntar, você sabe, você sabe, Please put your guns away. I'm happy for you guys to come up.
28:47
But, you know, the guy that got killed down the road, that's all I was thinking because I was so scared. You know, after that, it was a traumatic night for Elena and for both of us.
29:02
I am so thankful that nothing serious happened on that night, but I can understand the amount of trauma that was caused to Elena and to her family and to my family as well.
29:20
Are you sorry for what you did?
29:22
Yeah, I'm really sorry. Um, I'm embarrassed. It's shameful, you know, because I let a lot of people down and my work and that found out, everyone found out. So, yeah, I'm really sorry for what happened and sorry and thankful That nothing serious, serious happened.
30:00
That it never escalated to a higher level. You know, where she got hurt or I got hurt.
30:08
I know that she called you and told you that she was going to be doing this podcast.
30:13
Yes.
30:13
Is that the first time you guys had spoken about that night? How was that for you?
30:18
We had never spoken about...
30:22
The incident.
30:23
The incident in full detail until she called me.
30:27
Porque, you know, but I had seen her many times out and about, you know, because we're in the same sort of, and in those situations we, she had a family and she had moved on and I had never been, well, I never spoke to her about it.
30:51
We just got on with our lives.
30:54
So you would have been unaware of the kind of after effects you experienced, the PTSD, the kind of decline she felt for that year. What was it like hearing what your actions had done to her in the aftermath?
31:06
Embarrassing again, you know, it's really, when she explained it to me, I was, you know, I had my hands on my head looking down, you know, and I was Happy to talk to her then. And, you know, being here, I wanted to talk about it, you know, so for her and for me and for others, for people to see, you know, how quickly and how badly things can go, but where things came from.
31:40
And she kind of like, you know, protected me to quite a lot within that sort of framework, if that makes sense.
31:48
You were arrested for what you did to her and you went through the court proceedings. What was that like for you? Do you remember much of that?
31:58
Because I was in court so many times then and even after, it's all mounted into one big court case. Right. You know, like I can't, to be honest, remember even being at the court.
32:18
Really?
32:19
Yeah.
32:20
That's how... Do you remember what you were convicted with?
32:24
No, I just, you know, all I remember is that I had to speak about that in court in front of the magistrate. And I did or didn't have a legal support, you know, I don't even know the finer details of that.
32:44
Do you think you have blocked that out from a psychological point or because of the drugs and alcohol or a combination?
32:52
I think it's both because it was a long time ago I was on so many drugs and that I can't even really weed out which court case was which court case. Right. You know, because they were all very bad.
33:09
Did you have a rock bottom? When did all of this end? This constant drug taking and police and ending up in cells?
33:19
I guess when I was told, the first part of it was when I was told by the magistrate to, you're never allowed back into the eastern suburbs for 10 years.
33:34
Wow.
33:35
Yep. He doesn't want to see my face again and become in front of the court or else, you know, you're looking at, you know, da-da-da.
33:45
And it wasn't until, so I wasn't allowed back in the east. So I had a completely different, you know, it was like, oh.
33:55
E aí
34:17
To be away from everybody. And it was only by good fortune that I bumped into certain people that actually took me in and then I literally dried out.
34:33
It went up and down again, up and down.
34:37
You know, until there was the moment where I was in Bankstown and I rang up my mum and I told her I'm going to kill myself in front of this train. And I'm ringing to say goodbye and I'm sorry.
34:52
And she was screaming and not, you know, and telling me, please don't, don't, don't, don't.
35:00
And then I thought right there and then, Just as my life zoomed past you, you know, how you get those things, and this is it.
35:14
This is it, you know?
35:16
You're a fucking bastard. Throw yourself in front of that train, you fucking piece of shit, you know? And then there was something stopping me inside, and it was my mother was talking to me and telling me, please, please, please. And then I thought to myself, Oh my God, standing on the station with the phone, looking at the train and talking to my mum all at one.
35:43
Wow.
35:44
And that's when I just, my head just went down and said, you better pick yourself up now because everybody's going to be looking at me.
35:56
Like, yeah, that guy, you know? And from that time, I had to then, like, snap the fuck out of it.
36:07
And, you know, I had to go through another level of embarrassment, but it was a different type. It was, you know, a type that...
36:19
I knew this time that I could get through whatever's coming now. I just survived all of that.
36:26
You know, I could have got killed so many times by drug taking, by violence, by police, by everything that, you know, I thought... Oh my God, who the fuck is going to look after my mum? I'm the only one. I promised her and my dad that I would look after them till they died. And then they said that when you finish looking after us and we passed away, then you can do your life. You don't have to be Samoan. You don't even have to do church.
36:59
You don't have to do anything. Então eu acreditava com isso quando eu era jovem, então. Então é o que eu lembro. E eu pensei, oh, mano, isso me deu. E eu pensei, tudo bem, ok.
37:13
E aí foi o começo?
37:14
E aí foi o começo. E aí, eu disse a mamãe, você sabe, Well, you know, she's passed away in 2024 and I looked after her till she died and I really thank her and the many other women that helped me.
37:41
Você sabe, como Elayna, em toda essa tragédia, ela ainda me ajudou. E, você sabe, outras pessoas, meu trabalho, meus bosses, eles tinham que me pegar em jair, e, você sabe... So, yeah, that was it. And then I had to dry out for another five years.
38:02
And then I told myself, as much as how bad this is right now, as much as you're feeling this, well... Você tem que tomar isso no chin, e você tem que tomar isso dia por dia, e você tem que ser uma pessoa melhor. E eu posso ser uma pessoa melhor, mesmo que eu me engano, e tudo isso. Durante minha vida, antes de Elayna, Um, I just thought that, yeah, I'm not going out like this.
38:41
I'm not going out. And I got more to give to the community and to the world. And I'm going to, one, get a job. And I'm going to stay in that job. And if I stay in that job, then things should be better.
39:00
And then that's how I just crawled myself out from doing, you know, back to youth works and then my work, you know.
39:11
In this second act of your life...
39:14
Has there been any violence? Have you added to that criminal record at all? Or is that something that's in the past?
39:20
It is definitely in the past.
39:21
Okay.
39:22
And that, yeah, some people say to me, wow, you could have been, you know, the leader of this bikey gang. And I'm thinking to myself, why the fuck I want to be part of this? You know, going back into that, I'm more into helping our people who are lost between cultures and that try and find themselves through art making.
39:48
Before Elena reached out to you and you had that big conversation, had you apologized to her? Had you reached out to her?
39:55
I think I may have spoken to her once and apologised to her then, but I definitely, I believe I would have apologised to her back in the day.
40:07
Yeah.
40:07
You know, you know, it was shocking.
40:10
Do you mean like once you sobered up and everything kind of had died down, you think you reached out back then?
40:14
Yeah, I believe I did, you know.
40:17
If I didn't, oh, then, you know.
40:20
After the break, why does Kai believe taking responsibility for his actions now, after all this time, matters?
40:28
There are not a lot of men doing this and yet violence against women is a crime we're seeing every day. We're seeing women killed every week in this country. Yeah. Why is it so important for men to speak up, to talk about this stuff?
40:44
Sim, porque violência contra as mulheres é um homem problema. Não é uma mulher problema. A mulher tem que lidar com isso. Você já viu meu tremor, você viu? Foi tipo de tremor tremor. Mas...
41:00
Given that I had tried to become, you know, on track to align myself with what my parents were, they were preachers and they looked after big communities, you know.
41:16
My father wanted me to be a priest, and that wasn't going to happen then. But I used the arts and community to assist people in telling their stories. Men need to take responsibility about their actions, and if you don't know how to do it, um, you need to go and seek help, and, and, and this is the thing about that whole stereotype about men, that men, they don't cry, they don't, you know, and then there's all of these other stereotypes or tropes, you know, the way men are meant to behave, you know, it, it's just completely wrong, and we've been conditioned so badly as men, ...in the modern day and in the past... ...that we're the leaders... ...when in actual fact we're not the leaders... ...you know, the leaders are the ones... ...that's going to bear the responsibility of the children... ...and that's, you know... ...and as I was saying... ...you know, I'm an academic and I'm a historian... ...and when I read through and sift through our history... ...and I say, hey, this is so wrong...
42:35
You know, that in what appears in our Samoan culture is that the women, the men are the white of the eye and the women is the eye, you know. And so it's set up that what we call a wheeanga. And so that's one of the disappointing things that I can see in that sort of set up crossover in that. It appears that the men are the leaders, when in actual fact, the Samoans had always known that the leadership roles of chieftainship is so that the women, what we call faeleele, eleele is dirt, that the women don't get dirty doing that role of being the chief is lower than the women, because the women are behind them.
43:30
guiding them so even in the our hierarchy the women are still higher so you know from from from me as a person that has done so wrong in in this area and now they're looking at it from his historical and it's like it's almost um Consolidating that hierarchy, that the men are up here and the women are down there, it can come, it can feel like that, especially in, you know, if you look at a hierarchical system, that the men are chiefs, that means most people go, hey, the men are the chiefs, they're the leaders, you know?
44:18
Mas, na verdade, o sistema, os homens têm que fazer esse trabalho, porque os homens, eles estão tão busy fazendo tudo o real. Outro exemplo, em nossa cultura em Samoa, The women don't even do the cooking. The men do the cooking. You know, they have to go out into the bush and everything. So what I'm saying is that, you know, there is cultural precedence that, you know, we should be making more time to re-look at ourselves, re-look at our systems and see what's going right and what's going wrong, you know.
45:01
Because I'm like, well, then why? Why are so many men so violent towards women? Like you've just given us a great example of, you know, in your culture, women are supposed to be the highest of high and yet... Well, they want to be powerful, you know?
45:17
They want to be in control and abuse. You mean men? Yeah. I don't think they're actually built for leadership.
45:27
E, você sabe, quando você realmente olha o que eu estou dizendo, que agora tudo está feito de homem, há muitas culturas que as mulheres são, e quando você olha essas culturas, Yeah, so I couldn't answer all of the questions about why men are like that, but I definitely know that men need to listen more and that they need to break the stereotype of, you know, like I had is if I showed any sort of femininity in my youth, my brothers will smash it out of me.
46:04
So how do we change this? How do we turn and influence young boys into being good, non-violent men?
46:13
I know that's a huge question.
46:14
That's a huge question.
46:16
But what would have helped you as a young man?
46:18
Yeah.
46:19
What do you think would have helped you?
46:22
Because it was all hidden away, I couldn't even go and tell my mum what was happening to me because then I was scared, you know. So acts of violence was, you know, always, you know. And I even had an academic, Samoan academic say to me, Oh, get over it, you know. You think that was bad. I had it worse, you know. And I'm thinking to myself, why don't you get over it just by telling me you had it worse and that I'm trying to tell you, you know, how young men were behaving so badly.
47:00
E que, você sabe... Então, talvez melhor role modelos. E que é por isso que acontece, porque as coisas não estão sendo saides no momento, no momento, no momento, no momento, no momento. Então... Conversations, podcasts, men coming out and talking about it is where we need to go because we need to talk. So I believe that the churches need to pull their socks up.
47:32
I believe the youth workers are continuing to do their jobs. I believe that more adults should...
47:43
be trained to teach kids about about you know growing up and about women and how to treat women properly and how to deal with your emotions as you're traveling through time and or else These things are unchecked and they can go like grass will grow wild and continue like grass to be there.
48:14
Sorry to use grass as a bad...
48:17
No, it's a good analogy because you're right, it just runs rampant.
48:21
It just continues to be... I want people to know that man... Você não é alone, mesmo men, e que, você sabe, nós devemos falar mais sobre isso e não deve ser tabu, você sabe?
48:42
O que foi assim, revisando o crime against Helena, pensando sobre violência de men's violência, como viver em esse espaço em preparação para esse chat?
48:51
Yeah, it was really hard for me, but it wasn't, you know, because all the stuff that is was more self-conscious, you know, and it kind of like defeated the purpose of, you know, if I wasn't going to come and talk about it. So I thought, no, I want to do. I'm on the trajectory of doing good anyway. So if I can be of any use to anybody, if my voice or my story can help heal somebody, educate somebody, you know, that you're better than that.
49:35
And that's what I think. People have a low self-esteem of themselves that do that. And so if I can reassure them that... que não é o real você, que você é meant para ser, então eu acho que é uma boa coisa.
49:53
Elayna vai estar ouvindo isso. Isto alguma coisa que você quer dizer para ela?
49:57
Just em caso eu não me disseram sorry ou me disseram muito claro, eu me sinto ashamed ainda.
50:08
I feel sad, but I thank God in a way that nothing happened and that the kindness that she showed me helped me.
50:20
during it and after and she was part of my healing as well because you know it could have been worse she could have just taken complete offence but she had that inside her I think she kind of like knew that I was a better person than that and at that time I didn't think I was And so she helped me through it to buy time for me to find myself.
50:55
And then I'm very thankful for that.
50:59
or else I could have been on a different trajectory right now and things wouldn't have been good for me. So I'm very thankful and I'm proud of her that, you know, the work that she's been doing in the space of trauma to help other people. She's shown to me kindness after all, at the end of the day.
51:25
Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for telling your story.
51:28
That's okay, I'm really, you know, I'll do more in my capability to, you know, help our people and young men, you know, become better people, you know, so they don't go into this because I don't think most people would have survived what I went through.
51:51
Thank you to Elena and Kai for their honesty, courage and willingness to take part in this episode. This is the first time we've told a story like this in this way on our podcast. We're especially grateful to Elena for reaching out to us, trusting us with her story and giving us the opportunity to speak with Kai. Tchau, tchau.
