Their paths may be different, but Louise Nicholas, Dame Jenny Shipley and Dame Margaret Sparrow share one thing: a determination to stand up and make a change. In an exclusive extract from a new book by Margie Thomson, we profile the three Kiwi women, whose influential work will have a long-lasting impact.
There’s a scene in the movie Consent: The Louise Nicholas Story that finally helped Louise fit one of the final jigsaw pieces into her understanding of what happened to her. When she first saw it, she burst into tears. “I realised. For the first time, I understood.”
It’s the scene that depicts when Louise, aged 19, was offered a car ride from a police officer she knew. He said he’d take her home, but instead he took her to a flat where three other police officers were waiting. She sees the men waiting. She realises what’s going to happen. “Get out of the car, Lou,” she’s told. She says she doesn’t want to. She’s even taken her shoes off so she can run. But she looks beaten.
The question she’s asked herself, and was asked, challengingly, by lawyers in court, is: “Why did you go into that flat if you knew what was going to happen?” The film-maker, Robert Sarkies, explains it, powerfully, visually: 19-year-old Louise is in the car, utterly diminished. And then, just for a minute, we see that it’s no longer the young woman there, but the 13-year-old girl Louise had been the first time she was raped, the first time a grown man ordered her to do what she was told, and out of fear she obeyed.
“It was little Louise sitting in that car,” Louise says today. “When I saw that, I knew this was the reason why. It wasn’t the 19-year-old following, it was that little girl again, doing what she was told. There were no words I could find to thank those people that made the movie because they had answered the question I could never answer, and so I still carried that blame. But I didn’t have to carry it any more.”
この記事は Australian Women’s Weekly NZ の February 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は Australian Women’s Weekly NZ の February 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
PRETTY WOMAN
Dial up the joy with a mood-boosting self-care session done in the privacy of your own home. It’s a blissful way to banish the winter blues.
Hitting a nerve
Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes could aid physical and mental wellbeing.
The unseen Rovals
Candid, behind the scenes and neverbefore-seen images of the royal family have been released for a new exhibition.
Great read
In novels and life - there's power in the words left unsaid.
Winter dinner winners
Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of budget-concious recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.
Winter baking with apples and pears
Celebrate the season of apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the cold weather blues away.
The wines and lines mums
Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.
Former ballerina'sBATTLE with BODY IMAGE
Auckland author Sacha Jones reveals how dancing led her to develop an eating disorder and why she's now on a mission to educate other women.
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.
IT'S NEVER TOO LATE TO START
Responsible for keeping the likes of Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis in shape, Malin Svensson is on a mission to motivate those in midlife to move more.