‘Overwhelming’: Ali Mau on the Tika story, so far

The reporting tool for survivors of sexual harm has not yet been live for four weeks. Already, the numbers are remarkable. 

Last month, after three years of work, Ali Mau and Zoë Lawton switched on the core reporting function at Tika. Offering “a free, safe and supported way for survivors to seek justice – whatever that looks like to you”, Tika was built in direct response to a problem of extraordinary proportions. 

“The problem is that 92% of people who experience sexual harm, sexual violence in their lives, never report it to anyone,” Mau told The Spinoff. “A large [number] never disclose it to anyone. So the problem we started with was: how do we raise those reporting rates? And the question really is how do you make people feel safe to report?”

Mau and Lawton, a lawyer, set about creating Tika, an “alternative reporting option”, to break through some of the many hurdles that stand in victims’ way. The service then moves to correlate testimonies, so that legal support and advice can be provided – always free of charge. “The one thing that Zoë and I learned in our almost decade now of working with survivors of sexual harm in our different lanes of media and the law,” said Mau, “is that there is almost always more than one survivor. Often there are many.”

Already, with the site live for not yet four weeks, the response has been staggering, said Mau. “To date, we have received almost 1,400 reports. That's 30% of all the reports that were received by police of sexual assault last year. In under a month. So it's overwhelming… Our youngest client is 18. Our oldest is 82.”

The work now moves to “triaging those reports and making sure that the people who are having technical problems are being supported”. In November, “the second part of the work starts with giving personal legal advice to members who are part of a group".

Mau’s work at Tika builds on decades of experience as a journalist and advocate. A familiar presence on New Zealand screens from as early as the 90s, she founded and led the #MeTooNZ project for Stuff for five years from 2018. Last year she published No Words for This, an autobiography The Spinoff called “gripping, revelatory, generous and layered”. 

In a conversation for At Large with Toby Manhire, Mau describes how her personal experiences of sexual abuse and its impact within her own family inform her work today, how Tika works in practice, and how it sits in the international context. And, as images from the Cornell Seven to the Mama Hooch convictions in Christchurch flood our feeds, how does she assess the state of media and the legal system 10 years on from the advent of #MeToo?