A lunge and attempted kiss from a boss she thought she respected. It's just one disturbing incident of many in the long career of journalist Ali Mau, and back then there was nowhere to turn for help or advice. The now 61-year-old and co-founder of Tika, a free legal service and innovative platform for reporting sexual harm, speaks to Emma Hildesley about why the service is crucial and how her own experiences empowered her to act.
Last year, with the publication of your memoir, you told 1News [about abuse endured as a child and young woman] and about letting go. How have you put that into practice over the past year?
Oh, it's been very empowering. I think the work in developing Tika has accelerated it, and it's been a full-time job. When you're working on a technology start-up you tend to assume that you're just doing it on your weekends, but we were seed funded by the Clare Foundation in 2024 to work on this full time.
I've kept busy in the background because the book was a surprise bestseller – I was surprised! And it even made the shortlist for audiobook of the year, which was awesome since I read it and that was hard going.
I've had probably 500 or 600 people message me in the past year with their own stories, and a lot of people say 'gosh, that's heavy to carry'... and it can be, although I approach everybody who speaks to me about their own lived experience with compassion rather than empathy. Because empathy denotes you taking on somebody else's pain as if it's your own, and I think it can be a bit dangerous to do that.
What problem is Tika aiming to solve that you felt wasn't being solved already?
One of the functions that is less formal and legal is that it provides a place for survivors to put what they've been carrying. That may sound a bit woo-woo to people, but I can tell you as a survivor myself, a transformative moment for me was when my sister phoned me in 2018 and told me that I wasn't alone [in having been abused as a child by a family member]. So that sense of community is incredibly important.
What barriers did you personally need to overcome to create and launch Tika?
Yeah, it's been very hard. The crucial thing that's carried us through is that Zoë [Tika co-founder and lawyer Zoë Lawton] and I are both very stubborn people, and we were never, ever willing to let the vision go.
And one of the things that really kind of carried us was the fact that despite all the difficulties, particularly with finding funding, nobody has said – not once – in the three years we've been working on this, that this is a bad idea. So that sustained me, for sure.
Has there been a moment so far that has made you go 'this is why we do it'?
Most often it's the reaction from somebody who's never heard of Tika, when you explain the process. Particularly that absolute mic drop moment when you explain how the large language model takes your report and starts looking for other people who've reported the same person.
They go, 'oh wow, why hasn't this existed before?'.
We were unpaid for the first year and it's looked precarious at times and it was hard, but we never doubted that it was the right thing to do.
Can you describe something that happened to you as a young journalist that you now think should have been reported if the right avenues had existed?
Oh, tons. How long have you got?
It's very easy to say that it was a different time, and in a lot of ways it was – certainly in our understanding of the seriousness of these incidents.
But for example, I was 23, and it was my first television gig. And I adored my boss and we had a great working relationship. And one night when he'd drunk too much, he lunged across the backseat of a taxi and tried to kiss me. I went 'WHAT?' and reacted with horror. And it never happened again, but it was an example of inappropriate behaviour that these days you'd be off to HR, right?
I never told anyone. I'm telling you now because it was almost 40 years ago, but that's just one example. The worst examples I put in the book, I think it's chapter 12, my experiences at Channel 9 in Melbourne, and that was just blatant, over-the-top harassment, you know, out in the open. When I think back at what was said and done just blatantly in the newsroom to most of the women, it is absolutely horrific.
Why isn't the current reporting system through NZ police enough?
Lots of reasons. There are very good and supportive police teams around the country who support survivors through their criminal process, and it is done well. In other instances, it is not done very well – and historically it's been done very badly.
The collective mistrust over the years is not just down to the police process, it's that we hear constantly that the court process and justice process is retraumatising and often not worth the agony. Even officers of the court or senior lawyers will say to you privately, 'if my child was harmed, I probably wouldn't suggest that they go through the justice system'.
We are giving people not only information, guiding them through the process, but they have a legally privileged relationship right from the moment they register on the platform. They can kind of let their shoulders drop, and know that everything they tell Tika is confidential.
What does practical support for a survivor actually look like?
We'll have to wait and see how the cases shape up, but for example, we hear from counselling services all the time that their clients' private counselling notes are, essentially, subpoenaed. And most survivors find that a horrific idea, that what they've told their counsellor in private may be examined in open court. So that's just one example of how a Tika lawyer may be able to oppose such submissions and make sure that those counselling notes are not used in the cross-examination of a survivor in court.
I do want to make it very clear we're not the ones investigating the case, that's completely up to police. Once they have the information from our groups – if the [person reporting the harm] agrees and wants that – [police] are the ones that have to assess the case against the Solicitor General's evidence bar. And then if they decide to take the case forward, then it is police who investigate, and it is the Crown prosecutor who prosecutes the case in court. We are there for support.
How has your own experience of sexual abuse shaped your journey, positively or negatively?
I'm going to be really honest with you. I think that many survivors – and I am no different — come out of an examination of their experiences (and remember it took me 40 years to examine mine), with a kind of burning need to do something to help other people.
So many people have messaged me privately and said, 'how can I help? I had a similar experience – what can I do?' And that is what drives me as well.
Although, I had already set up the #MeToo NZ project at Stuff, which mainly looked into workplace harassment, before I had my own reckoning [about my childhood].
But what I was seeing come out in the wake of Me Too was just so unfair. The power differential that the survivors who spoke to me for that project had faced, which led to some pretty horrific treatment and abuse in some cases, was just so unfair. It made me livid, and when I get real angry about something, I tend to look for what I can do about it and see where I can put that emotion. I'm not alone in that, and it's not just a purely unselfish thing I'm doing here, it makes me feel as though I'm contributing and that is important to me.
If Tika succeeds in the way you hope it will, what does New Zealand look like in 10 years' time?
I think we could see a number of things. We could see the reporting rate rise, and interestingly, if you read those statistics wrong, that could look like a massive jump in the instances of sexual harm. Whereas, in fact, it would be surfacing the harm that currently goes unreported.
Cases are more likely to be taken forward, they're more likely to be investigated, they're likely to be stronger and we may well see more early guilty pleas, which will have an important impact in that it will spare a lot of survivors or complainants the re-traumatisation of a trial.
And in the end, we would have a higher conviction rate for sexual crimes.
This is not just a project that's going to feed more people into the criminal justice system – because we know that accountability looks different for every survivor.
People may not want to see their perpetrator go to prison necessarily. Let's say it's a teacher, they might just want them not to be in front of a classroom again. They might want an apology, or a mediated apology, or compensation through various civil options, or the idea of restorative justice. That might be the thing that helps you really achieve peace.
Check out tika.org.nz.
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