'Making me beg for it': Abusers using drugs as a weapon of control

Abusive partners are forcing women to drink, take drugs and misuse medication, with more than a fifth of Women’s Refuge clients also blocked from seeking mental health support, new figures show.

Women’s Refuge gathered data from more than 5,000 clients for a report due out next year, and has shared some of its preliminary findings with 1News.

Almost 21% of clients had been forced to drink alcohol, take drugs, or take more than they wanted to. A further 14.4% were forced to misuse their medication.

The data also showed 21.6% had been blocked from accessing mental health services, counselling or other support organisations, while 7.2% were stopped from getting addiction support.

As part of the research, Women’s Refuge spoke to women who had lived through this abuse.

One woman said her partner had controlled her supply.

“He was like literally drip feeding me to keep me high enough to keep wanting more. So, he was practically making me beg for it in the end and he wouldn’t give me any money.”

Another said she was attacked with her baby in her arms after refusing to hand over money for meth.

“He roped me in, now that I look at it [...] I was holding [my baby] in my arms and he punched me and smacked me over. I was like nah we have to leave and that was all because he wanted me to give him all his benefit for meth and I was like no I can’t do that.”

Women’s Refuge senior research adviser Cleo Arathoon said many perpetrators had also threatened to tell others about the women’s drug and alcohol use.

“So what we really hope that these figures show is that women don’t necessarily just, and mums especially, don’t necessarily just choose to use,” she said.

Auckland University of Technology addictions lecturer Suzette Jackson said mothers can be fearful about coming forward about their mental health or addiction issues due to the risk of having their children removed from their care.

Residential programmes posed another hurdle for women with caregiving responsibilities, she added.

"I'm a researcher at Higher Ground which is a residential service in Auckland that is mixed gender and we always find that there's less women in that service and the key reason is that it's a four month residential program and often there are caregivers and they can't access those services," Jackson said.

"So what that means is we need to be having services that are either community based, daycare based or day programs or specialist services that can accommodate women and their children."

Health New Zealand director of mental health and addiction commissioning Lisa Gestro said the agency was committed to strengthening support for women, parents and whānau affected by substance use.

“We recognise this is an area where there are opportunities to strengthen support for families affected by substance use,” Gestro said.

She said Health NZ was working to set up a new pregnancy and parenting service by 2027/28, as part of the Government’s Action Plan to Prevent and Reduce Substance Harm.

The service is likely to be based in the South Island, where a Ministry of Health-commissioned report found there are currently no specific services of that kind. The North Island has six.