Peggy (not her real name) is a survivor. A survivor of an incident that saw her kidnapped, raped and seriously assaulted by an ex-boyfriend.
She is the other side of police statistics that show in the year to the end of June, 154 sexual offences were recorded in the Dunedin area alone.
The police counted off 104 of those crimes as "resolved", but, Peggy says, for the victims the case is never closed.
The 47-year-old Dunedin woman says the day she was attacked, nine years ago, lives with her still and affects everything she does.
For three months after the attack, which left her entire body below her face covered in deep bruising, she uncharacteristically hit the bottle.
Her family had to take care of her son for a time because she could not cope.
She did not come out of her black hole until she was arrested.
It then hit home that she needed to sort herself out.
She lost weight and suffered serious bouts of depression and even today avoids places she knows her attacker, who served six and a-half years in prison, used to go, in case she runs into him there.
If she is feeling depressed or tired, she is also anxious about running into him in the street.
She saw him once a few years ago and started hyperventilating.
"It never goes away. It doesn't occupy your mind seven days a week, 24 hours a day, but there are turns in life every now and then that will always bring it back."
After several years of counselling and much assistance from Women's Refuge, she has pulled her life together.
She wants to try to help other people avoid the domestic abuse situation in which she found herself.
"In the end, this has made me stronger, and I did that all by myself."
She does not like to talk about the incident because she feels it will let the trauma back in, and has told few friends or family but, after recent media publicity about victims' rights, she is considering adding her voice in the hope it might make a difference to someone else.
"There's a lot for victims to be angry about. I'm sure what I feel is not unique to me."
