Breaking Silence - Series Three

...I remember lying there and thinking "this is it", and I was okay and I'd made my peace, just because it meant I was never ever going to have to deal with him again.

– Presenter Simonne Butler recalls the night her partner almost killed her, early in episode five

If somebody's thinking of leaving , come to Women's Refuge . . . We would never tell somebody to talk to their partner about leaving. That is something that is really, really dangerous.

– Women's Refuge Chief Executive Ang Jury on leaving a violent relationship, in episode five

I think that the dysfunction of the Family Court is one of New Zealand's worst-kept secrets . . . I think that we need to shut the court down.

– Auckland University Professor Carrie Leonetti on the Family Court, at the start of episode one

It's very difficult dropping your child off to a man that you know can be so violent and so frightening. But there's no choice.

– An anonymous mother on sharing custody with her abusive ex-partner, in the first episode

There's a message I want to get out there for young people: know who you are talking to, before you take those next steps of meeting someone. Hey, they may seem great on the end of a phone; it may seem that they're really nice from their photos and how they look like. They're living their lives through Facebook and Instagram. But the reality can be quite different.

– Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Hayward urges young people to be wary of people met online, and not to meet them alone, in episode two

I will go along fine for six months and then I'll crash. Whether it's my physical body or my mental body, you know, something goes. And I didn't realise I was on a lifelong healing journey and that it was actually going to be up and down and around and around. Every time I feel like I've finally got my shit together, something happens and then it sort of unwinds, and then I sort of start again. And honestly I fell like I've started again a thousand times.

– Simonne Butler on the ups and downs of the healing process, early in episode eight

It was a fairytale relationship to start with. Doing it all on my own for so long, having somebody come in, finally I felt like somebody valued me. But eventually he was manipulating, he was controlling every decision I made. I couldn't even order a cup of coffee without him doing it for me. And [he] wanted to control everywhere I went, everything I did.

– Fiona Southorn on how her relationship began to change, in episode three

You have the right to leave a violent partner. You should be allowed to take your child to a safe place, you know, that's a fundamental right.

– Lydia on the right to protect your children from domestic violence, in episode four

The purpose of the Hague Convention is to make sure children can be returned to their place of habitual residence if they have been unlawfully abducted. It's not set up well to deal with situations of domestic violence. A number of the cases I've dealt with, probably the majority of them, have involved mothers leaving abusive environments in Australia to seek refuge in New Zealand with their children.

– Lawyer Daniel Vincent, from law firm CS Law, on the Hague Convention in domestic violence cases, in episode four

I've worked in the family violence sector for over 20 years now. But I very rarely spoke about the fact that I had lived experience. I guess I still had a bit of a sense of shame, so I didn't openly share that. And I thought actually it's time for me to own very proudly the fact that I am a victim/survivor of family violence and start sharing that knowledge.

– Eclipse Family Violence Service director Debbs Murray, on how appearing in an earlier episode of Breaking Silence helped make her realise the value of telling her own story, in episode three

...I really struggled whilst I was going through police college. It brought up a lot of deep-seated emotions that I think had been suppressed for a long time. 

– Detective Jame Leigh, early in episode six

...if you're judging somebody, you can't help them. 

– Presenter Simonne Butler on the importance of empathy in the police service, late in episode six