As our New Year begins we will still be finishing work from our past, and particularly work for the injustices enacted on some of our young women.

We are not a timid country as our 2020 pandemic responses evidenced. Can we afford to be timid about devaluing girls which may seem easier to ignore or keep in our unconsciousness?

Checking out that unconscious assumption of entitlement common in particular men and boys, how this enables attitudes in them to target, belittle, isolate, drug, hurt and rape our sisters, and daughters, young girls and young women, remains one key to consciously responding.

This is responding to address the denigration of young women. Being crudely termed in the perpetrators' terms further through the media only the replicates the assumed glory and deepens the horrific damage. I will not use their terms here.

Justice restored will require our looking at how kin and society normalises masochistic attitudes, meaning the hatred of women and girls in subtle and not so subtle ways.

These attitudes unchallenged, endorse young men's predation on young girls.

Further to the current Criminal Court proceeding addressing injustices, it will require our consciousness personally, along with willingness as a collective to make structural changes with educational implementation of those changes, to offer protection for future youngsters.

Alongside the current America's Cup glory, it is sobering to remember that we as a society are only as rich as our weakest link: these young men who strategised and offended come from our families and communities.

Step up, be mindful, and keep safe our wonderful young people through this summer and so enrich all our lives.

Nga mihi nui

Merrill Simmons-Hansen, Tauranga South.

(Member of the Aotearoa NZ Association of Social Workers, and expert panel member ACC -Stopping Sexual Violence.)