“My dad was like my best friend, and so for him to go and get taken by another woman was really, really hard. And I wanted attention, but I was looking for that male attention, so I found it in my boyfriend. He was the next thing.

She said she was “100%” in love with him at the time and got pregnant. Weeks after giving birth to her first son at 17, Motu said they got married even though she didn’t want to, but her religious background and the “sin” of having a child out of wedlock added to pressure.

After that, Motu said he began to break her mentally.

“He started controlling me first, and I didn’t pay attention to it. I was like, okay, and I started listening and obeying… because every time I responded, he retaliated by yelling at me, and I couldn’t understand because I didn’t have never been raised like that.

The abuse began after the birth of her first daughter, beginning with slaps and punches and escalating from there.

Motu said she tried to contact the police and her family for help and support, but her husband’s gang connections made it difficult to escape.

“I never won this, so my family would be hurt by the gang because he comes from a gang family. My uncle tried to help me many times. He was beaten, then put in a cell.

The experience was traumatic for her children – Motu had another boy with her ex before the relationship ended – as it was for her.

“I was lucky that my oldest son didn’t really witness much because I quickly handed him over to my aunts and just told them, please take care of him. He saw me get hit by a car and run over. And so it was traumatic.

“But my daughter was my saving grace. She has witnessed so much. She saved me so many times. I drowned. I had my head in the toilet, everything. She saw me get stabbed and she saved me many times.

“The last time was when she wanted to risk her life to save me. And that was a turning point for me. She jumped in front of the knife. She grabbed it, she grabbed his hand and the knife just missed me. It hit me, but like it missed my chest and all that.

“She’s the one who saved my life. But the strength and courage and fairness that my daughter carried, I said to myself: why can’t I carry it? And that’s the day I gained courage and strength… when I saw her trying to save me. because she wanted to keep me alive, because she wanted me to be there for her brothers and sisters.

Motu ended their relationship and fought to get him arrested, and he was eventually sent to prison.

Her suffering did not end there, with Motu receiving threats from her friends because of what she had done. That’s part of what got her into boxing, and she told Bennett that things changed for her when she started training.

Motu has become a strong advocate through her experiences and wants to make the world a better place for women and their children so they don’t have to endure these experiences.

She’s also learned to adapt and move forward, thanks in large part to the struggles of her second-oldest son, the last child she had with her ex.

“At 9 years old he wanted to kill himself and he was in a very dark place. He didn’t want to be alive because he blamed himself for what I had experienced. But he also wanted to talk to his father. And he didn’t know how to talk to him because if he talked to him he felt like he was letting me down.

“And so when I heard that, it broke my heart. And I didn’t want to bury my baby.

Motu said she had to look at her own hatred and resentment, put them aside and allow her children to make their own decisions without letting her experiences and emotions control them.

“I didn’t realize I was already starting to teach them to be narcissistic, and I didn’t want them to be like him.

“It was the hardest thing I ever did, was to talk to him and tell him that you need to have a relationship with your children. And all I want is an apology. I want an apology for everything you did.

“So he apologized to me and that’s all I wanted to hear. And I said, I don’t want to be hurt anymore. And you won’t hurt me anymore.

Listen to the full episode to hear more from Motu about her experiences with domestic violence, why children are our future and stories from her boxing career.

Ask Me Anything is a NZ Herald podcast hosted by former Deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett. New episodes are available every Sunday.

You can follow the podcast on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotifyor wherever you get your podcasts.