“A family is a nation in miniature. Simply enlarge the circle of the household and you have the nation. The happenings in the family are the happenings in the life of a nation.” Baha’i church Inquiry submission, Inquiry document 2 Maintaining privacy and secrecy may once have worked as a way in which to protect the dignity of the family in Samoa, although it is more likely that this was never the case. It simply kept the issue out of view and denied the victim a way out of their suffering. The very nature of family violence is that individual acts are always part of a wider pattern of abusive behaviour and if the root causes are not addressed then it will continue. A regular matai, despite their best intentions, will not have the knowledge or skills to provide the support needed by either the victim or the perpetrator to break the cycle of violence. Treating the matter as a private family affair is a likely way to ensure the violence continues. Furthermore, consider that family violence is also linked to the prevalence of all forms of other violence and recall the international coverage of events such as the rape of the wife of a couple on their honeymoon in Samoa. The headline in the Samoa Observer was: ‘National Shame’.30 Secrecy and privacy does not maintain the dignity and honour of the family because the family is society as the Baha’i faith points out. By driving family violence underground, shame is brought upon the whole country, not individual families. The only people who will argue against this are those seeking to maintain the gender hierarchy and their own personal power and control. Those who will never change their minds are motivated only by maintaining this status quo, or are too entrenched in their thinking to consider the facts. They should ask themselves this: ‘Does the current approach work?’ Can they be honest and argue that the vā tapuia among men and women, parents and children, among in-laws, is being respected when violence of the nature detailed in Part III is rife? Only 4% of the 1,500 participants in the Inquiry consultations thought family violence is not a problem and it is time for the 96% to consider how treating family violence as a private matter is not working and what the solution might be. INQUIRY FINDING 18: The vā tapuia, and Fa’asamoa generally, is no longer respected as it once was, removing a critical prevention mechanism against family violence contained within the Fa’asamoa. 7.3.4 Breakdown of Communication (talanoa) in Samoan families Communication and oratory are at the heart of the Fa’asamoa and in principle should play a positive role in preventing the spread of family violence through creating pathways to reporting and preventing silence 30 Samoa Observer. “National shame.” (19 July 2016). Retrieved from http://www.samoaobserver.ws/en/19_07_2016/local/8871/National-shame.htm. Accessed 12 May 2018.