When people see 26-year-old Tia-Loketi (Tia) Harvey, they don’t know where to look. They certainly don’t feel comfortable enough to smile. There is more ink on Tia’s face than bare skin. The word ‘wahine’ is tattooed across her forehead, ‘toa’, across her chin. The number ‘13’ on the left side of her cheek bone celebrates her 13-month internship under senior Mongrel Mob female leader Paula Ormbsy. For Mob members, 13 also represents the letter 'M' – the 13th letter of the alphabet.

“You know, people get their moko kauae. This is mine,” she says. Her facial tattoos are what police officials have termed a "foul-mask" and Tia is the only female in the history of the Mongrel Mob to have been granted permission from leaders to receive one, after the kaha or strength shown in her journey. She's likely the only woman in any gang across Aotearoa to have received a "foul-mask", something only men are known to have been granted.

“Nobody knows my story. These are my scars, they are the stories that I can tell. Every time I’ve been hurt, this is all to cover up my pain.” 

Tia’s story includes torture, abuse and multiple horrific rapes by a 35-year-old patched mongrel mob member who she entered into a relationship with eleven years ago when she was 15.  

Her story also provides an insight into how every chapter of a gang has its own independent leadership, rules, codes and values. Tia says the experiences of members in one Mongrel Mob chapter don’t necessarily reflect the experiences of those in another. 

Why is she still so loyal to the Mob?  

According to Tia, the chapter she now belongs to, Mongrel Mob Kingdom Waikato, would never tolerate the treatment she experienced in another Mongrel Mob chapter. And since the women’s chapter of the Mongrel Mob was launched – Wāhine Toa – things are changing, she says. "They are the reason why I live. Wāhine Toa's never turned their back on me. And that's what I've had all my life. I've had people turn their back on me.” 

“What I have seen from the Mongrel Mob Kingdom and Wāhine Toa is love. I've been nurtured, I've been heard. I've found a mum. I found a mum that truly loves me.  

 That "mum" is Paula Ormsby who’s also a Mongrel Mob Waikato senior leader and founder of Wāhine Toa. “It’s up to us to retell our stories that were stolen from us, from wāhine that were silenced,” she says. Paula is one of four mothers who share their stories in intimate interviews with TVNZ+. They are women affiliated with some of Aotearoa’s most notorious gangs. We’ve called them “Gang Mums” because they are mothers who are active members of gang whānau or who have children in gang leadership.   

Alongside Tia and Paula is Matilda Kahotea whose three sons are senior Headhunter leaders in the North Shore chapter. Then there’s Klare Timoti, a “Sister of the Fist” and rangatira married to a Black Power president in South Auckland.  

All four women have had varied experiences within gangs and some of their stories paint harsh truths about gang life, detailing horrific abuse, torture, pack rapes and drugs. Others say they've found refuge, safety and comfort in their gang whānau. Matilda and Paula acknowledge that violence and crime is still a dark reality in the gang world but say it isn't the full picture and they believe many wāhine are agents of change. They’ve led healing wānanga, whānau days empowering wāhine and their stories include love, loyalty, protection, support, faith and whānau.  

Women are the silenced and invisible members of gang communities

Women have always existed in gangs but there are no official records to show it. They have been active members since the conception of gangs, as wives, mothers, sisters and daughters. Some have even become patched members, a rare honour earned through violent initiations. But very little is documented about them in research and literature.  

There are no women recorded on the National Gang List – the only official record of gang membership in New Zealand. According to the police, no women meet the criteria. The involvement of women in gangs is “varied, complex and can depend on many factors". 

The research on women in gangs is also scarce. They are typically defined in terms of their relationships to male gang members and they remain a rare voice in the male-dominated gang stories across mainstream media. What we do know about them is often tainted by those stories of crime and violence involving their brothers, husbands, sons or fathers.  

For Tia, Klare and Matilda, sharing their stories is a "massive undertaking". What little has been documented about women in gangs has often stigmatised them. Other media stories, they say, have dehumanised them and their whānau.

“The lack of trust and balance in media reporting on our people is the very reason we hesitate to share our world," says Matilda. "But we are sharing in the hope we will not just change some mindsets – but provide some balance through a pathway rarely shown to us women – the media.

“When media report about our whānau they don’t often consider the potential impacts – not just on ourselves – but the vulnerability of the people we represent. The sensationalism can lead to misinformation or harm for us.”

The outside world can be "petrifying"

“We're mothers, we're grandmothers, we're sisters, we're aunties, we have jobs, we work, we sit on trusts and we are contributing members to society,” says Paula. 

But their gang affiliations mean they have also felt excluded from society, she says. The state and societal services that most of us take for granted feel inaccessible to these women, who see threats where others might see support. Many gang wāhine miss out on essential healthcare such as breast screenings and cervical smear tests that could be life-saving because they feel distrust of the medical system, along with other mainstream institutions. They also feel stigmatised when they arrive at health services with their patched-up partners.

Paula says some choose to give birth without their partner present in the delivery room, for fear of having their newborn babies uplifted by the state. These women have seen and often survived the dark side of state care and they are “petrified” of their own children being taken from them and put into that system.  

In response to what Paula shares in her interview, Oranga Tamariki said: 

"Every concern reported to Oranga Tamariki is individually considered and gang affiliation alone is not considered a care and protection issue."

State care and gangs:
a historical link

The Waitangi Tribunal estimates 80 to 90 percent of Mongrel Mob and Black Power gang whānau were brought up in state care. It suggests gangs are a product of the state.  

“Our men went in as innocent children and came out monsters,” says Klare. “Now we are trying to heal our whānau. We know how to heal our own.” 

Paula says, “The atrocities that were inflicted upon us are a reflection of the atrocities that were inflicted upon our men. But it’s the wāhine that are pillow talking next to their men at night. Nobody else can heal those men but us, because they don't trust anybody else to share their stories with.” 

But what about those women who have suffered horrific abuse by their men.
Why do they stay?  

“Where do they go? is my question,” says Paula. “It's laughable that [Police Minister] Mark Mitchell says that he is going to support women to leave the gang. Because I had one of my wāhine that emailed them, that rang them and said, 'Look, I want to leave this organisation. What support can I get?'

"You say that you've got things in place to do this but what are they? There was nothing for her. It was bullsh**,” says Paula. "Even when we were reaching out, there was nobody reaching back."

We put those comments to Mark Mitchell's office and received this response: "My office offered comprehensive advice and support to this individual at the time, and I understand that was not taken up. Any gang member who requires support to leave a gang will get support from the government."

Perhaps "support" has different meanings to different people. But there are other major factors keeping women in gangs, not least the fact that, for many of them, gang life is all they know. And, they say, it's changing.

"We're four and five generations into Mongrel Mob now in this country and my babies themselves know nothing more than Mongrel Mob to be this beautiful whānau that is loving and caring and nurturing and safe," says Paula. "[For] people to leave something that they have been born into, [they would be] cutting off the whānau that they have been born into, and they don't know their hapū, their iwi, they don't have a wider whānau outside of that.”

In a report last year, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor (a group of professionals called Kaitohutohu Mātanga Pūtaiao Matua ki te Pirimia) noted how women in gang communities were often the change makers and many of them were breaking stereotypes held by society.

Matilda has helped to establish a residential facility that takes on many convicted men with gang affiliations. This came about because she and other women had had enough of seeing their husbands, sons and grandkids dying in the gang environment. But, she says, it also meant she had to face her enemies. Matilda was pack-raped at the age of 12 by members of a particular gang chapter.  

Forty years later, she was faced with supporting a young man from that gang chapter at her facility. It’s one thing to face your enemies, it’s another thing to love and care for them (or their affiliates).

“This is a boy that represented everything I hated about men and I've learned to love in that arena, too.

 “I had to face it head on. I had to forgive. Now I hold that boy close to my heart, I watch his movements. He rings me all the time. He's like, one of my own.  

“I tell him, ‘I love you, boy, just make sure you're okay and your kids are okay.’"

Last year’s report by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor noted the “missed opportunity” and “massive oversight” of women’s experiences within gang whānau. It said this was “a reflection of the fact that the research community has long overlooked their role.” Former gang associate, Glennis Dennehy, remains a rare voice in the research around women in gangs in Aotearoa. Her early work delved into the stories of women who had left gangs, just as she had done herself.

But the wāhine in the TVNZ+ Gang Mums series are still part of their gang whānau and this is the first time they've allowed the public into their world. Parts of their stories will shock and sadden viewers. But they also might surprise them by providing an insight into gang life rarely seen and a deeper understanding of the complexities behind why women in gangs choose to stay.