FAQs

Tika is a registered charitable trust and an incorporated law firm. Tika Charitable Trust manages all fundraising, marketing and education about Tika’s legal service. Tika Legal Limited manages all client registrations and then delivers a free legal service to eligible clients.

Tika offers a safe, private, and free legal service for anyone aged 18 or older in New Zealand who has experienced sexual harm, at any time in their life.

Right now, we’re providing the first stage of our legal service. This includes processing your registration and answering questions about how our lawyer–client relationship works.

From 1 July 2026, we will begin offering the next stage of our legal service to registered clients. Clients will be notified if at least two other registered clients have been harmed by the same person. Clients will then receive tailored legal advice.

No, we need you to provide your name, contact details and identification like your drivers licence or passport. This is for your own safety and ensures that no one joins Tika with a fake identity to compromise the integrity of our service, such as a perpetrator.

Sexual harm covers a wide range of experiences including physical assault, unwanted touching, verbal harassment, coercion, image-based abuse, and online harm. It also includes historical harm, regardless of when it happened.

You don’t need to know how to categorise what happened to you. If you experienced something that felt wrong, Tika is here to help. The only requirement is that the sexual harm must have happened in New Zealand.

For more detailed information, visit our What is Sexual Harm page on the Tika website.

Your privacy and safety is at the heart of everything we do at Tika. All information you share with us is confidential. This means:

• We will not tell anyone that you are a client of Tika
• We will not share any information that could identify you
• We will not contact anyone about your case without your clear permission

These confidentiality obligations apply to everything related to your case and continue even after you stop being a client of Tika.

To keep everyone safe, we ask all clients to verify their identity using our online ID provider, IDVerse. This helps make sure no one can pretend to be someone else and join our client pool with harmful intentions. You can learn more about IDVerse here.

When you complete your ID check, you must use your own identification documents and upload a photo of yourself. If you try to use someone else’s identity, Tika may decline your registration. In serious cases, we may also make a report to the New Zealand Police.

Yes, we welcome people of all genders.

No, there is no cost to register and if you are eligible for our legal service, Tika covers all the costs.

Tika’s technology includes a secure, trauma-informed reporting platform, and an insight tool which uses pattern recognition to search for matches in the information provided by our registered clients. It will not use publicly available generative AI or chatbots.

The large language model (LLM) component of Tika’s technology will not interact with victim-survivors in any way. It is purely a tool for our lawyers, to support the task of reviewing databases of complex and detailed information.

Our programme is built to stop repeat perpetrators from harming others. When you register with Tika, you will input information that may help find out whether your offender has also offended against others; as different Tika clients may input different information about the same perpetrator, the use of machine learning will be vital to scan the information and identify patterns.

Once a pattern is found and a group of one or more victim-survivors is identified, the information is flagged to a lawyer on Tika’s legal team. No clients who has submitted information will be contacted before the information has been verified by a lawyer.

Tika’s Terms of Service for clients set out how our legal service works, what you can expect from us, and what we ask of you. You can read the full terms here.

We encourage you to read carefully through the terms before submitting your registration. If you have any questions, you can contact us at [email protected]

If you have any concerns or complaints about our services, please tell us as soon as you can. You can contact us at: [email protected]. We will review your concerns and respond as quickly as possible.

If you are not satisfied with our response, Tika will arrange for an independent third party to review and consider your complaint. This will be paid for by Tika, and you will not have to cover any costs. If appropriate, this process may include mediation.

If we still cannot resolve your concerns, you can take your complaint to the New Zealand Law Society, which runs an independent complaints service for all lawyers in New Zealand. You can phone their enquiries line on 0800 261 801 for guidance, to lodge a concern, or to make a formal complaint please email [email protected]

You are welcome to tell anyone that you are a client of Tika and to talk about your experience of sexual harm. You can also share this publicly, including on social media.

However, please do not identify the perpetrator while you are receiving our legal service. This is to protect you and to protect other clients who may have named the same perpetrator. It reduces the risk of threats, intimidation, or legal action from the perpetrator, and helps make sure nothing interferes with your case.

Talk to your lawyer about when it is safe and appropriate to speak publicly about the perpetrator - they will guide you.

If you have already identified the perpetrator publicly before registering with Tika, don’t worry. You can still register. It’s just important that you tell your lawyer so they can be aware of this and manage any risks.

We will contact you to confirm your registration. From 1 July 2026, we will begin offering the next stage of our legal service to registered clients. Clients will be notified if at least two other registered clients have been harmed by the same person. Clients will then receive tailored legal advice.

No, you can join if you have experienced any kind of sexual harm, including past childhood sexual abuse, online harm, or sexual harassment.

You can withdraw your registration at any time, for any reason.

To withdraw, contact us using the form in the Tika platform. Our team will guide you through the process and explain what happens to your information.

You will never be forced to do anything you are not comfortable with. If a group forms and you disagree with the direction being taken, you can discuss your concerns with your lawyer.

You always have the option to withdraw.

False reporting has the potential to harm innocent individuals.  We acknowledge there will always be a very small minority of people who will try to engage in bad faith or with malicious intent, especially where a service is created to be accessible and sensitive to the experience of victim-survivors. Tika will always begin from a place of trust; however, making a false complaint is a serious contravention of our policies and in some cases, is illegal under the Crimes Act. Every ‘connection’ found by Tika’s platform will be manually reviewed by our legal team, to ensure false reports are flagged and excluded, and processes are being developed to address our response to such situations.

Where a group of clients choose to report to NZ Police, their file will be reviewed by NZ Police. NZ Police will then decide whether there is sufficient evidence under the NZ Police Prosecution Guidelines to prosecute the individual. The same applies to regulatory bodies such as the Medical Council and Teachers’ Council, which will determine whether to prosecute the individual. Where a group chooses to file a civil claim, the evidence will be reviewed by Tika’s legal team, which will determine whether to file a civil claim on the group’s behalf.

Yes. A non-disclosure agreement or confidentiality agreement does not prevent you from registering with Tika. We won’t notify the other people or organisation which asked you to sign the agreement.

At this stage, Tika requires a valid New Zealand passport or driver’s licence to verify your identity. We understand this may not work for everyone, and we are actively working on expanding our verification options.

Yes. You can save your progress at any point during the registration process and return when you feel ready. Your information will be securely stored until you come back.

There is no time limit on completing your registration. Take as long as you need.

Once you’ve submitted your registration you won’t be able to edit it directly. If you need to correct or update any information, use the contact form in the Tika platform and our team will help you.

We understand that for some people, receiving emails from Tika may raise privacy or safety concerns. If you share a device or email account with someone, or if you have concerns about your safety, please consider this before signing up.

Tika will only email you at the address you provide. We recommend using an email account that only you have access to.

If you are in immediate danger, please call 111. This is New Zealand’s emergency number for Police, Fire, and Ambulance.

Tika is a legal service and is not able to respond to emergencies. If you are unsafe right now, please contact emergency services first.

Tika does not provide non-legal support services like medical services or counselling. However, information about support services provided by other organisations and how to contact these organisations can be found on our support page.

At present, we are only accepting registrations from clients located in New Zealand, or using a New Zealand VPN. We will lift this restriction in future.

If you're concerned about who might see your browsing history, opening a private window is a simple way to protect your privacy. It means your visit to Tika won't be saved on this device.

Here's how to open one, depending on your browser:

Google Chrome: Press Ctrl + Shift + N (Windows) or Command + Shift + N (Mac). Or tap the three dots in the top right corner and select "New Incognito Window".

Safari: Press Command + Shift + N. Or go to File and select "New Private Window".

Firefox: Press Ctrl + Shift + P (Windows) or Command + Shift + P (Mac). Or tap the three lines in the top right and select "New Private Window".

Microsoft Edge: Press Ctrl + Shift + N. Or tap the three dots in the top right and select "New InPrivate Window".

On a phone or tablet: Open your browser, tap the tabs icon, and look for a "Private" or "Incognito" option.

Once you're in a private window, your session won't be saved to your browser history when you close it.

Take whatever steps feel right for you. There's no wrong way to keep yourself safe.

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First, you are notified by a lawyer that you have been put in a client group. You are told the number of clients who have been harmed by the same perpetrator, but you are not identified to each other at this stage. You then receive advice from a lawyer on the legal pathways available to you and vote on the pathways in your order of preference.

Since 2024, we've been developing the Tika platform to make reporting sexual harm safe, secure, and anchored in a sense of community and shared experience. We've used ethical frameworks and engaged sector experts and people with lived experience to test the platform to ensure it's safe, robust and secure before it opens to the public. We aim to open the platform for registrations in April 2026.

We have had the protection of victim-survivors' data as our number one priority since day one of Tika’s development. All internal processes and technical methods reflect this commitment.

Yes. Victim-survivors of sexual harm are at the heart of everything we do at Tika. We understand that everyone’s experience is different, and that you will come to our platform at your own unique moment - we want your experience to reflect that.  

Our processes, from start to finish, have been co-designed by people with lived experience of sexual harm and focus closely on their needs in a trauma-informed manner.

We are establishing a Lived Experience Advisory Board which will advise us on Tika's internal processes, and our programmes and messaging. And because Tika will operate like a law firm, it is bound by the same laws and regulations as law firms, including the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006 and the Conduct and Client Care Rules 2008. This puts our clients at the centre of our processes, and ensures they have full control over if, and how, their information is used. The decision to proceed through each stage of the service remains entirely in the client’s hands, and they can put their file on hold if they need time to reflect and decompress, or withdraw at any time, no questions asked.

Yes, there is no time limit. We welcome anyone who has experienced sexual harm as children, teenagers, or adults. The only requirement is that you are aged 18+ at the time you join Tika.

We have made our registration process as simple as possible, but there is some mandatory information we need from you. Your information will be stored securely.

When you register with Tika you enter into a lawyer / client relationship with a Tika lawyer. This means that your information will not be shared with anyone unless you provide permission. Your information cannot be requested by anyone, including the perpetrator, under legislation like the Privacy Act.

No. Tika’s platform will be safe and secure and the details of your perpetrator will not be shared publicly. At the end of the legal process, a judge or disciplinary tribunal may decide to name the perpetrator or the perpetrator may get name suppression.

We have built a unique new platform which uses machine learning to help find out whether your perpetrator has harmed others who have also registered with Tika. The safe and secure technology will use the information you provided in your registration form about the perpetrator to check whether others have entered the same information. This includes the perpetrator’s name, as well as unique identifiers such as their email address, phone number, social media handle, photo or other information about the perpetrator. That’s why it’s good to enter as much information as you can remember. If it finds a connection with another client, we’ll let you know.

This depends on whether other clients have identified the same perpetrator. It could be instantly, or it could take weeks, months or years. If you decide you don’t want to wait, you can report to NZ Police at any time.

Once three clients connect, a group is formed. Any additional clients are added to the group when they join Tika.