Non-fatal strangulation often leaves no marks but it can deprive its victims of oxygen and cause lasting physical and psychological damage.
Last year the Law Commission recommended to Parliament that, to help prevent family violence, strangulation should be a separate, specific crime.
The Minister of Justice has now introduced into Parliament the Family and Whānau Violence Legislation Bill which proposes a new crime of strangulation and suffocation. That bill passed its first reading unanimously in Parliament this week.
We talked to Dr Ang Jury, the chief executive of Women's Refuge, about the women who have been held up against a wall by their throat until they could not breathe.
(Thanks to Women's Refuge for the image sourced from its website.)