Keepa had seen a message on Hall’s phone from another man and the pair began to argue, according to the police statement of facts that went before a court.<\/p>\n
The police report said Keepa reached out to grab Hall by the scruff of the neck. He then frogmarched her before letting go. Hall fell to the ground.<\/p>\n
![\"Ria](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ria-hall-with-former-partner-eruera-keepa-S3M6SKKWAVARHKMWML52K57T7Y.jpg\")
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Ria Hall with former partner Eruera Keepa. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
The violence that April morning had played out in a bedroom as a young child watched on. <\/p>\n
“I was incredibly afraid,” Hall told TVNZ\u2019s Marae programme. “I couldn’t believe that the person that I had loved, gave whakapapa to, would treat me like this in my own home.”<\/p>\n
Hall adds, her voice catching: “When someone grabs you by the neck, they don’t want you to breathe basically. They want to cut your air circulation off.” This was the only moment in the interview when the Kiwi singer, Te Matatini soloist and mother of three broke, her vulnerability and hurt evident. <\/p>\n
And while the assault was awful enough in itself, in September Hall’s distress was compounded when Keepa was given a prominent role in one of M\u0101oridom’s most significant events of 2025, the Koroneihana, or coronation anniversary, for the M\u0101ori Queen.<\/p>\n
Weeks earlier Keepa had pleaded guilty in the Tauranga District court to common assault and breaching a protection order. He was sentenced to six months of supervision, ordered to complete a stop violence programme and to pay $1000 reparation for emotional harm. The court removed his name suppression at that hearing in August.<\/p>\n
At the time there was no public reporting on the outcome of the case, during which Judge Christina Cook had noted that a previous assault had occurred five years ago.<\/p>\n
“It is of concern that this incident has occurred again given the history,” she said. “The fact that there is volatility within your relationship does not exclude or explain your behaviour on this occasion and it must have been very frightening for the victim and also for your children.”<\/p>\n
‘Completely whirlwind’<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s words bring home the reality of the former relationship. From the outside it had at one time seemed Hall and Keepa made sense. Both are talented, smart, creative, natural do-ers. <\/p>\n
![\""I](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ria-hall-beach-FQIJUMKCQNAKVCSIA7HTTA46UY.png\")
<\/p>\n
“I gave him too much grace. I gave him too much space,” Ria Hall says. (Source: Marae)<\/p>\n
Keepa was a Matatini performer, a champion body builder and helmed an important and celebrated grassroots hauora campaign for women, Smear Your Mea, after a wh\u0101nau tragedy.<\/p>\n
“It was completely whirlwind,\u201d Hall says of their relationship. \u201cCaught me off guard. All of the romantic kind of connotations that you might appreciate from, you know, meeting someone and building a connection. I thought I had found my person, the person that I would, you know, live happily ever after together.”<\/p>\n
But behind doors the relationship was complicated. There were multiple police callouts over the years. <\/p>\n
Beautiful tamariki were born.<\/p>\n
And five years ago there was the earlier assault conviction against Keepa. Then, in 2022, Hall was granted a final protection order.<\/p>\n
She says: “You know there’s a degree of responsibility that I have to take too because I had continued to put faith in him that he would come around, that he would act in good faith for our tamariki, that he would… I gave him too much grace. I gave him too much space.”<\/p>\n
Hall says the pair were not together when April\u2019s assault happened and hadn’t been for years.<\/p>\n
The court sentencing might then have been seen as a line in the sand, the end of an ugly incident in a relationship that had long run its course. <\/p>\n
But what happened just a few weeks afterwards had Hall asking questions about how M\u0101oridom reckons with family harm.<\/p>\n
Keepa was at Koroneihana on September 4, the annual event being particularly special because it was Te Arikinui Kuini Nga Wai Hono i te Po, the M\u0101ori Queen’s first as leader of the movement. Tens of thousands had come to T\u016brangawaewae to help commemorate and celebrate.<\/p>\n
Many thousands more watched online and that’s where Hall saw Keepa stand to represent his Tau Ihu side. <\/p>\n
The southern tribes had come bearing a gift, formally presenting a whale jawbone to the Queen.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/whalebone-at-koroneihana-XZQISXJFSVHIJGJYSOIPYVHKEY.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
A a whale jawbone at T\u016brangawaewae for Te Arikinui Kuini Nga Wai Hono i te Po. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Keepa had been on the board of his iwi Ng\u0101ti R\u0101rua, a position the r\u016bnanga told Marae he’d resigned from earlier in the year. It’s not clear when.<\/p>\n
‘No one did anything about it’<\/p>\n
Hall said she was devastated.<\/p>\n
“There were people there that knew that he had just been recently convicted of assault. I was disappointed when no one did anything about it. I was disappointed that tikanga wasn’t used as the correct forum in that moment to sort that out.” <\/p>\n
Here she\u2019s referring to occasions when waiata and other more physical means have been used to remove speakers. <\/p>\n
“It said to me, to a degree, that our people accept this as normative behaviour. Our people are willing to put the abuse of a woman… at the back in order to let someone to speak on the pae. <\/p>\n
\u201cI felt very isolated all over again, traumatised all over again. That was unacceptable from my perspective.”<\/p>\n
Marae wanted to ask Ng\u0101ti R\u0101rua whether the tribe knew of Keepa’s conviction for common assault and breaching a protection order and about the appropriateness of his role at the Koroneihana.<\/p>\n
![\"Ria](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/ria-hall-on-beach-NX7V7EQFXZDCLL5XYFE76FTYAU.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Ria Hall says her ex-partner “deserves to live a good life”. (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
But in a statement the iwi said: “Te R\u016bnanga o Ng\u0101ti R\u0101rua (TRoNR) confirms that the individual referenced resigned from all roles with TRoNR earlier in the year. At the time, as far as we were aware, the individual was subject to court-ordered name suppression. TRoNR has not received any official notification from the court that the suppression has lapsed.”<\/p>\n
It would not be standard practice for the court to notify any convicted person’s iwi of an offence, and there wasn’t a suppression on file at the time of Koroneihana.<\/p>\n
Written apology and personal visit<\/p>\n
Marae has since learned that a written apology from Tau Ihu has been sent to Hall. In it, iwi chairs from the region said their mandated speaker was unable to attend at the very last minute and Keepa “took it upon himself to stand”.<\/p>\n
The apology added: “We should have intervened to stop this, but we did not. For that, and for the distress this must have caused you, we are deeply sorry.”<\/p>\n
Marae also understands that just a few days ago, Tau Ihu representatives came to Tauranga to meet in person to address the harm, gifting Hall a taonga.<\/p>\n
Still, for now, she’s hoping for a process where Keepa’s wh\u0101nau and her own can come together in Tauranga Moana, where she\u2019s from, to sort through the issues.<\/p>\n
“He deserves to live a good life. I want him to live a good life. As hard as it is to admit that, I want him to be everything that he can be because he’s a real talented person,\u201d Hall says.<\/p>\n
“He’s a real talented person and if he can take full accountability and really face some hard truths as to how he’s acted…, man I think he could get to a really powerful place.”<\/p>\n
In a statement Keepa said he would not be “sharing private details about my past relationship with the other parent now or in the future, out of protection for our tamariki\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added: “My focus remains on building a respectful and healthy co-parenting relationship so that our tamariki can grow up surrounded by the aroha and support of their siblings and both of their wh\u0101nau.”<\/p>\n