Ritchie, of P\u014dkeno and Auckland, held longstanding roles with the New Zealand Aids Foundation (NZAF), Body Positive Inc, and Positive Women.<\/p>\n
She set up the Cartier Bereavement Charitable Trust to support those dying of Aids and was also a member of the Prostitutes Law Review Committee, advocating for the decriminalisation of sex work under the Prostitution Reform Act 2003.<\/p>\n
That work has recently been recognised with her appointment as an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the New Year Honours.<\/p>\n
Her work with the Cartier Bereavement Charitable Trust is particularly close to Ritchie\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n
The trust was named after her friend, Cartier, a drag queen who died of Aids.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember so clearly sitting with her that night [she died] and saying to her, \u2018Okay, darling, it\u2019s time for you to go. Your mum and dad are waiting.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShe … died in my arms.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the Auckland Pride Festival Gala Opening in 2018 (from left): Shaughan Woodcock, Christopher Olwage, Karen Ritchie and Sonya Temata. Photo \/ Norrie Montgomery<\/p>\n
Ritchie said she was someone who \u201ccan\u2019t visualise people having to die alone or suffer\u201d \u2013 something that was common for people with Aids as many of those infected were stigmatised, and their families didn\u2019t want to have anything to do with them.<\/p>\n
\u201c[The trust] really helped us to give people a funeral with dignity, which they would not normally have. They would be body-bagged and just sent away.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they were ostracised by their families … somebody had to bury them with dignity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trust had a board, but Ritchie said nobody got paid.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery single cent went to the cause, and I was adamant about that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Before the trust closed in 2023, because better treatment was available, it supported hundreds of people, she said.<\/p>\n
Karangahape Rd, where Ritchie lived in the 1980s. Photo \/ Jason Dorday<\/p>\n
Conditions for sex workers had \u201ccertainly got better\u201d since the law change in 2003, but she described the years before that as \u201ca horrible time\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said authorities were \u201cso cruel to street workers\u201d and she had seen a lot of \u201caggression towards the LGBTQ+ and gay community\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrust me, I\u2019ve cleaned it up a lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just ridiculous how they were getting treated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether they\u2019re gay, straight, whatever, I don\u2019t care. They are somebody\u2019s child, and that sort of treatment they were getting from straight people or guys was not acceptable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat had to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Karen Ritchie said she was given the nickname ‘The Mother of K Rd\u2019. <\/p>\n
To help address the rising violence against LGBTQ+ communities and sex workers, she helped to set up the K\u2019Rd Community Safety Group between 2016 and 2023.<\/p>\n
When working on the safety group, she ensured \u201ca lot of police [were] on the beat to clean it up\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Ritchie\u2019s advocacy reached beyond New Zealand.<\/p>\n
She was also a founding member of the Red Umbrella Fund, an international organisation dedicated to supporting the rights of sex workers.<\/p>\n
She said it was a \u201cwonderful privilege\u201d to be a part of the fund. <\/p>\n
The main purpose of the organisation was to ensure sex workers could legally get financial help in their countries for health reasons.<\/p>\n
During her time with the fund, she heard many horror stories of the abuse sex workers would face all around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of them were killed by authorities, by people, some were beaten up.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey couldn\u2019t get any help health-wise … so that was our main project.\u201d<\/p>\n
A couple of years later, when the fund took off, she resigned, and her last working stint was in the sexual health clinic at Greenlane Hospital. <\/p>\n
Now retired, and reflecting on her career, she is proud to have been advocating for those communities.<\/p>\n
She said she had been supporting the cause so loudly that she was given the nickname \u201cThe Mother of K Rd\u201d.<\/p>\n
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakat\u0101ne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ritchie, of P\u014dkeno and Auckland, held longstanding roles with the New Zealand Aids Foundation (NZAF), Body Positive Inc,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[9225,13038,41110,29217,95,1558,40750,9060,84045,2082,134,2830,27246,42551,17847,130,6178,111,139,69,1118,2642,44298,143623,7680,131,7563,1529,12767,4478],"class_list":["post-245613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-advocacy","tag-advocate","tag-affected","tag-aids","tag-and","tag-been","tag-communities","tag-decades","tag-fierce","tag-for","tag-health","tag-hiv","tag-honoured","tag-karen","tag-lgbtq","tag-more","tag-mother","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-rd","tag-ritchie","tag-ritchiehas","tag-sex","tag-than","tag-those","tag-three","tag-worker","tag-workers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}