The Labour party appear to be participating in the #MeTooNZ campaign for all the wrong reasons. The public statements by Andrew Kirton and Jacinda Ardern over the sexual assault scandal smack of a coverup.
The party General Secretary hasn’t reported the alleged crimes to police, hasn’t told the parents of the alleged victims and, according to Jacinda Ardern, hasn’t informed her.
For someone who claims to not have been briefed she knows an awful lot more in her answers than she should.
The video on Stuff is very revealing when it comes to body language.
Labour’s general secretary has defended not telling the police or parents about complaints teenagers were sexually assaulted at a summer camp last month.
A Young Labour supporter has been barred from future events after allegations a 20-year-old man sexually assaulted four teenagers, all aged 16, including putting his hands down the pants of at least three of them.
Andrew Kirton, the Labour Party’s general secretary, said he stood by the way the party had handled the situation, which he said was done with a “victim-led” focus on the back of advice from a Wellington sexual violence charity.
He said he wasn’t aware of any of the victims taking their complaint to the police, although both he and Labour Party president Nigel Haworth had offered their support to the victims if they chose to do so.
Parents of the victims hadn’t been told about the incident because “we wanted to deal with the young people in the first instance,” Kirton said.
“We didn’t want to assume the young people involved had told their parents. They’re 16 so that had an impact on that decision and that was the advice we got.”
Hush it up, more like. He is aware of serious crimes that carry penalties of years in jail… and he hasn’t told police?
The Prime Minister was also kept out of the loop because Kirton said the advice he received was that it could cause more damage to the victims if they were “under the impression or feeling or knowledge that a widening circle of people were being told”.
“We took the decision to deal with it as a party issue and keep it between myself and the president and keep it tight in terms of the people who knew.”
He said he wouldn’t change the way the party had handled the situation but in future would tell Ardern if that was what she wanted.
Andrew Kirton, at the very least, needs to resign. He’s made the wrong decisions. For a start, this is the party that likes to claim that they are better than all the others, virtue signals on equality and sexism and was shoving it in everyone’s face on International Women’s Day all the while sitting on a massive scandal.
If you thought John Key pulling pony-tails was bad, this is far, far worse, and it appears at least one MP was in attendance for the whole weekend.
Ardern opened the summer camp on the afternoon of the first day, on February 9, and said she would investigate allegations of sexual assault and underage drinking.
“Certainly none of that was apparent when I was there. This is the first I’ve heard of any such allegations but now that you’ve made them I’ll happily investigate, because that is not the behaviour I would expect of any Labour function,” she said at her post-Cabinet press conference on Monday.
How on earth is she going to investigate? Is she abrogating the role the police should have in investigating this? Is she interfering in police operational matters now?
She should know better than that; her father was a senior Police Officer after all.
Ardern said in a statement on Monday night that she was “disturbed” to hear about the allegations of “harassment and sexual misconduct that occurred at the summer camp”.
“I expect young people, and indeed anyone, attending our camps can do so knowing the environment is safe.
“I’ve sought assurances that everything is being done to support the complainants. I’ve also asked the party to take every step possible to ensure that our events are safe for everyone who attends in the future.
“I understand this work is already underway, and started as soon as the complaints were received.”
Hang on, in your press conference you said that this was the FIRST you’d heard of it, and now you are saying that you’ve put all that in place. Sounds like porkies to me, Prime Minister. If you had only heard about it first in your press conference how could you possibly understand all that and have issued orders to fix it?
Heads should roll.
-Fairfax