The man who was stood down last week for alleged sexual assaults has taken his story to the media after the prime minister refused to comment and Speaker Trevor Mallard refused to release details of the charges. The government is not obliged to release details under the Official Information Act.
Referring last week to the alleged assaults, Mallard said: “We’re talking about serious sexual assault. Well that, for me, that’s rape.”
In a two-hour sit down discussion in his home, the devastated man said “The accusation of rape has put me in a very dark place”.
“I was driving to Parliament the day after the bullying and harassment report on the place was delivered and heard on the radio that a ‘rapist’ could be stalking the corridors and it disturbed me greatly,” he said.
However early that afternoon he realised he was the so called ‘rapist’ when he was summoned into the office of the Parliamentary Service boss Rafael Gonzalez-Montero to be stood down.A colleague at the centre of an unsubstantiated complaint against him three years earlier had come forward again after complainants were urged to do so by The Speaker.”
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Ironically, the head of the Mallard appointed review, Debbie Francis, found the allegation was without merit.
“It’s ironic that the review was about bullying and harassment. I feel I’ve been bullied out of Parliament and harassed within it, particularly by the Speaker’s claim,” the teary-eyed man said.
He said his family was dumbfounded, they couldn’t believe he could be accused of sexual misconduct.
“Arriving home after being stood down I was numb. I sat stunned thinking this can’t be happening to me,” he said.
No doubt he will be considering achieving justice through the legal system.
After talking to the man, NewstalkZB saw the finding of the investigation against him, a finding that would usually be kept under wraps by the unimpeachable Parliamentary Service. The finding bore out everything the man had claimed and found the claim against him was unsubstantiated.
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An experienced defamation lawyer Hugh Rennie QC was asked whether the man had been defamed but wouldn’t personalise it to The Speaker, preferring to make his comments in a general sense.
Rennie said the statement that a “threat” has been removed is an allegation of continuing risk which is unjustified on the facts stated. There is no evidence stated of a continuing threat and to suggest there is, and that the response needed is to be barred from the workplace, is defamatory.