Warning
Content warning: This contains distressing descriptions of sexual assault, along with its mental health implications, which may be triggering to survivors.
Jacinda Ardern chooses her media moments for maximum coverage. She hit a home run nationally and internationally after Christchurch, but wants nothing whatsoever to do with the Labour Youth camp sex scandal or the investigation into a Labour Party staffer allegedly forcing himself on seven female staff members for sexual gratification.
Last month Mike Hosking asked Ardern how the Labour Party investigation into the alleged repeat sexual offender was going.
“Mike:
So, where are they at, currently?
Jacinda:
Aah… they are currently assessing the enquiry that was undertaken.
Mike:
But we can say there will be no change to the outcome?
Jacinda:
Aah… that is not for me to determine. It’s not a matter that I’ve enquired into personally. It’s a matter for the Labour Party.”
Why doesn’t Ardern want to know? I’d sure as hell want to know how the complainants are faring. These women are Labour Party supporters and volunteers. Coming forward with a claim of sexual assault is hard enough, victims can feel ashamed, wondering if they inadvertently triggered the assault. Or they won’t speak out if they think no one will believe them, they’re up against a VIP and on a hiding to nothing. It’s much easier to put a horrible incident behind them and move on.
In this case, seven women came forward with sexual assault claims against the same man. Of course, after the first complainant came forward it was much easier for the others to follow.
They need not have bothered, because no one in the Labour Party took them seriously. After a hearing behind closed doors and with no access to their original statements, complainants were told no action would be taken against the perpetrator and no appeal process was available to them.
What happened when they took their complaints to the Labour party is shameful, just as shameful as a prime minister not prepared to go in to bat for the complainants who support her office. It seems politics is more important to Ardern than sympathy or justice.
Ardern hugs widows from the Christchurch attacks but sees, hears and says nothing about the victims of the alleged sexual abuse out of Labour’s Wellington HQ, Fraser House on Willis Street.
Sarah (not her real name) says the process of seeking justice for the assault has “completely eroded her faith in the [Labour] party”. Sarah has to shoulder a little of the blame for not initially disclosing her full story in the written statement. But she insists they knew it because “she read her notes aloud to the panel, and that included the allegation of sexual assault”. But not being written down was a free pass for the panel and they took it.
“At the conclusion of the inquiry, after months with scant communication, the seven complainants all received an email from party president Nigel Haworth detailing the outcome of the internal investigation. “The recommendation was that no disciplinary action be taken in this case,” he wrote. “The New Zealand Council has accepted this recommendation.”
The Spinoff
Sarah, a 19-year-old female Labour Party volunteer, talks about the worst encounter at the hands of a “pretty senior and active” Labour Party staffer.
“I tried to knock him off but he put me in a hold across here,” she recounted, gesturing to her collarbone. He pulled her off the chair and onto the floor, keeping his arm and his body weight on top of her as she struggled, he said. “I remember him just saying, ‘shhh,’ and shushing me or telling me to be quiet without explicitly telling me, or he’d press his arm down on my windpipe.”
Desperate to attract the attention of the rest of the household, Sarah banged her feet against the hardwood floors, she said. She recounted him pulling down her jeans, and the coldness of the floorboards against her bare skin. He aggressively groped her breasts, she said, before pulling her underwear down and violently penetrating her with his fingers.
“I was just in total disbelief, struggling a lot and still trying to bang on the floor,” she said, taking long pauses in her recollection. She continued to hit her feet on the ground through the attack, hoping to make as much noise as possible. “I just wanted someone to come upstairs. Anyone.”
The assault lasted between 10 and 20 minutes, she said, before he rolled off her. “I was just lying there for ages and then tried to frantically put everything on. I grabbed my phone, I grabbed my USB [from] the computer. I was shaking, I couldn’t speak.” She told him that she had to go home. He asked her if she wanted to stay the night.
When she turned the corner of his street, Sarah started to cry. “I just broke down. I was too scared to stop moving, I just wanted to get out of there.” Walking home in the dark, she tried to call a handful of people, but nobody answered. It was around 10pm.
She didn’t stop once on the 25 minute walk. Her vagina felt “scratched up and in pain”, her chest “swollen and bruised”. She didn’t tell her flatmates what happened, why she was unable to sleep that night. “I didn’t shower until the next morning, which was absolutely awful. I felt really uncomfortable with my body. It didn’t feel like it was mine.”
The Spinoff
Directly after the assault, Sarah did not receive professional advice or counselling. Any advice the Labour Party might have offered her hung on her watered-down complaint which Sarah claims she verbally corrected at the hearing but her original statement was not corrected because she was never given access to it.
“Sarah chose not to detail the more serious allegation, explaining in the email that she was “unsure how to process it or tell people” because of his power within the party. Sarah chose to detail a more “low-level” allegation, she told The Spinoff, because she was worried about who might see the email. “I was pretty paranoid and still trying to process what had happened.”
Perhaps in shock, Sarah said and did nothing at the time, when she should have sought professional advice and gone straight to the police.
“Sarah didn’t want to go to the police. She knew people who had been through the process and had told her how difficult it was, she said. “I thought about the amount of people who come forward and then the number who actually get convictions, and it just felt like it was going to be really hard.”
Much as she wants to, Arden cannot continue to disassociate herself from this scandal. The story will likely grow legs now that ‘Sarah’ has taken it to the media. If the alleged assailant re-offends the dirt will spread.
Ardern will have to get her hands dirty at some point, hopefully when either someone goes to the police or the Labour Party recognises that they have a problem that won’t be going away. Word on the street is that daddy is running legal interference for his naughty boy – this is bound to stir the media pot, who will be all over this – which may prod the princess into action.
When the perpetrator is publicly named and shamed, Ardern will dust the dirt from her hands and claim a job well done. But will these women see the perpetrator banished and will we see a photo of Ardern hugging a sexual assault victim?