The ‘Roastbusters’ case was mentioned on TV some time back. I was at someone else’s place and the lady there was mid-70s and was watching this news item too. It referred to the notorious teenage West Auckland rape gang that had operated with impunity under police detective protection from 2011-2013. I had covered this disturbing saga on the Tumeke! blog as it developed from day one to the point of giving up at day 82. I can’t even remember what the news item was saying exactly because I was far more interested in what this lady’s reaction to it was.
She was an “old biddy” type to be fair, but I caught her mumbling and muttering under her breath as a by-and-by as biddy types do “…running around at night…”. She was shaking her head in disapproval of the girls. “…out all hours…”. She went on like this for a while, tut-tutting. Nothing about the rapist boys, not a peep, zilch – it was all the girls doing. All of it. At least two generations of feminist advancement stubbed out like another chain-smoked cigarette into the busy ashtray perched on the windowsill.
Now I started shaking my head: “What are you talking about?” She said they were running around all hours of the night, and drinking with strange boys and what do they expect, etc. So, I said: why do you think it was at night when they never mentioned what time it was? She gave the same reply more or less, to paraphrase: the young girls are sluts and they deserve what they get. I said I knew the case and it wasn’t at night – it was the afternoon, it was a barbecue, it was with boys from their school and at the house of a police officer. A pause. She didn’t verbally respond from memory, but she shook her head in discomfort. Discomfort at being wrong about the facts and being found out that she makes it up to fit her prejudice. But there was not discomfort about having any cause to change her prejudiced view, those facts were not going to get in the way of victim-blaming, that was obvious from refusing to acknowledge the girls’ were not responsible for being force-fed spirits and gang raped at a police officer’s house. It was somehow still the girls’ fault in her mind.
The existence of the female excuser is perhaps the main reason male-against-female sexual violence are largely unresolved crimes. No-one wants to address it. The female excuser watching TV telling the lounge room the rapists weren’t wrong is at the benign start of the spectrum which ends up at Ghislaine Maxwell. In between all it takes is one biddy on the jury and he walks. The sordid sorority can be seen at work in the apparent collusion of at least one female NZ Police executive in the Jevon McSkimming scandal that has now spilled over into ex-Commissioner Coster and his staff. Use a woman to do the dirty work of fronting – the role of the exonerator.
I haven’t yet read the IPCA report on McSkimming. Because the reaction is all a bit fucking precious if you ask me. This is the worst thing ever? That a few executives were covering each other? That the victim was charged instead? This is really nothing in the scale of police offending. This is the easy stuff – the email chain, the process, an administrative crime that (supposedly) outweighs whatever the original offence may have been against the woman. It’s something Wellington boffins and academics and the media love, because it is safe, there’s no risk – it’s timelines and paperwork, the Public Service and OIA’s. Civil society can pretend to be upset liberals for a while.
While what happened to Ms Z was appalling, the ‘Roastbusters’ were responsible for many many many allegations of rape, not just power imbalances. There were perhaps dozens, or more, and in each case the course of justice was defeated in the first instance by the NZ Police themselves. Indeed, the gang boasted online about it all, they were permitted by the West Auckland detectives to do it for two years who thought the videos were great and it was then covered up subsequently by higher levels of the NZ Police in a phony investigation “Operation Clover” specifically designed to intimidate the victims and shield the offenders.
And the line through the Police’s disgraceful report into the cover-up was to blame alcohol and that teens needed education on consent. Yes, it was all the girls’ fault, and the guys didn’t know better. It was the biggest failure of an operation ever, and the Detective in charge gets an award for it? Beyond all credibility.
And yet everyone accepted the Police tactics during the roast buster case, the executive supported the cover-up. The culture is broken, it’s not just the process that is failing, it’s all levels – the Crown Solicitor did his part to deliberately try to keep these rapists from justice.
The police power is out of control and always has been. We need a commission of inquiry to investigate all the other numerous rotten apples. We need a board to which the Police Commissioner is responsible like other civilian entities. We need a special prosecutor appointed to act on IPCA and (the proposed) Inspector-General recommendations.
I got the impression that the then Police Minister Anne Tolley and Cabinet at about day 7 or 8 into the crisis were seriously considering removing the Police Commissioner because he wouldn’t act, but I got the distinct feeling the Cabinet was confronted with a unified police executive that said they regarded it as an operational matter that the minister couldn’t direct and they would all quit if the Commissioner was fired. Cabinet was terrified and couldn’t move for fear of barratry. Then they hatched “Clover” to release the pressure… and nothing happened to resolve anything, the complacency of New Zealand subsumed the rage. But now there is rage again, so let’s look at this horror case again too, as if maybe there could possibly be accountability this time.
Many have read the McSkimming report, so to those people please compare the lapses, collusions and offending of the police staff in the following timeline of the ‘Roastbusters’ cover-up taken from Day 11 of the crisis (13/11/2013) and tell me whether this is worse than the McSkimming revelations:
Day 1: Sun 03/11/2013
TV3 exposes ‘roast busters’ gang on evening news.
No immediate police response.
Day 2: Mon 04/11/2013
Statement 12:41pm: “a full and thorough investigation has been conducted, but in the absence of significant evidence such as formal statements, there is not enough evidence to prosecute the alleged offenders at this time.” This was latter corrected because it was such an obvious lie.“These enquiries have been ongoing for some two years and involve a group of boys allegedly involved in sexual activity with young teenage girls whilst grossly intoxicated.Detectives from the Waitemata Child Protection Team have been working on the case since 2011, when a teenage girl came forward to Police to informally report what had happened to her.”
The semantic nonsense of “formal” v. “informal” is a tissue-thin basis to start off their superstructure of a cover-up.
“A full and thorough investigation was launched and the offenders and circumstances were identified. All identified and possible victims were contacted by Police and encouraged to give formal statements which would assist the enquiry.
Three teenage boys were formally interviewed by Police as suspects, but unfortunately made no admissions. A fourth boy refused to co-operate.”
Unfortunately, eh. And they can just refuse to co-operate altogether and that’s cool too. Where are these written statements and when were they made? They claim here this is ALL of them – I doubt that, these are the underage victims only, I suspect if they were 16 or over they were told because they are over the age of consent it would be too difficult to proceed – that’s my initial thought.
“Police have spoken with all identified and possible victims and their friends, on a number of occasions” – they are adamant this is everything: ALL. A “number of occasions” tells us these were multiple complainants involving multiple contacts. So many people and not a single arrest, not a single charge. And then this claim: “it is very frustrating for the enquiry team who have worked tirelessly for months on the case.” When did they start? how many staff involved? But this enquiry was not given a name so it could continue off-the-books.
Statement 5:30pm: “one of the young men who previously declined to co-operate presented himself at a Police station early this afternoon. Another young man is also being interviewed by Police.” Note “decline to co-operate” as if this was normal and a valid reason not to pursue an offender. Det Insp Bruce Scott: “publicity around this case has enabled us to make further progress, and we hope to build on the work done by the enquiry team to potentially take us to the stage where we have enough evidence to build a case.” Is that the most far removed from an arrest as you can get… hope/potentially/build. Scott and Searle’s other interviews make it plain that they expect nothing to come of this. What did they tell those offenders? Then one glaring admission:–“We’re aware that questions have been raised about why we didn’t act to shut down the Roastbusters Facebook page. The page was left open for operational and tactical reasons, and whilst we acknowledge it was upsetting for the victims, it was being monitored for information or evidence that would assist our investigation.”–So they now admit they were aware of it and they were “monitoring” it. They obviously think nothing appearing or being alluded to on that page to that point in time was criminal. Question is what contact did police have with the offenders during this period in particular – because it sounds as though the police had told the gang that as long as they didn’t see anyone underage on it what they were doing was lawful and no action would be taken. Hales had bragged several months ago on his ask.fm site that the police had spoken to him and they said what they were doing to these girls was legal.
Day 3: Tue 05/11/2013
RNZ: (or was this Monday?) Supt. Searle (or Scott?) says victims lack “courage” not to give statements and are not “brave.” This sounds indistinguishable from intimidation.
Statement 1:26pm: Supt Searle admits “the involvement of a Police Officer’s son.” […] “Two of the young men spoke with Police yesterday afternoon and that information is now being assessed by the enquiry team. A Senior Detective who is independent from the investigation has been brought in from outside the Waitemata District to provide extra support.” And Supt Searle warns against vigilantism due to the inaction.
Day 4: Wed 06/11/2013
Police threaten to charge The Daily Blog editor (and Tumeke blogger emeritus) Martyn Bradbury over a parody rape recruitment ad for the NZ Police, seemingly on the basis that people would think it was true.
6pm TV3 interview 13 year old “first victim” (now aged 15). She said the police re-victimised her by their interrogation technique, said the police involved were atrocious – and said it had been videoed.
Statement 7:10pm: Says can “confirm a complaint was received in December 2011. An investigation was launched and the complaint was thoroughly investigated.[…]Out of respect for the victim and her family Police are unable to discuss the specific details of this particular situation any further.” Refusing to provide information like this is really out of respect for the offenders.
Day 5: Thu 07/11/2013
Statement at 8:26am regarding number of victims. The back-tracking on the police’s initial dismissive bravado begins. In full:–Roastbusters – Clarification
There are four girls that have been identified as victims, and of those four, one has made a formal complaint.
Three of the girls were in contact with Police in 2011.
Another girl began discussions with Police in late 2012.
Of the total four girls, one has gone through the process of making her complaint formal, where an official statement was made by way of an evidential video interview.
–The spurious clouding of formal and informal is an utterly bogus tactic. Once Supt Searle saw the previous night’s TV3 story where the victim said the interview was videoed he had to change his story as he thought all of them had been dissuaded from making a written statement… he must have forgot the video. Comm. Marshall was on radio at some point thereafter claiming that case had reached a “natural” conclusion (which sounds to me like a set-up for saying the video and other evidence had been destroyed because the case was closed… despite the official line it was a two year investigation) – that was my initial thought.
Comm. Marshall’s statement: Supt Searle “reviewing aspects of how the investigation was handled.” Marshall claims: “now satisfied that her [first victim] complaint was very thoroughly investigated”. And mentions: “[…] when we become aware of the sort of activity which this group has engaged in, which we also find abhorrent and disturbing […]” but does not say it was criminal despite being aware the victims were aged 13 – 15 years of age. Ending thus: “In the meantime, we welcome any IPCA investigation that may take place, and will act on any learnings it may identify.” – so Marshall takes the wet bus ticket slap for precisely what it is – a lengthy non-response to the initial lengthy non-response. Parliamentary question time 2pm: To astonishment of the House, Police Minister Anne Tolley says police “enthusiastically” investigating. Minister can’t see that her complaint lodged with IPCA means she cannot possibly have confidence in the Commissioner and that this position is untenable.
Statement at 3:40pm regarding a call to Newstalk ZB they thought was worth mentioning so they can deny a link with the case, then adds: “The Officer in charge of the case has been in regular contact with the victims families.” Regular contact meaning a pattern of intimidation from the overall context.
Day 7: Sat 09/11/2013
Commissioner Marshall interviewed on Q+A: NZHerald: Police have been criticised about the questions asked of the complainant, now aged 15, including about what clothes she had been wearing.
Mr Marshall told Q+A the girl had been interviewed by a specially trained female interviewer.
Was it a woman – he seems to know a lot about the specifics.
Day 8: Sun 10/11/2013
Comm. Marshall personally telephones home number of blogger commenter ‘Kracklite’ who has been critical of NZ Police.
Day 9: Mon 11/11/2013
Operation Clover declared open. Confused and contradictory brief: says Det Insp Karyn Malthus “to lead a multi-agency investigation team” then says later “Detective Superintendent Andy Lovelock will retain overall oversight of the investigation.” This does not make sense – my interpretation is the woman will deal with victims as an alternative to police (like ACC, counselling etc.) whereas the actual duty to apprehend the offenders still lies with others, ie. the same policemen as before. “Retain” indicates Lovelock has had this gig all along (not that he has been hitherto mentioned on any official police statement). Confusing and murky enough, but what of Searle and Scot’s responsibilities – are they still on this case? As part of the suppression they need to have their computers seized and to be investigated themselves, but no chance with the current Commissioner digging in like it was the Western Front. The end statement tells us there was really no investigation at all: “The Police investigation is known as Operation Clover and will be referred to by this name from now on.” Begging the obvious question: what was the name of the operation beforehand – and when was it launched? Police refuse to answer specifics of victims/suspects following announcement.
Day 11: Wed 13/11/2013
… when will this anarchy end?
When the NZ Police attempt to intimidate their critics, when random citizens with internet connections have done more (at least in intention) in the last dozen days than the entire NZ police force put together to break this gang then reasonable people will inevitably conclude what the facts are and who is and who is not doing their duty. Since the Commissioner of Police refuses to do his duty he should be replaced with someone who will. Day 11 and this rape gang – all of them – are at-large on the authority of the NZ Police.
This is a state of terror created by the NZ Police upon the victims and would-be prey of this gang and that terror is now spreading to critics of police. And all to defend the good name and freedom of the son of a policeman who does not even deny being part of the gang. Is he at the Police College or something? – is his Dad mates with the Commissioner or something? Or is this the immunity that any cop’s son can expect? And is this the vulnerability everyone else is expected to live with – their daughters, grand-daughters and sisters being fresh meat for a police-sanctioned rape gang? This gang are the sons of the controlling class exploiting and terrorising the daughters of the subject class. Who wants to live in such a society?
Sadly the politicians are incredibly, negligently weak – across all parties. There weren’t even any questions to the Police Minister yesterday in parliament despite all the contradictions and inadequacy of her and her department’s (in)actions. The questions to expose the conspiracy are there, and no politician has the balls to ask them – this is a monumental failure of the political class of this country. Is New Zealand a constabulocracy or a democracy?
Today – not a single question to the Police Minister. It is like all 121 MPs are acquiescing in this collective abuse.
Of all the West Auckland MPs I have contacted (via Twitter), Tau Henare gave a sarcastic endorsement of vigilantism and Phil Twyford more constructively had written a letter expressing ‘disappointment’ and will have a meeting with local police on Friday (Day 13). Zip from the rest. If they do not express their no confidence in the Commissioner over this case – this on-going rape crisis – then it must be inferred they support this monstrous and untenable situation. People must speak up and stand up. Where is the leadership?
Thanks for the details that provide the evidence to show the police cover-up. There are more than a few NZ cases where police have convicted innocent people who at great expense have managed to clear themselves in court yet we never see the police staff involved in providing false evidence ever get prosecuted, we also don’t know how many people are wrongly convicted yet they don’t have the means to get justice through what is mistakenly called a justice system. As you say we need a completely independent system to investigate any complaints about the police although as you describe a large part of the population will not accept any complaints against the police as it will destroy the picture perfect world view they have where poor people are bad and rich people are good.
Let me be the old biddy’s advocate. The Roastbusters rapes came out of a certain social environment in which alcohol is freely available and consumed without inhibition, where casual sexual encounters are the norm, and everyone (in this case the young men concerned) is encouraged to become a “winner” without undue regard to moral niceties. In other words, a typical neoliberal society operating under a typical neoliberal value system.
If just one half of society (the old biddy would say the female half) opted out of this neoliberalism we would all be better off. But it is not going to happen that way.
As I have just argued on “The Integrity Institute” in relation to the McSkimming case: “The psychology of the police officer is an interesting one. It is centered on rules which are taken as a given. There is not a lot of introspection or reflection on the justice or wisdom of those rules. If there was, the police officer would be at risk of failing in his or her given role. For the job, the most important rules are those enacted in law. There is little to suggest that in this case the top echelon of the police broke those rules, that is, breached the law. However the typical police officer is equally given to upholding the unwritten rules of society, and strange as it may seem to us, the woman in this case was seen to be the one breaking the new rules of the neoliberal social order. So the police hierarchy turned on her”.
In the Roastbusters case I believe that there were clear breaches of the law. But the police did not see it that way. They saw young men playing hard by the rules of neoliberal society, and so they moved to protect them.
Conclusion: You can’t confront corruption in the Police force without confronting the corruption of neoliberal society as a whole.
The Christ’s sake, is nothing to do with neoliberalism. It’s young men taking advantage of naïve young women. It’s nothing much to do with the economic system, because under whatever you want to call non-neoliberal regimes the attitudes were much the same. Myself I never got quite so drunk is under the labour government of 1972 to ’75. And the attitude of young men then was even worse than it is today. So perhaps if the young men gave up on that, and everyone stopped blaming the victim, we’d all be a lot better off.
Not all young men take advantage, and not all young women are naive. Young men who take advantage have been brought up in a certain moral environment, and young women who are “naive” (I assume that you categorize heavy drinking as naivety) likewise. I know that is a body of opinion that argues that liberalism has nothing to do with neoliberalism, that social liberalism has no connection to economic liberalism and so on, but it is a difficult case to argue, which is why we usually just have bald assertions like “The Christ’s sake, is nothing to do with neoliberalism”. If you deny that social conditioning has any impact on the sexual behaviour of young men (or for that matter older men) then I don’t know where that leaves us. Respectable society likes to deny any responsibility for the behaviour of individuals. It does not want to acknowledge that its values or lack of values might somehow be connected to the behaviour of its young people.
I don’t deny that social conditioning has something to do with sexual behaviour. I don’t think I said that. But if you look at sexual behaviour over the years, possibly the worst sexual behaviour ever was in Victorian England which was supposed to be a bastion of morality. Where young men were brought up – in theory – to be honest faithful and true and not have sex outside of marriage. That actually was in the Boy Scout manual years ago I remember.
It didn’t stop them from having sex outside of marriage. It didn’t stop them from seducing young women in the social classes below them. It didn’t stop the prostitution industry which was probably more active then than it is today. So whatever people’s sexual behaviour is and whatever it’s influenced by, I suspect that these days it’s simply much more out in the open than it used to be when people were allegedly much more moral. All I said was that in my youth in the 1960s and 70s, there were still women being taken advantage of, and probably in a worse way than they are today. Because people use to make all sorts of promises then – because of the social conditioning – which they probably don’t today.
As Spike Milligan said albeit in the words of one of his characters “Tha’ll never stop fookin’ in Bradford.”
The sort of problems which concern us here are affected by social and moral values (“belief systems”) and also by material social relations.
As you point out, Victorian men were able to sexually exploit female domestic servants, factory workers and so on. At the same time, men from the laboring classes struggled to obtain the means to maintain a house, spouse and family, and so resorted to prostitution and similar kinds of sexual relations. There is an economic aspect to abortion as well. Women have aborted children who they could not afford to raise.
The distinguishing characteristic of our present era is that through neoliberalism society has managed to escape the Victorian hypocrisy of condemning all unnatural social relations (sex as a commercial transaction, aborting of one’s unborn children) while continuing to foster the social and economic conditions which make them inevitable. Capitalist society in the neoliberal era has been able to escape the charge of hypocrisy only by renouncing moral values in general.
I don’t know if you are correct to say that sexual immorality is less prevalent now than it was, and I am not sure if it matters whether or not that is the case. My own position is quite clear. Sound social and moral values dignify the human being, and social egalitarianism is both an essential element of a sound moral order and the condition for its full realization. A healthy society needs both sound moral values and social justice. At present capitalist society as a whole has neither.
Ecclesiastes says “There is nothing new under the sun”. That is true of sex, and it is also true of economics.
The “good old fashioned” economic liberalism of Victorian times had parallels to the neoliberalism of today. We prefix “liberalism” with “neo” to suggest that it is something wholly new, which it most definitely is not. The main difference is that in the nineteenth century the economic liberals tended to be moral conservatives, which was an intolerable contradiction, giving rise to the infamous Victorian hypocrisy.
In our century social and economic liberalism sit side by side, epitomized by the extreme political and moral liberalism of the ACT party. The “gig economy” is the modern day counterpart of the Victorian “piece work” system of super-exploitation of labour.
The ruling class is just as sexually debauched as it always has been, and it systematically sexually exploits young women from the lower classes just as it always has. Ask Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Andrew Windsor and Jevon McSkimming about that.
“There is nothing new under the sun” or in the shadows, and in social terms “everything is connected”. Economic behaviour closely parallels sexual behaviour. In feudal times the serf served the lord of the manor for life, he could have no other lord, and marriage was binding for life. Now we have the gig economy, casual sexual relations, and no fault divorce. McSkimming was “Uber” (nice Teutonic connotations there) to Ms Z’s gig worker. Gross exploitation. On the one side cynical abuse. On the other side vain hopes to be cruelly dashed.
Free love and free markets go together. That doesn’t mean that they are necessarily bad in themselves. They become bad when they are false and deceptive. They become bad when they are nothing but a cover for gross exploitation.
Worst take ever Geoff.
Why?
Hey, weren’t there some belated arrests in 2020 over the Roastbusters case?
No news since then. I’m sure there wasn’t any more undue Police interference involved.
I can’t stand this few bad apples bullshit. It might be a few – more than everyone intimates I might say – that are doing the actual deeds, but everyone and his fucking dog covers up for them, whether it’s the police, all the church.
In any organisation, the ‘few bad apples’ seem to always rise to the top, hence we hear more about them and feel there are more than there possibly are.
Being a bad apple probably gives one certain skills which enable an accelerated rise in the ranks.
It’s probably very hard not to get bad apples at the top because they are the first to tell you that they are the best candidate and that they know everything.
The ‘top’ bad apples….ALL appointed by Labour!
Coincidence….I think not lol
Yes the extreme frailties of exposed yet again.
Oh dear. Who appointed everyone in this CoC? Not Jacinda.
The talent pool is extremely small and if you eliminate the really bad apples there’s almost no one left who’s qualified. You have to appoint someone.
There are several who have decided they can’t stomach this govt. and took voluntary gardening leave then were replaced by CoC Yes/Men/Women. e.g. reserve bank.
Got any more brainwaves, you two?
Dear me Joy you have been radicalised.
I don’t think it is a few bad apples. The CID has always had a reputation for dodgy dealing, but now we hear that 120 front line staff are busy falsifying drink driving tests and that the top brass are involved in covering up the reprehensible actions of one of their own.
I’ve gone on record here defending the NZ Police but these last couple of months have made me think that there is a broken culture in that organization that makes its way from the top all the way down to new recruits.
And to be honest it should have been evident to me when the Deputy Police Commissioner praised Bruce Hutton’s “integrity beyond reproach” at his funeral how broken the NZ Police were. To praise a prick like Hutton spoke volumes about how they’d protect the old boys club
An angry Bruce Hutton once told me that he had never fabricated evidence against a person who was not guilty as charged. Trouble is, he considered himself better qualified than a court of law to assess guilt or innocence. Then he considered it his duty to manufacture the evidence necessary to convince the court.
And I think that sums up the CID in NZ. They make up their mind who the guilty person is (or in the case of Arthur Allen Thomas get public pressure to ‘solve it’), and then as you say construct the evidence.
There are so many examples of it.
Bruce Hutton was a piece of shit, but he was just one example. I’m very glad that we abolished the death penalty in NZ, not because of moral reasons, but because of people like Bruce Hutton.
Did you supply evidence in the case against Hutton?
No, and neither did the two Corrections Officers who were present at the time. The more senior of the two (actually the one who had promised to “break” me in detention) would probably have given truthful evidence if asked because he was an old-school colonialist with his own sense of being an honorable person.
Well Geoff you certainly have your argument in a muddle.