My Son has been wrongfully convicted of rape – Part 6
How independent is the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA)?
People might think I am an obsessed mother who will never admit that my son is guilty of anything, and I totally get that.
Some may say I am on a crusade and will never stop, and they are right, but what they need to understand is this isn’t only about guilt or innocence, this isn’t just about my son, this is about justice.
After months of consideration, going through statements, police job sheets and trial transcripts it became very clear that the biggest injustice in my son’s case was the process.
I have previously discussed police conflicts of interest forms being filled out by officers who investigated Jamie’s case, and that all but one of those officers had a clear conflict of interest in the case.
How the alleged victim’s father knew nearly all of the police officers investigating Jamie’s case, all of which is written on the forms.
As wrong and as corrupt as this sounds, it was a terrible fact that we had to grin and bear through out the whole trial process, mainly because defence counsel was not aware of these conflicts until after a conviction had been entered.
The Jury never got to hear of these conflicts. Some of the Polices’ core values are professionalism, respect, integrity, and empathy. The investigation against my son was anything but, he was prejudiced from the start because of the biased and corrupt way the officers started and carried out this investigation. That unfairness carried on to the trial, where the Judge, Jury and hislawyer wasn’t even made aware of these conflicts, until it was too late.
Not being one to sit back and do nothing, I decided to exercise my right of complaint, and wrote my concerns in a sixty-two-page document to the IPCA which was submitted to them on the 7th of October 2021, and we were advised it possibly could take two to three months for their investigation to be completed and for us to get a response.
Finally, someone was listening, and we had a voice. How wrong could I have been!
I received a one-page written response on the 20th of October 2021 stating, “ as you were able to raise these issues in court, we are exercising our discretion under s18(1)(b)(v) of the Independent Police Conduct Authority Act and we will be taking no further action”.
The IPCA’s role is not to examine convictions and or appeals, its role is to investigate any misconduct or neglect of duty by Police employees, or any Police practise, policy, or procedure.
I had not asked them to review the courts decision, I had made honest, truthful, factual allegations about police errors that were made during my son’s investigation. Errors that are being repeated every day by police all over New Zealand, hoping to be heard so that policing policy could be changed and so that this sort of shocking policing can never happen again to another New Zealander.
How can the IPCA be independent when a great deal of the IPCA employees are ex police officers ? People who know the very people and system that complaints are being made about or against.
I question how, even after a royal commission of inquiry into the independence of police investigations, can this still be happening. Dame Margaret Bazley commissioned a report into police investigation independency in 2007 and made several recommendations, one of which was
“New Zealand Police should develop a consistent practice of identifying any independence issues at the outset of an investigation of a complaint involving a police officer or a police associate, to ensure there is a high degree of transparency and consistency. The practice should be supported by an explicit policy on the need for independence in such an investigation”.
In my son’s case this has clearly not been implemented, so how many other investigations are there out there that need looking into. How many other New Zealanders have been wrongfully prosecuted, convicted and sentenced because of the Police breaching their own standards?
In closing I will say, although our journey has been a harrowing experience, it has ignited a part of me that I never knew existed. Fight, passion, and a sense of duty to our country.
Due to my experience, I have created a lobby group and a charitable trust that will stand up for all New Zealanders. Social Justice Aotearoa, www.sja.org.nz, will stand up against corrupt policing, people being treated unjustly by corrections and any injustice in Aotearoa.
Jackie Foster
Jackie is a hardworking mother and grandmother; she is also the Managing Director of her own business. From humble beginnings, Jackie endured hardships during her childhood, spending time in Women’s Refuge and working from a young age to help support her mother and siblings. She has been married for 26 years and resides on the Hibiscus Coast with her family.
I think recent articles around some of the IPCA handling of police use of firearms against members of the public has shown it’s not “independent”. The case of the mentally unwell man who was shot in the back while running away ( near Puhoi) was riddled with examples of what would hardly be considered arms length treatment of the officers involved. It ends up making the conclusion of “justified” look like a foregone conclusion.
Hi Jackie – right from your very first post through to this one I have felt for you and while I am not a mother I do understand your hurt and pain with this. I have previously made comments in some of your previous posts so I will not repeat them here. But I read with interest your comments about the IPCA because of a previous experience a very close friend of mine had with that organisation…….and it was not pleasant.
As I often do I spoke to my father’s friend who is a retired cop about the IPCA and he simply shook his head and said to me that it is not independent at all. The word independent comes from the installation of a Judge to apparently oversee the investigations but that is a joke because apparently he does not sign off on every so-called investigation which are carried out by retired senior cops whose default position is that the police can do no wrong. When a complaint is made to the IPCA, in most cases it is referred back to the cops for comment and everything they say is accepted without question – even when it is wrong.
My father’s friend refers to the IPCA as an adjunct of the cops and simply a vat for the overflow of complaints against the police where the findings on unreasonable and unlawful conduct by the cops are in the main in favour of the cops. He gave me two examples which are shocking to say the least in that they upheld unreasonable and unfair police conduct. The main thing here is that the people who put those complaints in through their lawyer do not have the funds to challenge the decisions of the IPCA in court.
So I totally agree with gagarin’s comment above but until that time comes, more and more people will find themselves at the wrong end of shocking decisions made by the ICPA.
I do wish you and your son well and I support you in what you have set out to achieve.
What a terrible thing to have happen and the corruption alleged in your story is not the first instance of police corruption by any means. Those in authority quite often overlook the hurt and pain and shame they are laying on the young ones who have been falsely accused of misdeeds.
In regards to appeals, you actually have to prove that something was wrong in the hearing of the case itself. These conflicts of interest may not be enough. What evidence was there in this case? Go back and try to see if their evidence stacks up because if it does not, then you will have a clear case to appeal the decision, but I would imagine appealing the decision based on these conflicts of interest could be made quite difficult.
Don’t be intimidated by authority figures either. That is another tactic they can take if they are challenged and they don’t like it, which they quite often do not.
Good on you Jackie. It is my opinion that IPCA stands for Independent (of the truth) Police Complaints Authority because they almost inevitably decide that the police can do no wrong. I can appreciate that we need the police with the problems that exist in society & they often have to deal with the most awful situations so we should support them to do a good job but that should not allow them to escape fair scrutiny (punishment?) for the times when they get it wrong.
IMHO, just one person being arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned for a crime they did not commit IS ONE TOO MANY !
Such foul inhumane treatment should never be MADE to befall any innocent person.
The cause of this problem lies squarely on the inequity and failings of The English Adversarial Justice System which is relied upon to prosecute citizens within its jurisdiction. It is an UNRELIABLE system on so many fronts that it beggars belief that it continues to be prosecuted in the manner it is.
For one, and in particular of cases of alleged sex crimes, the reliance upon Verbal Evidence in isolation and indeed the absence of any factual physical proof of the crime having been committed, goes against what all of us in the world outside of a Trial Court would not tolerate as being fair and just. Compared to cases of murder, sex crime prosecution has become an Industry upon which many citizens rely for an income, and a handsome one at that. Operatives within Child Welfare, Police, Support Agencies, Lawyers, QC’s and Judges, all ride on the “Gravy Train of Income” that is provided by ensuring an endlessly revolving supply of “Alleged Sex Crime” cases. They do this under it having been mandated by law, that ALL such cases, MUST BE PUT TO TRIAL. That, is regardless of the guilt or innocence of the Defendant in the case. This gives Police to be able to waffle their way through such cases with minimal investigation and with wholesale reliance in favour of the Self-Claimed to have been Victim of the crime.
Added to that, Governments have opted to give generous financial incentives for persons to make such Allegations. This to my mind is monetary criminal bribery and Justice System corruption personified in dollar terms. False Allegators can willy nilly take part in this Lottery, with a fair chance of ending up a winner, simply because a Jury can be coercively confabulated into believing anything an eloquently suggestive Prosecuting QC can convince them too, be it true or false or half true or put to them as negative innuendo about the hapless Defendant, who has more than likely been brainwashed by his Defence Team into believing that they can tell what he/she experienced far better than they can themselves. The only two people who KNOW the TRUTH in a verbal argument between them from the experience of it ,are the two adversaries. Third parties certainly do not, because they cannot.
In no venue outside of the Justice System do we as citizens rely upon anything other than what the Two parties in disagreement each themselves have to say about the matter. Then WE make our Judgement. If there is factual physical evidence of some kind, judgement is made the simpler as to guilt or innocence. The fallacy is, that in those sex crime cases where no such “factual evidence” can be found or produced it is merely words spoken that is relied upon to deem the guilt or otherwise of an Accused.
Even if found “Not guilty” by the Justice System, it is not a statement as to an Accused being “Innocent”, only tacit admission that not enough proof was ventured so as to secure a conviction.
A sex crime case in which I became involved saw the Accused found guilty on one count of 18 charges of historical child sexual abuse. He claimed it was False Allegations. The Prosecution was able to convince the Jury that he was guilty, by using what was said about him by her sisters who each had their own gripe against him due to his having left the marriage when they were all under 6years of age. That they each had deep seated paternal “Abandonment issues” were obvious to me in their Police Statements…..but of course…..NOT to the Police, who only seek out what can be relied upon in court to condemn an Accused ( Inculpatory evidence) while at the same time avoiding taking in or documenting anything stated that could give a Jury to doubt the guilt of an Accused (Exculpatory Evidence).
The English Adversarial Justice System is geared to “getting a Conviction” not finding The Truth.
Don’t just take my word for that…..scan the Internet for the likes of Dr. Robert Moles and Evan Whitton, people who spent years investigating the failing of our so-called Justice System, which from my own 6 years of research and investigation and personal involvement, is anything but.
Here are some links:-
http://www.netk.net.au/
http://www.netk.net.au/Whitton/OCLS.pdf
Until we all recognise that any one of us could at any point in time become a VICTIM of False Allegations of sex crime and rise up to fight the inequities in the manner in which such cases are dealt with by Police and the Justice System…the Injustice System Gravy Train will continue to roll on, on track into oblivion, while the already hundreds of wrongful arrests and convictions will continue to grow.
Thank you for sharing this excellent and useful information. I’m not sure the ‘subscribe’ button actually works though. For anyone with a loved one in prison the visitor minefield is a sight to behold. I remember leaving a prison after visiting and seeing a woman sitting in her car with her young baby, bawling her eyes out and being too freaked out to go and comfort her. The worst thing I think was the smell, a kind of commercial disinfectant like jeyes fluid that permeated the whole complex and affixed itself on everything and everyone.