MEDIAWATCH: “No one told me about sexual assault complaints” – wheels start falling off Spinoff story
Just when you didn’t think this allegation scandal couldn’t get any more convoluted, we get this bombshell response…
Labour investigator: No one told me about sexual assault complaints
One of the members of Labour’s investigating panel has broken his silence to say that he was not told about a sexual assault complaint against a former Labour staffer, either verbally or via email.
Simon Mitchell was one of three members of Labour’s investigating panel that looked into seven formal complaints about the ex-staffer and decided in July that no disciplinary action was needed.
…Simon Mitchell is a go to when Labour want an experienced hand, that he has come out denying key parts of The Spinoff story should be keeping the editors of The Spinoff up and very worried…
A tumultuous week kicked off for Labour when a 19-year-old volunteer detailed an allegation of sexual assault in an article published last Monday in The Spinoff.
She subsequently released email correspondence to The Spinoff that she said outlined her sexual assault claim to the panel, both in March and in June, adding that she also told panel members about the assault verbally.
But Mitchell said that was untrue.
In a statement, he said the woman emailed him on a March morning before she was due to testify before the panel to ask if he could print a timeline testimony that she wanted to read to the panel.
“The email did not have an attachment,” Mitchell said in a statement.
Mitchell said he told her to email the document to Labour’s assistant general secretary Dianna Lacy, who printed a copy and gave it to the complainant.
“When the complainant met with the panel, she read from a document taking us through her concerns. She did not provide us with a copy of that document.
“At no point did she say that she had been sexually assaulted or tell us about the events that are described in The Spinoff article.”
Mitchell said he has checked the document that was sent to Lacy and it did not contain any details of the sexual assault allegation that was outlined in The Spinoff.
“I met with the complainant again on May 29 to clarify the allegations and the matters we were investigating,” Mitchell said.
“At no time during that meeting did she say that she had been sexually assaulted by the subject of the complaint or disclose the events that are the subject of The Spinoff article.”
After following up with her about further documentation, Mitchell said she emailed him three documents on June 11, including one that she referred to as her testimony, none of which contained any reference to a sexual assault.
Mitchell said that she emailed him on June 17 and thanked the panel for their hard work.
…this is a very, very, very different story from the one that The Spinoff has given us…
The woman alleges that the ex-staffer attacked her in February 2018, and that she told Haworth about the attack in October 2018, and then told the investigating panel verbally and in documents attached to an email about the nature of the attack in March this year.
Following Haworth’s claim of not knowing anything about a sexual assault claim, the woman released the June email to The Spinoff, which reported that the email contained a clear reference to the sexual assault.
Mitchell said he was gravely concerned by these reports.
“On becoming aware on the complainant’s allegation that she had provided me with details of the assault on her both in person and in attachments to emails sent to me on March 9 and June 11, I have had my computer forensically examined,” Mitchell said.
The March email had no attachment, and none of the attachments sent in June referred to a sexual assault, he said.
Mitchell’s lawyer Penny Swarbrick declined to send the Herald a copy of the emails and attachments, with personal details redacted.
…Mitchell must release the emails to back his version of events up because this is an extraordinary counter claim that undermines the Spinoff story considerably.
I’ve said from the beginning that this could have been a case of Labour not finding enough evidence to back up the allegation, many mainstream media journalists and pundits have demanded Jacinda resign because she knew of this sexual assault and tried to cover it up.
Those same mainstream media journalists and pundits will be sweating this one out tonight.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before Dept. …but why in this quantum universe would someone unwilling, or at least not ready, to go to the Police over an alleged assault, go to Paula Bennett instead?
Without negating that Wellington is bulging with egotistical unpleasant types, this reminds of the manipulation of Amanda Bailey in the John Key pony pulling case, where various people falsely represented themselves such as then NZ Herald writer Ms Glucina. I agree that Simon Mitchell has to ante up to assist with solving this increasingly bizarre case.
This stinks. It stinks of Dirty Politics. It stinks quite simply because Paula Bennett is up to her double chin in this filth.
If it looks like a rat, scuttles like a rat and squeaks like Paula Bennett, then you safely assume it’s a rat!
If Mitchell is true to his word and let’s not forget, this is exactly what Haworth said, then this goes from just sloppy amateur reporting to crossing a line into deliberately fabricated misinformation. And with an awful lot of spade work gone into it.
So exactly whose credibility would that misinformation undermine were the narrative directed in a certain way? Jacinda Ardern’s, that who.
Bullying and harassment are veritable grey areas, always bordering on personality differences and boring non events to anyone outside that microclimate that in this case is the deep Labour Party machine. Hence despite this dragging on it was generating no interest. So in that case could it have been just too damned tempting to not spice it up with a good bit of sexual impropriety? And bang on cue, roll out Bennett? Say it isn’t so.
The National Party and its supporters have grown impatient of waiting for Jacinda to slip up and manufactured a horror story all of their own. Trouble is, Bennett over egged the pudding. The explanations that she went into bat for these victims because there was no one or no other option, a scripted theme repeated over and over by so many, never made any sense, rather it came across as illogical and dodgy. And the trouble is the well organised chorus grouping of Hooton, Hosking, Soper, Garner and Duplicity plus the usual corporate media lackeys like Watkins et al howling at the moon in perfect synchronicity just looks a little too tidy! And even more unusual but quite fitting is to leave the leader in waiting, Simon, out of the fray, quietly being all statesman like!
Christ, this is looking exactly like the definition of Justice Mahon’s classic but very apt summation, “an orchestrated litany of lies”!
Well at least I’m not the only one who is some what puzzled by this.
It must have been about 3 months ago, there were reports of a”rapist” working in parliament , this was dismissed my the media as pre-judging the alleged perpetrator.
If the allegations were as serious as reported, why are the police not involved. As this has happened in the work place, the issues are greater than the wishes of the women involved.
Now some serious questions need to be asked, and some serious investigative journalism to dig deeper into this. Like why is Paula Bennett drip feeding this story, and to the news media?
On another note, more to do with dirty politicks… My niece’s boyfriend is a neo-nazi ACT on campus/ Young Nat wannabe. He boasts that he was smart enough to choose to be born white into a wealthy farming family. He has joked about how he and some friends were going to join labour & have some fun, whatever that means…
Anyway I’m probably just a cynical, paranoid lefty. Maybe there really is a serial rapist/sexula offender in the labour party, and somehow none of his victims want to go to the police, but they go and see Paula Bennett.
Looks like a complete circus.
Perhaps you should also be telling the other side of the story or are just going to going to tell porkies? Here’s the response to Mitchell you haven’t bothered to report, bloody useless git.
Response to Simon Mitchell’s statement
The complainant (the person called “Sarah” in the Spinoff’s article of 9 September) has records of three emails sent by her to Simon Mitchell between 9 March 2019 and 21 May 2019 in which Mr Mitchell was made aware of there being allegations of sexual assault.
These emails have been provided to Labour Party lawyers Kensington Swan, who have been requested to provide the emails to the reviewers conducting the independent review of the internal investigation.
In the earliest email, sent by the complainant on Mar 9, 2019 at 9:35 AM to Mr Mitchell, the complainant attached two documents, one outlining the sexual assault in depth (this document contained sexual assault in the file name of the document) and the other the complainant’s testimony, which also outlines allegations of sexual assault. Attached is a screenshot of this email and the attachments.
The other two emails sent by the complainant to Mr Mitchell were also sent (simultaneously by cc) to the two other members of the investigation panel as well as Labour Party President Nigel Haworth, and another NZ Council Member. These emails were as follows:
Email sent by the complainant on Apr 26, 2019 at 6:28 in which the complainant draws the investigation panel’s attention to the seriousness of the allegations, including the allegation of “rape”.
Email sent by the complainant on Tuesday, 21 May 2019 11:00 PM in which the complainant again draws the investigation panel’s attention to the seriousness of the allegations, including the allegation of “rape”.
The complainant maintains that she went into detail about the sexual assault during the 9 March interview and that Mr Mitchell was present and engaged.
The complainant is struggling to understand why Mr Mitchell would make these statements when he sat through her giving testimony of the sexual assault.
The complainant is not the only person who made allegations of a sexual nature during the internal investigation.
The complainants are hugely disappointed that Mr Mitchell has come forward with his statement just as the complainants and the Labour Party are making some positive progress.
The complainants await the outcome of the independent review of the internal investigation announced by the PM this afternoon.
I think I’m going to puke. Garner and co should all have their mouths washed out with sand-soap, but that won’t clean their grubby little puerile minds. Dirtiest is the determination to use this extraordinary scenario to drag down a PM for not knowing about something which may not have happened.
The complainants did themselves no favours going to someone like Bennett – there are Nat women with much greater credibility and mana than Paula will ever have, not even in her wildest dreams. I doubt there’s any employment lawyer in NZ who has not addressed messy situations like this, but none as messy as having political groupies trying to publicly use an occurrence for beneath the belt political butchery like a bunch of small town hicks.
There could be one or two unexpected legal cases on the horizon, and I very much hope that everyone involved has the fortitude to cope, and that politicians at least try to acquire a little more circumspection – and a sense of proportion to go with it.
Since Simon Mitchell’s statement yesterday, hardly a mention of this issue in msm this morning that I can find! Funny that …
In many companies I have worked for attached files with the names mentioned or content would have been stripped off by the incoming mail server. This would tie in with Mitchell’s claim that the email had no attachment. Quite often Admins will not have configured the feature telling the recipient or sender this has happened. Everyone here is aware that email leaves a trail that cannot easily be totally wiped and there is no point in lying. It seems possible the common email cleaning is what happened. What is harder to understand is that the allegations were repeated in a meeting and ignored. The fact that Paula Bennett is involved immediately leads to suspicion. I have had deep reservations about her since she canned the training incentive allowance. Why would someone who used it to rise above their circumstances deny it to others?