Scorned women, great men: when will police update their take on sexual violence?

OPINION: Does the NZ Police need reminding of how to deal with alleged sexual violence? Journalist Michelle Duff draws them up a basic checklist.

It’s been almost 20 years since Louise Nicholas’ allegations of rape and abuse at the hands of members of the New Zealand Police came to light, leading to a Royal Commission of Inquiry. Those incidents actually occurred over 40 years ago in 1984. They were first reported to police by Nicholas, partially at the time, and in full in 1993.

In other words, it took decades for horrific abuse allegations against police to be taken seriously by the police themselves – and another two decades have passed since that lesson was supposedly learned.

Since then work has been done to change police culture and make the experience better for victims. Police manager of national sexual violence and child protection Detective Inspector Rebecca Cotton, who has run sexual assault squads within police, says that in the 20 years she has been in the force there has been a huge change in police culture and response to sexual violence.

“We’ve implemented really robust case management that provides good accountability. In terms of our culture, we’ve made huge inroads in the training we give to staff, our code of conduct and the behaviours we challenge within our organisation," she said.

“It’s gutting to think victims might think twice about coming forward. I understand, with what’s happened, why there might be an element of apprehension, but I want to assure them they can expect empathy, to be responded to in a way that’s tailored to their needs, to be taken seriously by staff. We’re not perfect, but we are working to improve what we do.”

That’s great news but considering the all too familiar scenarios that emerged this week (the ability of a powerful man to persuade those around him to accept his side of a narrative; the unquestioning embracing of the cliché of the vengeful woman scorned; the tight circle of supporters, including top cop Andrew Coster, closing around a powerful man to support him; the dismal failure to consider Ms Z as someone in need of support and protection; police members evidently valuing internal politics over their duty to the public) it seems that some of the very basics still need to be outlined to some members of New Zealand Police.

To help, I’ve drawn up a list.

Throughout the IPCA report seeps a rich vein of misogyny, and by that I mean negative and sexist ideas about the way women behave that made Jevon McSkimming’s version of events easier for many of his executive buddies to believe. Ms Z was characterised as a bitter and jilted woman out for revenge (this is his story, by the way; she maintains she ended their relationship).

Essentially McSkimming used all of the narratives that are available about women being “crazy” and vengeful to build a story that placed himself in the position of victim. This type of narrative is powerful; it obscured the view of police officers around him to the point that they saw her as the aggressor. “That’s what offenders do, they make sure people aren’t believed,” says Kathryn McPhillips, executive director of HELP Auckland, an organisation that supports survivors of sexual abuse. “The mistakes that have occurred here reflect the dynamics we see every day.”

While we’re out here busting myths that should have been dead long ago, here’s another one: that there’s a “perfect” victim, who acts a certain way after a crime (crying, reporting it immediately) when this does not exist. Everyone processes trauma differently, and let’s use the IPCA report to look at what happened here: “Concerningly, some within Police failed to recognise that a possible victim of sexual assault, who had allegedly been told for years by a very senior Police officer that she would not be listened to (and that explicit images of her might be distributed) if she tried to complain, might present as a desperate person sending sometimes extreme and abusive emails in an attempt to be heard.”

McPhillips says this reflects a lack of sexual violence understanding among top brass. “These skills do exist within the police, we work every day with specialist teams who do a great job. Why are these people not making the decisions? Reporting to police can in itself be really intimidating, they hold a position of power. We all need to take a sharper look and understand how these myths serve perpetrators, so we don’t succumb to them.”

The complainant sent hundreds of emails to police, and three reports to the police 105 complaints service. Some of them are alleged to be vitriolic. Yet as the IPCA report states, police were so blinded by McSkimming’s version of events that they not only failed to consider that the allegations could be plausible, but they used her own reports in her prosecution. Officer B, who ran that prosecution, inserted the word “false” in front of "complaints", in the summary of facts in court.

This reflects a concerning societal trend, with more than a third of people in the most recent Gender Attitudes Survey saying they thought false rape complaints were common. (They are not.) In any case, police had no way of knowing if Ms Z’s complaints were false, because they hadn’t investigated them. Which brings us to our next point.

If there needed to be a reason to hire more women in the police force and promote them into higher positions, then let those reasons be Officers D and M, revealed by RNZ to be Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves and Detective Superintendent Kylie Schaare. As those around them tried to cover up for McSkimming, Reeves and Schaare asked questions.

When it was finally established that Ms Z’s complaints would be looked into, Reeves was appointed as investigator and given a narrow term of reference which prioritised McSkimming’s career. Here’s a snippet of that brief: “A serious allegation against any politically exposed person has the potential to significantly, and permanently impact an individual’s work and career. It is appropriate to investigate circumstances such as these described below in a cautious manner to ascertain the truth.”

Reeves thought this was weird, along with the fact she was the only detective assigned to the case (there would usually be a team), that she was reporting directly to the executive instead of the usual regional manager, and that her superiors became defensive when she said she would have to talk to Ms Z.

Reeves contacted Ms Z, reported the bogus investigation to the IPCA, and later told them: “The handling of this… prior to my involvement is appalling. We have just not followed policy whatsoever and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist… Jevon has tried to get rid of this by making a complaint and … making [Ms Z] the villain, when in actual fact what he perhaps should have done was gone: ‘Can someone look at this and investigate it and get it cleared up? Because I’ve got designs on the future, and I want my integrity intact, so I welcome an investigation. Let’s get it cleared up, get it out of the way’.

“But you know what’s the worst thing – if you make a mistake … the only worse thing that you can do is then cover it up… You can paint all sorts of nice words of this… but to an outsider looking in, and… I mean even me, this looks like a cover-up.”

All of this is to say, what do you get when you put your best female detective on the case?

An investigation.

As Ms Z’s lawyer Steven Lack told the media: “The Police have failed my client… they could have viewed her as a traumatised victim. They chose not to.”

Trust has been broken. Around one in four New Zealand adults say they have been the victim of sexual assault in their lifetime, and these have the lowest likelihood of being reported to police of any crime - with the main reasons given in a Ministry of Justice report including “shame/embarrassment/further humiliation” and “fear of reprisals/would make matters worse”.

Whether trust can be rebuilt remains to be seen. “This is a wake-up call for police, and changes need to be made so it doesn’t happen again,” McPhillips says. “We can’t abandon a justice response to sexual violence—these are serious crimes, and people deserve to be safe.”

Michelle Duff is an author and journalist who has spent years investigating sexual violence and misconduct.

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