A week after Andrew Kirton announces he is leaving his job with Labour.
Police are believed to have arrested the man at the centre of the Labour Party summer youth camp sexual assault allegations.
Newsroom understands the man, who Labour said at the time was not a party member, was arrested and charged yesterday and will appear in a court in Auckland in the next week.
One victim told Newsroom last night: “To know that four months after the assaults occurred, that some action is finally being taken is fantastic. It feels like there’s some closure. After months of backtracks, lack of support and media coverage, its all coming to a head.”
Kirton resigned last Friday to take a government relations role at Air New Zealand but is expected to be in office when the Berryman report is received. His actions over the camp allegations were widely criticised but he was praised highly by the party president at the time and when his resignation was announced.
I expect suppression will apply to the victims at least, and probably initially to the person arrested. So no naming here please – this will be strictly enforced,
Your NZ 
High Flying Duck
/ 26th June 2018Jacinda has baby. Wait a couple of days for the appropriate amount of gushing media to have passed and then right on cue…
PDB
/ 26th June 2018Labour attract young people to overnight workshops with promises of free booze – what could go wrong?
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018Nothing. Why DO you ask such a silly question ?
Free drink, no supervisor, teenagers….what COULD go wrong there ?
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018Ms Ardern isn’t saying much, is she ?
She didn’t even KNOW about it.
sorethumb
/ 26th June 2018Much a do about nothing.
traveller
/ 26th June 2018Allegedly 4 minors are sexually assaulted and that’s nothing?
Right, now we know where some stand then
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018so if it was found that David Gray was a National Party member it would mean what ..exactly?
Gezza
/ 26th June 2018😳 WTF? 🙄
Trevors_Elbow
/ 26th June 2018You’re scum bringing into this discussion the name of a psychotic mass murdering ahole…
grow up – this is about the sexual assault of youth and possible minors.
Park your hyper partisanship at the door and get a life..
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018get off this dead hobby horse you and other desperados seek to beat up to a ludicrous ..level.Let the law take its course instead of trying to paint Labour evil.Tosser.
Trevors_Elbow
/ 26th June 2018SO Pete – is Blazers comment going to be removed as a personal attack???
Trevors_Elbow
/ 26th June 2018Alleged Sexual Assault Blazer – [carries a 7 year term in the pokie if the alleged perp is found guilty by the way so it ain’t trivial].
An Alleged Sexual Assault which the Labour hierarchy tried very hard to bury, but your line is nothing to see here? “Dead hobby horse” is it – you’re a rather sick individual…
Labour leadership should have CALLED the Cops in straight away and informed the parents straight away….but for some reason they didn’t… for some reason they choose to support the perp instead of the victims, against all of the stated axioms of the Left and Feminism…. do you remember Labour’s kite flying around sexual assault perps having to PROVE their innocence if accused and not being afforded the protection of the long standing western principle of ‘the innocent till proven guilty’??? Wasn’t that something the now Minister for Justice was pushing not so long ago???
Does your hyper partisanship know no bounds?
For the good of the Party above all else is it???
duperez
/ 26th June 2018For a moment there I thought I stumbled into a post complaining about hyper partisanship which itself has a sort of odour of hyper partisanship about it.
Dave K
/ 26th June 2018Evil or just hypocritical?
#metoooooo
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018hey pot…’You’re scum ‘!
Trevors_Elbow
/ 26th June 2018Your feelz upset BOL…. address the issue of Alleged Sexual Assault at a Labour Youth Camp – maybe you won’t feel so slighted then and maybe we will know if are more than a KDS, EDS, JDS sufferer and a hyper partisan Labour shill…
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018just take the irelevant word Labour out of the story…and let the law run its course.
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018Pots call kettles black, that’s the whole point of the cliche.
Trevors_Elbow
/ 27th June 2018Oh dear… don’t like it up Capt’n Manning….
Labour in this up to their eyeballs sunshine. And no matter how you try and divert away from the point its there bold as brass…
Given your obsession with anything National I totally understand your 3 Monkeys act on this one….Party before All else for Bol
sorethumb
/ 26th June 2018what i mean is that there is a moral panic around sexual behaviour these days. I recall the school bus when i was a kid. The girls were equal to the boys.
sorethumb
/ 26th June 2018Maggie Barry could have stopped Rolf Harris but she didn’t etc, etc.
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018I wouldn’t give someone 7 years at the raxpayer’s expense for groping.
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018I would guess that there was a fair bit of willing groping and snogging going on and someone misread the atmosphere.
It’s at the low end of sexual assault; it can’t be compared with rape or attempted rape. That would be an insult to the victims of these crimes. Giving someone 7 years would be saying that rape is the same as a grope for seriousness.
duperez
/ 26th June 2018I wouldn’t be presumptuous enough to suggest what there was. Conjecture can be the enemy of rationality.
What isn’t conjecture is that there’s been a lot of conjecture and most of it seems to have had politics as its fuel.
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018Teenagers, unlimited drink, away from home….we saw some video of the event, and it looked like a fairly uninhibited thing, to say the least. if there was no hankypanky going on, it would be a very unusual teenage party indeed.
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018It’s not conjecture, it was described at the time many times. He put his hands inside peoples’ trousers.
duperez
/ 26th June 2018It is conjecture to guess that there was a fair bit of willing groping and snogging going on and someone misread the atmosphere.
David
/ 26th June 2018Megan Woods is all over this, I still think there is no need for name suppression unless the judge/police need some political pay off as per usual.
lurcher1948
/ 26th June 2018Hope it’s no one linked with national
David
/ 26th June 2018Good try, everyone knows it’s the lefties have to assault to cop a quick feel. We on the right just get on and have a good time which is why we arnt so bloody angry at every little thing.
PartisanZ
/ 26th June 2018“Get on and have a good time” doing what?
Orh … you mean Right-Wing people only do completely innocent stuff?
You sound bloody angry …
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018hilarious…what do you do.. just ‘grab their pussy’….or buy ..it?
Maybe impress them by taking them for a spin in your indian..car!Bol.
Shane Le Brun
/ 26th June 2018Blazer, was that reference to Jaguar? the pinnacle of Indian automotive engineering?
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018David has a new Range Rover,he is extremely proud of it…but my ..toaster..is better than..his.
PartisanZ
/ 26th June 2018“Kirton resigned last Friday to take a government relations role at Air New Zealand …”
The Corporate-Capitalist-Governance elite play “Pass the Parcel”
PartisanZ
/ 26th June 2018There are those who say that who you employ speaks volumes about your company’s values, culture and ethics …
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018So if you employed a tradie who ripped you off,that would be because of your own ethics and values ?
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018It’s a logical conclusion if people employ those whose values & ethics are like their own.
PartisanZ
/ 26th June 2018And, Miss Kitty, there is a logical and fairly simple difference between a private sector contractor and the employee of a large corporation …
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018😀
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018A corporation can’t be blamed if they are taken in by a fraudster with forged documents.
Maggy Wassilieff
/ 26th June 2018No-one being charged for supplying loads of booze to minors at the camp, I notice.
PDB
/ 26th June 2018Labour blamed the fridge.
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018Of course, who else ? 😀
Kitty Catkin
/ 26th June 2018Seriously, what kind of fool has an open bar, teenagers full of raging hormones, no adult present….
Of course it was the teenagers who poured the drink down their own throats, They were not forced to do so. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t grossly irresponsible to have the drink there in the first place. It wouldn’t occur to me that it would be there if I had a teenager going to this event. I wouldn’t even have asked.
??? Has this always happened at Labour youth camps ??? Has anyone asked that ?
PDB
/ 26th June 2018Sexual assault – let’s not do anything about this!
Meanwhile Alison ‘#metoo NZ’ Mau concerns herself with mould: https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/104957628/alison-mau-landlords-need-to-wake-up-and-smell-the-mould
Gezza
/ 26th June 2018Isn’t her crusade focussed on sexual harassment & sexual exploitation in the workplace, to be fair? Not Summer Camps. Keep it in perspective.
PDB
/ 26th June 2018You’re right – she shouldn’t say anything at all about the Labour-led govt not setting an example for any company, person or organisation within New Zealand in regards to sexual assault.
PDB
/ 26th June 2018To add – you might find that a ‘summer camp’ run by the Labour party would constitute a ‘workplace’ under NZ law and health and safety regulations.
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018well using PDB ‘reasoning’….National WILL do it too…sometime!Bol.
PDB
/ 26th June 2018Bit of a strawman there Blazer, best you stick to burying your head and saying ‘nothing to see here’ over and over…
Dave K
/ 26th June 2018#willdoittoo
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018@DK…’#willdoittoo’…PDB’s extension of…’whataboutry’.
Gezza
/ 26th June 2018Well I don’t think they were in favour of it, nor did they defend it, nor allow it to continue. So maybe just stop pushing this particular overblown & irrelevant linking with the grandstanding Ally Mau looking to get into the public eye again & you won’t look quite so ridiculous & petty? 😳 Up to you though.
PDB
/ 26th June 2018Simply pointing out it IS a workplace (Labour run workshop essentially) therefore if Mau was doing her job she would be all over it, especially considering this involves the main party of our govt.
“Well I don’t think they were in favour of it, nor did they defend it, nor allow it to continue”.
They defended it by trying to bury the incident and by not telling police and the parents of the assaults. They may have allowed the alleged offender to continue to assault elsewhere by not dealing with him appropriately in the first instance.
Gezza
/ 26th June 2018There’s no need for her to do anything about this case: it’s developed a life of its own as regards widespread condemnation.
From my personal perspective Kirton is a disgrace & that he has been allowed to just slither off in to a well-paid sinecure as an Air AllBlacks lobbyist is a disgrace to Sir John & the rest of that board. But then they even paid half a mil for Key’s rich golf buddy to come and play a few rounds with him so I probably shouldn’t be surprised. Obviously a pack of troughers.
Nigel Haworth has made an equal utter disgrace of himself over the whole affair & should step down & join the troughing Air AllBlacks board as well.
Gezza
/ 26th June 2018According to the Stuff article I read earlier Labour’s whitewash Berryman internal investigation is still puttering along. Bloody ridiculous. And the police decision to charge this dirty little scroat is independent of that ‘investigation’.
PDB
/ 26th June 2018From the sounds of it the internal investigation after 3 months had only just got around to talking to the first of the alleged victims. Sham from the start. Possibly delayed so that Kirton could organise himself another job to go to which if true shows you where Labour’s priorities lie.
Grimm
/ 26th June 2018And the person responsible for mishandling the whole thing, conveniently resigned last week.
If the police have enough evidence to bother with an arrest, he would have been toast anyway.
Trevors_Elbow
/ 26th June 2018I wonder why Air NZ would hire Mr Kirton? Surely the handling of this issue is a red flag for someone hired to handle government relations on behalf of a major public company? Wouldn’t one suspect his judgment is somewhat off following what has been disclosed about the incidents and the subsequent handling of them?
PDB
/ 26th June 2018Note he got himself the nice paying job BEFORE his full part in this is fully known, including before the police charged someone over the incidents.
Blazer
/ 27th June 2018NOTE Coleman lined up his job before causing a bi election costing hardworking taxpayers 1million ….and escaping from the reveal of what a meal he made as Health minister.
High Flying Duck
/ 26th June 2018PartisanZ
/ 26th June 2018Kirton might be the perfect candidate for the job of Government Relations Manager at AirNZ?
Been there … done that … sorta CV sorta thing …
Chuck Bird
/ 26th June 2018The following is a comment from one of the victims.
“I’m hoping that some good will come out of it and the [man] begins to realise the seriousness of his actions and the awful position it has put not only me in, but the other three victims and the Labour Party too.”
There are now four charges against the man. This indicts to me that Labour was trying to keep from the public like they did in the case of the naked young man running from Annette King’s house.
The victims and/or their parents were pressured to not go to the police. Labour is a disgrace.
Blazer
/ 26th June 2018Barclay,English,Sabin…3 disgraceful episodes of obsfucation,denial and ….amoral behaviour.
PDB
/ 26th June 2018Blazer”…PDB’s extension of…’whataboutry’.”
You are the true master and a hypocrite to boot.