The international #metoo campaign has been picked up in New Zealand with the #metoonz campaign started by Alison Mau and supported by Stuff journalists. There are risks, care needs to be taken to respect due process, but it is good that they are trying a robust way of addressing the issue of sexual harassment and crime.
RNZ: MeToo media campaign inundated with messages
Inspired by #MeToo campaigns abroad, broadcaster Alison Mau and publisher Stuff are urging New Zealanders to blow the whistle on sexual assault and harassment at work.
What was described as the “worst kept secret” in Wellington’s legal circles was certainly news to the rest of the country when online outlet Newsroom revealed serious sexual misconduct at law firm Russell McVeagh last month. It’s reported on several incidents involving several lawyers at the firm over a seven-year period.
Dame Margaret Bazley will now review Russell McVeagh, the Law Society is looking at new ways of investigating complaints, and most law schools have withdrawn from the firm’s internship and law clerk programmes and sponsorships have scrapped.
All that this was kicked off by the investigative journalism of Melanie Reid and Sasha Borissenko at Newsroom.
Individual lawyers have also given the story more legs such as former litigation lawyer Olivia Wensley who went public last week with her own experience. Among her suggestions for fixing this was an anonymous tip-off service victims or witnesses could use to notify the Law Society.
The same day broadcaster and Sunday Star Times columnist Alison Mau announced a service where people can report direct to her and publisher Stuff.
Ms Mau said she was inspired and encouraged by a former a colleague in Australia – journalist Tracey Spicer – who kicked off an investigation into sexual abuse in the media and entertainment industry there last October.
By last Monday, Ms Mau said hundreds of women had been in touch with stories she described as “heartbreaking”.
Stuff’s chief editor Mark Stevens told Mediawatch two journalists – Cecile Meier and Michelle Duff – will work closely with Ms Mau.
“That can be dialed up depending on need and outcomes. It could change at any time. Beyond that, we have support from Stuff senior editors right through to administration support,” he said.
In an article launching the campaign Ms Mau said there will be “a triage system” to assess people’s complaints.
It is important for vitims that they get things right. It is important for the campaign that they minimise the chances of getting things wrong.
What’s the actual goal of the Stuff MeTooNZ campaign?
“This is about achieving change. For individuals who suffered while their persecutors prospered. And to make this country, its institutions and its workplaces safer for those who dwell here,” stuff.co.nz editor Patrick Crewdson and Sunday Star Times editor Jonathan Milne wrote in a joint editorial published in the paper last weekend.
“It may be too soon to say whether Me Too and the related Time’s Up movement will achieve the lasting cultural change of the civil rights movement or the sexual revolution. But it’s not too soon to realise confronting sexual misconduct is a defining issue of our time,” they wrote.
When launching the campaign, Ms Mau said she wanted to hear from anyone with a story to tell in any profession or industry where “it seems this kind of criminal behaviour is rife.”
“There are certain male-dominated industries that have a problem. I can see that clearly just from the first 100 or 150 emails and messages I got,” said Ms Mau.
“I’m looking first at organisations or companies showing systemic problems with harassment and have been like that for years. We are concentrating on those because… the perpetrators are still in place and people are in danger, ” she said.
They have to be careful they don’t unfairly implicate organisations or companies.
They will need to be very careful with legal firms like Russell McVeagh (who have acknowledged problems and set up an independent inquiry into problems there).
But they can potentially do a lot of good, holding businesses and people in power to account for inappropriate and illegal sexual behaviour and harassment.
