Kiyota.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a special bonus episode of The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. There have been no official talks yet about compensation for the complainant against Gevin Mcskimming, The former deputy police commissioner, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to having child sexual exploitation and beast reality material on his
work devices. A scathing watchdog report has found some of the nation's highest ranking officers ignored a young woman's anonymous complaints against mix Skimming. Instead, she was prosecuted for digital harassment. The handling of the case has been called appolling by the now Police Commissioner Richard Chambers and Police Minister Mark Mitchell.
Today on The.
Front Page, colleague HEROLD Senior reporter Jared Savage is with us to take us behind the scenes of how this case unfolded and how the sordid details came to light. First off, Jared, how did this first come to your attention?
So late last year? Sort of December tweeny twenty four, we started hearing sort of whispers around how Deputy Commissioner gim Skimming was possibly under criminal investigation that related to a complaint from a young woman who happened to have
worked for the police for some time. So we started, you know, as we do, started sniffing around and trying to find out what was going on, and we put some questions into the police, saying, you know, what's going on, essentially as the Deputy commissioner under investigation and so on
and so forth, and what happened. The response back was a typical no comment, but they also said they also said, well, there's actually another prosecution which we can't tell you about, and there are massive suppression orders all over it, which means that essentially you're gagged from saying anything. So that was the starting point. We broke a story saying that jem mcskimming was under investigation, but we can't retell you
much more than that. Now. As time went on, mc skimming, the police investigation uncovered quite extreme pornographic material on his work devices. So he denied these allegations that we couldn't report. He denied these allegations saying I'm innocent, you know, and I'm looking forward to coming back to work. That was
in January. Shortly after that, the police found the subjectionable material on his devices, and that triggered a separate criminal investigation, and as we now know, he pleaded guilty to a possession of abjected material. He had to resign in disgrace, and that easy yet to be sentenced on that. However, there was this underlying what had happened was is that the other investigation, which we couldn't report on, we kept on digging and we've we found out what was going
on there. And what had happened was is that the woman who had made these allegations about mic skimming had in that been prosecuted for essentially a harassment campaign of multiple emails, and so of course her defense was, well, I'm telling I'm telling you, I'm telling the truth about this guy. And that is only just this week we managed to fight the suppressions getting uplifted. And that's what's how everything has tumbled out in the last couple of days.
Because it would be so frustrating knowing that there was something under the surface, being kind of so close but yet so far because of those blanket suppressions. And it is important though, when something is suppressed, when there are two concurrent cases happening at the same time a suppression on both of them, you need, right.
Yeah, I mean, in this case, the suppression orders were put in at the time of that she was arrested in the middle of last year. The suppression orders were put in place ostensibly to protect mc skimmings's reputation. He was about to put his hand up for the top job. If they had been reporting of these emails accusing him of being a sexual predator, obviously that wouldn't have been good for his chances of getting that job, regardless of
the veracity of the allegations. So therefore, the suppressions were put in place to sort of stop further harm to him and his reputation and his Stanley. But of course that's the narrative that he was putting putting forward, and that was the reason why the police didn't take these allegations from this young woman seriously at the time. They didn't investigate them. They chose to basically accept his version of events on face value, and that's led to these
charges and suppressions. And it was incredibly frustrated because, you know, as we were on following these cases, you know, throughout the year, we kind of knew that the IPC A report was going to come out and make this quite sort of damning findings about how senior police handled the allegations, and up until you know, five pm on Tuesday on Tuesday night, like, we were fighting to get it lifted because if we didn't succeed, the IPC A report couldn't
be published and we can tell you the full story. And yeah, very frustrating, but yeah, you've got a as a reporter, you've got to stick to the six of the laws and the rules, and you know, we're just lucky that we had the resources to fight it.
I suppose, Jared, what kind of pressures are there that come with reporting on people in power, especially within the police hierarchy. You're juggling, you know, getting answers from police, but obviously work very closely with them in your capacity as a senior crime reporter. Is it quite difficult to juggle?
Yeah, because often the people that you're speaking with are unable to speak to you in an official capacity or on the record, so you're just getting snippets of information here or there. You know, the police have a large communications team of pr advisors, so often when you're a reporter, they actually can know a lot more than you about the case or what's going on, So it can sometimes be like shining a bit of a torch in a
darkened room. You can just see one little bit, but you know there's other stuff happening in the in the shadows. On top of that, you've got to be very careful legally around not defaming people, making sure that everyone has the right to reply. In this case, you had multiple things going on. There was developments all the time, so you're having to report at speed and have political ramifications as well. So this was a this was quite a
tricky story to report on. Now that the floodgates are open, it's all it's all coming out, and that's great because
sunlight's the best disinfectant and and that's brilliant. But but at the time when you're reporting on things, yeah, you're not you're not always entirely one hundred percent certain, and you've got to work really hard to confirm things or corroborate things even when people aren't, you know, cooperating essentially, And in this case, the suppression order has made it harder as well, because people could just turn around, you know,
government agencies and departments or individuals involved could say we can't talk to you about that because it's suppressed. So yeah, and at the same time, you as a journalist, you're wanting to be incredibly fear to people like you know you're making these you're publishing these allegations. You know you've got to give everyone an opportunity to be heard. And yeah, you fight, you walk a fine line at times.
I mean, I lead an organization of fifteen thousand men and woman who do an incredible job day and night across the country. I know how hard they work because I'm connected to the front line. You know this report, the findings, there's a kick in the guts for them.
They are no different to me.
We take a huge amount of pride in the job that we do for our country. That won't change. What will change is we will make a swift action of implementing this with my new leadership team, and we will do our absolute best to ensure this never happens again.
It doesn't really seem like Chambers or Mitchell were too privy to a lot of this information before the IPCA report actually landed on their desks. I mean, what did you think reading those one hundred and thirty five pages.
It's a bombshell of a report. May have seen anything quite like it. Into of fifteen twenty years of reporting on these matters, that really dived into a lot of detail, the intermassinations of what was happening at Police National Headquarters and the failures of many senior beliefs to not investigate what was run in front of them. They actually named certain officers and they're including the former Commissioner Andrew Costa, and detail quite significant failings over a long period of
time by a number of police officers. Essentially, what it boils down to is this young woman has made allegations of quite serious sexual and physical nature against jem mcskimming. His explanation for all of this was, look, we were in a consensual a year. It's ended badly and this is a campaign of harassment or revenge to destroy my career.
And instead of stopping to think, well, maybe she's telling the truth here and maybe we need to investigate, but just wholesale brought his vision of events, and you know, it's brought down the entire weight of the States to prosecute her and drag her through the court system. And
so it's a huge power balance. Yeah, it's it's quite it's a staggering report in the end, like the police didn't lay criminal charges against Geno Mixginning in relation to her complaint, but that you know, that's sort of that's sort of by the buy and away this this report details with this this long running attempts to Yeah, they just they just didn't look at it. And it's it's quite staggering and it's been a huge amount of damage to the New Zealand place. Yeah.
I've read a fair few I p c A reports and similar as well A And what struck me was the language. It was quite emotive, more emotive than what you would expect with these kind of things. So I actually remember gasping when I saw the press release come through from Richard Chambers using the word appalling, which is unusual.
Right, Yeah, very you could sense, I mean he said he was angry, and you could sense the anger in the press release, but also the subsequent press conference with Richard Chambers, the police, mister Mark Mitchell and Judith Collins attune in general quite an emotional press conference, a lot of anger and disappointment in it. I think it's because they realized the damage that this does to the reputation
of the New Zealand Police. It brings up or resurrects a lot of bad memories from the Beijley Reports sort of twenty years ago, where again there were allegations of cover ups and serious sexual complaints made against police officers. You know, so this is history repeating in some regards, and you know, I guess the police would have been kind of hoping some of those attitudes of bariing in
the past. But I mean, here it's it's quite clear that they they believe Mick Skimmings vision of events and they didn't want to hurt his shot at the top job. And it's it's it's it's.
Remarkable as a reporter, how does it feel sitting on this information and what does a day in the life look like when you're trying to hunt down these leads.
Most of it is really boring league work, So it's.
Not like the movies and Spotlight where they're running around town and opening up files and things.
Certainly not quite as dramatic as the movies make out, but I mean a lot of it is simply calling people, filing requests for court documents, talking to two people involved in the case, and just sort of trying to piece piece it all together. We had quite a nervous wait
on Tuesday. We were obviously waiting to we you know, we had engage lawyers to try and get uppressions lift it, and we had a story prepared to go, and you know, little bits and pieces were leaking out and other you know, other media, and you know, there's there's pressure to make
sure that we're complying with the suppression orders. They'd also be the first to break the story, and so yeah, it was a bit of a relief when we were able to do so and get it out at sort of you know, five oh one on Tuesday night, and everything just fell out of that, and obviously there was a bit of a feeding frenzy with the press conference
and the ips air report coming out. So yeah, it's a good reminder actually about you know, the value of transparency and the value and journalists, you know, and it wasn't just me, it's other journalists and other newsrooms as well, and also without our newsroom, support of editors and lawyers to try and get this over the line so that people could be fully informed about it. And I guess that shows the value of the media, and it's sort of watched og role in the.
Fourth estate, and we'll just end on that. I think one of the most important aspects of this story, and that's the woman involved at the center of this case. So I understand that you've spoken to her legal counsel.
Yes, I've spoken to Stephen Lackett, who barised an author. Yep. He you know, he gave quite a strong statement to the Herald for that first story in relation to how the police had failed his client, that instead of treating her as a potential victim, that they have chosen to ignore her essentially and brought the full weight of the
state down instead of devastating impact on her. The Lewis is and so I would not be surprised that at some point there's going to be some kind of civil or compensation kind of claim brought against the police in relation to this. And yeah, it'll be interesting to see how that plays out as well.
Thanks for joining us, Jared Legia Jose.
Thank you.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at ends at herold dot co z. The Front Page is produced by Jane Yee and Richard Martin, who's also our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.