Chioda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. The government plans to change laws to allow victims the right to choose whether a convicted sex offender gets permanent name suppression or not. Currently, automatic name suppression applies to protect witnesses and complainants under the age of eighteen and those where certain sexual offenses are alleged. It's a law that garners a lot of criticism online and from the general public.
There's constantly commentary on the perceived reasons why someone gets to keep their name a secret. Carold Senior reporter Melissa Nightingale and Newstalks DB's Sophie Trigger have been delving into the feedback given to the Minister about these changes. Today on the Front Page, Melissa is with us to discuss them and what the law looks like at the moment. Melissa, let's start with name suppression laws in general. There are some cases where it's applied automatically and others where it's not.
Can you explain them to me?
Yeah, So there's multiple ways that people will get automatic name suppression. Obviously, in terms of victims or complainants. If they're children under eighteen, or if they're victims of sexual offending, they will have automatic name suppression. But when we're talking specifically about defendants, there are some cases where they have automatic suppressions, such as if they've been charged specifically with incest or sexual offending against a dependent family member, that
kind of thing. Also, if the defendant themselves is a youth, they will have automatic suppression and that generally can't be
lifted except in certain circumstances. For example, a case that we had I think last year in Wellington where a youth was charged with attempted murder, but because of the seriousness of the charge, he was moved up the jurisdiction into the High Court And once they move out of the Youth Court jurisdiction, even if they're still used, they're no longer entitled to that automatic name suppression.
So Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith he's announced plans, well, he announced plans late last year to make a couple of changes to name suppression laws.
What were they, But he's planning to bring in this law. Basically, the courts cannot grant permanent name suppression to defendants who have been convicted of sexual offending unless the victim consents to them receiving that name suppression. This doesn't include some of those automatic cases such as incest cases those kind of things, but it would cover most sexual offending matters.
What advice and feedback has he gotten about these changes?
So an Official Information Act request that enzid ME has received has shown that there's been quite a lot of feedback to Minister Goldsmith and the Government about this proposal. There's a few legal groups that have said that they think this is a really bad idea, essentially that there's a lot of risks that come with it. In the Ministry of Justice itself also gave a briefing to the Minister saying we do not recommend you proceed with this
proposal as it doesn't contribute to helping victims. However, it appears that Cabinet has set aside those concerns and continued on with very minimal changes to the proposal.
The primary issue is that you have people who are convicted of sexual crimes, rape and being convicted and they can still get permanent name suppression, and that's a massive issue, particularly for the victims. They can't really talk about what happened to them, they can't warn others, and so we decided, look, you only get permanent name suppression if you're a convicted sex offender, if the victim agreed, and if the victor and doesn't agreeable.
Tough luck.
You're not going to get it, and you should own up for your crimes.
I mean, some of the concerns raised in the feedback and briefings to Goldsmith. I'll just read out a carple victims could be exposed to influence and negative repercussions from family members, particularly if they're under eighteen. Also, the proposal requires agreement from a lay person who does not have access to all the relevant information, including council submissions and psychological reports. I mean, the list goes on, doesn't it.
It's quite a hefty list. And you know, I've been caught reporting for more than a decade, so I've sat through my fair share of name suppression arguments or participated in my fair share of name suppression arguments. And there are many, many factors that go into decisions like these, and so even I was surprised at just the list of things that these legal groups have raised as potential problems.
Some that hadn't occurred to me, including things like this actually could lead to less convictions potentially for sex offenders. For example, if the court finds that this defendant there's a risk to their life in some way if they are named, however, the victim says, too bad, I want them to be named. That means that they're actually potentially more likely to succeed in a discharge without conviction application, because those applications rely on with the consequences of a
conviction out of all proportion to the offending. So if the court was to find, well, actually, this defendant essentially could die if they are named, and if they are convicted, then they might decide not to convict them. You know, we don't know if that's what's going to happen, but that's what some of these legal groups have raised as a possible concern.
And I know Ruth Money, she's been a victim advocate for quite some time. She was appointed Chief Victim's Advisor. What has she said.
She feels that the concerns that have been raised by these legal groups are offensive. She said that they're disempowering to victims. They're disrespectful, she said, just because someone has been sexually violated in some way doesn't mean that they don't get to have autonomy, they don't get to have agency, that they don't get to have a voice. So she believes that victims are in the right place to be making these kinds of decisions and they can be supported
to do it the right way. When she was speaking to me, she said, you know, she's dealt with victims who have chosen to support the defendant getting named suppression in order to protect third parties such as small children that are innocent in all of this, who might be
affected by, say a parent, getting named publicly. So she said, victims do make decisions that are in other people's interests as well, and she doesn't want people to discount that and just assume that they don't have the ability to make these calls.
Now, you and I have both been court reporters and crime reporters for quite some time, and we often see outrage from the public when name suppression is given to certain alleged defenders. Right, the first one that comes to my mind is Jesse Kempsen, who murdered Grace Mulane. He kept his name a secret for more than two years, but it was kept a secret to make sure he had the right to a fair trial for other charges
relating to two other women. And it's not just about his right to a fair trial, it's about making sure the trial isn't prejudiced. And because of this, he could have kept appealing and drawing out the court process. That's unfair to his other victims. Now, this is just one example of why a person might have name suppression. What are some others.
Yeah, there's a whole host of reasons people will get name suppression, and there's only a couple of them that actually really relate to the defendant themselves. The main one that is usually brought up is that they will suffer
for extreme hardship if they are named. And extreme hardship can sort of come in many forms, but the one that I see quite often is that they say their mental health is so poor that they will be at risk of suicide or other types of harm if their name is to be published, and that that translates to
extreme hardship. And while you might think if someone says I might kill myself if my name is published, you might think that sounds like a very strong ground, it's actually quite difficult to get a judge to agree to that, and there has to be expert advice and usually for multiple experts to say that there is a real high risk of this person taking their own life, so it is a difficult ground to establish. Other ones include if there's a threat to their life potentially their safety from
outside parties. Maybe they have said someone's made a threat
against me in prison. There are other factors that relate to third parties, such as for example, a defendant might have small children who are going to be bullied in school when it is revealed that their parent is a sex offender or something like that, and these are all battled out in court to try and decide, well, does this child's potential for being bullied outweigh this victim's right to be able to put their story out there, And it can be a very difficult argument and it can
also be difficult to accept the outcomes, and we don't always agree with them, but that is a burden that currently rests on the judges shoulders rather than the victims.
Google kind of considers their hands off because it's all just their software that gathers up news and harvests again without any care about where that's been published into They have to care about it. They have to care about whether or not they are breaching suppression orders. They are a publisher and they've got to be held to account.
Did you Google. Did you say to say to them, look, if you're going to if you're going to ignore this, we will have to do something.
Did you tell them, Yes, I said that it is not acceptable that this would happen. They seemed to understand that, They seem to accept it. Said they would go away and have a look at their systems and make sure that they could operate them in a way that didn't happen. Again. Now they're telling us they're not going to do anything.
And at the end of the day, we all have a right to a fair trial, don't we. Do you think people just forget about that old saying innocent until proven guilty?
Yep? I think that the moment you see someone's name connected to a crime, there's something in your head that says, well, they must have done it. Anybody that's got their name published in relation to offending is probably tired with that brush from the get go. Unfortunately, it just seems to be how we operate as people.
Yeah, and do you think court processes have become increasingly more difficult, but especially with the arrival of the Internet and social media, because there are gray spots everywhere when it comes to name suppression, and say Google, given different jurisdictions, adhere to different rules, Hey, it.
Can be a real mess. And I think we saw that with Jesse Kempsen's case as well, that his name was already out there on Google and there was difficulty getting it down despite the name suppression, I believe. And we've had plenty of other high profile crime cases in New Zealand where that's been the case. And then, like you say, social media is a whole other thing. People
will post names, people will share names. Often as a reporter, it can feel a bit rough when someone is granted at least interim name suppression despite knowing that their identity is the city's worst kept secret and that it's already been shared everywhere. But that's what the courts decide and that's what we've got to follow along with.
And the Criminal Procedure Act expressly says the fact that a defendant is well known does not of itself mean that publication of his or her name will result in extreme hardship for the purposes of subsection. Now, I feel like this is a pretty important one to point out, hey, because given the amounts of comments we see just online.
It is and it seems to be one of those cases where it really depends on who is making the decision on that matter. And sometimes it's about, well, not only am I well known, but my whole career hinges on this, and I am saying I'm innocent, and so it would be extreme hardship for my career to be torpedoed over a false claim against me or something like that. But sometimes judges say, regardless, this is just a natural
consequence of being charged with something like this. Other times they are willing to give them that opportunity to be found not guilty, potentially before that decision is made.
So if we go back to Goldsmith's changes, what's next? When can we see these changes to the law go through the system.
It's going to go to a select committee, and he has Goldsmith has said that this is where these kind of issues get thrashed around, and they will, you know, supposedly hammer out the issues and the fine details at select committee before it proceeds to the next step.
Thanks for joining us.
Melissa ys all right, thank you for having me.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzidherld dot co dot mz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also our sound engineer. 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.