Adams Amy: Urgent Debates — Roast Busters Case—Independent Police Conduct Authority ReportText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Urgent Debates — Roast Busters Case—Independent Police Conduct Authority Report[Sitting date: 19 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2457. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): The report into Operation Clover and the subsequent report today of the Independent Police Conduct Authority are undoubtedly sober reading for us all. As the Minister of Police and others have said it is extremely disappointing to hear from the authority of these serious inadequacies in the police investigation. I think it is quite right that this House would be concerned about that and would want to take the time out of its schedule to register in the strongest terms its concern.It is fundamental to our system of law and order that the police have the respect of all New Zealand and that New Zealanders see them as being above reproach and always operating to the highest standards of ethics and good practice. Although I have absolutely no doubt that for most of the time for most police officers that would be true the reality is that it takes the actions of only one or two officers in one or two cases to seriously damage that trust and reputation. Although it is an incredibly tough and high standard to hold our police to I think we can and must hold them to that standard.Sexual violence in New Zealand as it is in other countries is a matter of shame for this country. It is not a problem that is unique to New Zealand but it is a problem that New Zealand absolutely can and must face up to. In my view the incredibly high incidence of sexual violence—and actually even more concerning the extent to which some women expect to be treated in that way or accept that they will be treated in that way and do not feel that it is their place to stand up—is an absolute criticism of our country. The attitude that prevails amongst some is one of hostility and aggression towards women and that cannot be allowed to carry on.We have a situation—and we saw it actually in this Roast Busters case when we read the report into Operation Clover—where the young women concerned were very reluctant to come forward and very reluctant in many cases to make a complaint. It was very interesting to read the reports as to why that was. The women gave three reasons in the main. The first—and what is noted overwhelmingly as the biggest concern for them—was actually the ramifications and the fallout that they would have had from their peers and their families. They feared that they would be looked down on in the eyes of their families and that they would face criticism from their peers. If we have a culture where a woman feels reluctant to come forward because of how society will treat her then we have an issue not just in the police in this instance but across our society.The other really concerning aspect that the report mentions—well there are two more but the first of those—was that the women themselves felt somehow culpable. That really upset me—that they felt that somehow because of the way they were dressed the way they were acting the fact that they had had a few drinks they might have been flirting they had lost the right to complain about what subsequently happened to them. I am horrified to think that young women in New Zealand are being led to believe—and I do not think it is necessarily a sort of formal training; but the way they are growing up is encouraging them to believe—that somehow if you wear a certain type of clothes or act in a certain way or have a few drinks then you get what is coming to you. You absolutely do not. A woman can wear what she likes she can say what she likes and she can act as she will—she never ever can be held responsible for sexual violence that happens to her.Hon Ruth Dyson: Well said Amy—well said.Hon AMY ADAMS: Thank you. I do not know what more we need to do to teach our young women this but as a mother as an aunt and as a member of our society and I am sure every woman in this House would agree I say we have to do better in teaching our young women that they do not have to feel that they are responsible.The final reason that the women gave—and I certainly do not want to shy away from this—was that they were concerned about what coming forward would mean for them in terms of having to go through the system. This is an area that is absolutely on my plate and I am happy to reflect that this is an area in which I have to take leadership and I am happy to try to do that.We know that coming forward and going through the court system can be incredibly destroying for victims. Many of them describe it as a process of revictimisation. Again that cannot be a way forward. We cannot hope to make a difference if victims are being told: “I wouldn’t come forward if I were you because the process is so awful.” Although I understand the rationale for people to make those comments we simply cannot send the message not to come forward. We have to support the women who come forward—those who have the courage to stand up in the face of all of those issues and doubts and concerns that I have mentioned—and we have to support them through a system that is more supportive.My own view is that I do not think that it will ever be easy and we should not kid ourselves that we can design a court system where it is easy for victims to have to go forward retell their story and go through a process of questioning. But what we absolutely can do is make it better than it is. That is why I have committed to doing a number of things in my time as Minister of Justice. Let me say first off that I am absolutely open to working with anyone in this House who has suggestions as to how we can make it better. I do not believe this is a political issue. I do not believe that there is any party in this House that would not recognise that we need to make it better. Anyone who wants to step forward with good ideas and good advice I certainly want to hear from.The House will know that I have asked the Law Commission to urgently recommence its work on pre-trial and trial practices in sexual violence cases for this very reason. There is a lot of good work in its initial issues paper and I think we can make some changes. Let me just say though that change is always difficult. I get a lot of feedback that people are excited to hear that we are looking at it but when you actually come to make the change it is incredible how often you then get all these reasons why you should not possibly do it. So I will need the support of this House when it comes time to say that if we want different outcomes we have to do things differently.I am also in the process of creating the role of chief victims advisers to Ministers in order to make sure right across Government and across all ministries we ensure that we have independent and contestable advice coming to us about the impact on victims.There is one other thing that I did really want to spend a bit of time on in this last contribution in this urgent debate and that is the absolutely abhorrent attitude of these young men. Any perpetrator of sexual violence is obviously the lowest of the low but the particular attitude of the young men involved in this case was gobsmackingly appalling. Not only did they demean assault and invade these young women they laughed about it they demeaned it and they publicised it through social media because they wanted to make themselves look like the big guys and one-up themselves.We have to recognise that in the modern digital world—and I apologise to the House in advance for my language—the behaviour commonly known as “slut shaming” or “revenge porn” has become increasingly prevalent and it is a serious threat to our young women and young people. We have to understand that in a digital world the ability to revictimise and re-traumatise these victims is real and can often be more damaging in some events than the original case.In front of the House is the Harmful Digital Communications Bill which is making an effort to at least allow us to stop these women being revictimised through explosive viral fast-disseminated means and I hope we will have the support of this entire House so that should a situation like this ever arise again not only do we absolutely expect a better standard of performance from our police but we absolutely should expect that as a society—we might not have been able to prevent the initial attack but we absolutely can prevent these women from being revictimised through social media.The last speaker before me in the debate Ms Williams spoke about the link between sexual violence and domestic violence and I want to reiterate that. There is a very clear link often between the dramatically high rates of family violence and sexual violence and in many of the issues we face particularly in designing a system response the investigation the handling of the cases many of the same issues arise.In New Zealand we have one domestic violence notification every 6 minutes. Half of all our homicides are related to domestic violence. We lose on average 14 women seven men and eight children a year. I know that the particular case in front of us is not a domestic violence situation but actually some of the underlying attitudes approaches and outlook the intergenerational normalisation of this behaviour is underlying both of them. This cannot ever be allowed to be repeated.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.