It was Radio N.Z. news, with political correctness at its most blatant. On 23rd June 2010 Morning Report was covering a report by the Commission of Enquiry into police conduct, investigating the handling of the Louise Nicholas case and other matters. Of 47 recommendations in the report, so far only seven had been fully acted upon and Radio N.Z. and certain others were indignantly asking “Why?”

Ominous 8am headline : “Why are police tactics (sic!) with sex abuse victims changing so slowly?” 8.05am news : “Louise Nicholas says the police should remember the public is watching their progress!” 8.15am news and Louise Nicholas heard : “They (the police) are being watched!” 8.30am news : “Louise Nicholas, the woman who triggered the Commission of Enquiry….is worried the impetus for change is dwindling”, also (she) “fears police culture may not change.”

Minister of Police Judith Collins was interviewed by Sean Plunkett. Casting aside journalistic objectivity he asked her : “Are you at all disappointed by comments from Greg O’Connor of the Police Association [the President] this morning, which seem to suggest — I mean, he does represent the frontline police, perhaps the people who Louise Nicholas thinks need to change their attitude most — that “all this stuff may be a little politically correct and stops us catching criminals”? The Minister appeared not at all “disappointed” however.

The above news excerpts present but a snapshot of where radical rape activism is at today in N.Z., with all its intimidating tactics and general news media posturing. For example, what gives Louise Nicholas the right to presume that she speaks for the public in general as she menacingly warns the N.Z. Police that they are “being watched”? What rubbish!

I see certain parallels here with other anti-police activism, such as with the agitation against police use of tasers. Both are promoted by ideologically- driven lobby groups, clearly with hidden agendas. The anti-taser campaign is fronted by seasoned radical leftist and anti-police activist John Minto who, in 1981, fronted the Halt All Racist Tours (of rugby with South Africa — HART). In a 31st March 2010 press release Greg O’Connor detailed other areas of anti-Police and anti Justice Department activism also, but for now I shall limit myself to the anti-taser issue.

The campaigning about police handling of rape/sex abuse allegations is headed by rape “survivor” Louise Nicholas, who in turn works as an “advocate” for the radical feminist anti-male, anti-police Rape Prevention Education group, aka Rape Crisis, a Marxist front group as also was HART. Back in 1979 in the leftist, July issue of The Republican, there was published a highly revealing article : “Radical Feminism and the N.Z. Political Scene” by Christine Dann, of more recent times a Green Party senior staffer.

In that article Dann included Rape Crisis and HART among a host of activist groups she described as “anarchists…..and latterly their more Marxist ‘libertarian socialist’ and ‘anarcho-communist’ fellow leftists” etc.

Since that was published Rape Crisis and related groups have conducted an ongoing crusade for radical change to the Police and Justice systems, and public attitudes in general, to meet their own predetermined agenda. Aided and abetted by a broadly compliant and often heavily feminist-influenced news media, they have been able to run rampant over traditionally-accepted procedures of civilised debate and manipulate public opinion to serve their own nefarious ends.

They have laboured consistently to broaden the definition of what constitutes rape/sex abuse, and falsely portray the incidence of such problems as being of epidemic proportion, such as 1 in 3 or 4 girls as being sexually abused etc.

The scandalous June 1988 Telethon publicity hoax spelt this out only too well. Back then the N.Z. public was being asked to donate funds largely for feminist-based rape/sex abuse/domestic violence agencies, and was beseiged with scaremongering publicity utilising those bogus figures.

Eventually, a week before Telethon, this flagrant falsehood was reluctantly acknowledged by lesbian psychologist Dr. Hillary Haines (later Lapsley), then Deputy Director of the Mental Health Foundation, which had supplied the figures for the Telethon promotion. She had the audacity to admit : “Of course they are only guessing with these figures, but in a sense it doesn’t really matter. The main point is that they shock.” (Auckland Sun 18 June 1988 : “Statistics : The Facts”)

A similarly shameless admission came in the editorial of the July/August 1988 Broadsheet with lesbian Jenny Rankine gleefully admitting : “The widely-quoted guesstimates of the amount of family violence were feminist ones — another feminist achievement.”

Yet, despite such astonishingly frank admissions of the bogus nature of those figures core rape activist groups still persisted in clinging to them as part of their political propaganda. A notable example occurred less than a year later on 20th April 1989 on Auckland radio station 1ZB, now Newstalk ZB. Lunchtime talkback host was Bob McNeill and a guest was Kim McGregor, then of the HELP sex abuse centre, who was striving to uphold the validity of those utterly discredited figure.

As secretary of Credo Society Incorporated at the time (now defunct) I phoned in and created a furore by challenging McGregor on this point. However, as usual on such occasions, fair and rational debate was not possible and I was pilloried for my views, from those in the studio and from subsequent callers. McNeill refused me right of reply, with his producer rejecting my concern with “You have to expect it!” Similarly when I phoned station manager Brent Harman to complain : “You set yourself up!”

This outrageous episode had its sequel several weeks later. I wrote an Open Letter of protest to Brent Harman documenting the entire shabby episode, and distributed copies in Queen Street in a one-person demonstration, complete with protest sign. Within weeks McNeill had been removed from 1ZB.

21 years later Dr. Kim McGregor is as active as ever on the radical feminist front, now being director of Rape Prevention Education. Two years ago (N.Z. Herald 6th August 2008), she was gleefully discussing how the (then) Labour Government was funding Louise Nicholas to work for that group “collecting the stories of other sexual violence victims” etc.

True to form, in that news item McGregor was still quoting those long-discredited and concocted figures : “Surveys showing (sic) that between a fifth and a third of girls and between an eighth and a sixth of boys are sexually abused before the age of 16.”

Having, I hope, demonstrated the abysmal level of credibility of the various rape/sex abuse agitators I want to return to those 23rd June 2010 Radio N.Z. news items about a Commission of Enquiry report into police handling of rape/sex abuse allegations.

Louise Nicholas and certain others are clamouring for more of the report’s recommendations to be put in place : “Police ‘tactics’ with sex abuse victims are changing so slowly” etc.. Surely, though, in all honesty, this is simply more rape political activism in the guise of victim compassion? No one could be more concerned and compassionate for genuine rape/sex abuse victims than myself.

Having said that, there is something seriously amiss here. On the one hand, as a nation, and over many years, we have been periodically told that people making such allegations to the police must be given special treatment….never even a hint of skepticism or doubt in their stories etc. because they never lie!!! On the other hand we have the worrying phenomenon of growing numbers of false accusations.

As far back as 8th August 1997 an article of mine appeared in the N.Z.Herald : “Double standard in handling rape”. That very month the N.Z. Police Executive was set to approve, yet again, a changed policy on the handling of rape complaints. It seems that Rape Crisis was claiming that many women do not report rape to the police because of “problems with people being disbelieved”! I pointed out there that Rape Crisis maintains that women must always be believed because they never lie about such matters! Heaven help us!

In that article I also quoted former police commander Bryan Rowe and lawyer Murray Gibson. Rowe had told a recent meeting that he felt police were adopting a double standard. With a fraud allegation a person is put through the hoops, “but with rape complainants — no, probably instant arrest. Sexual cases should be treated as any other cases; the same standard of proof should be required.”

At the same meeting Gibson had discussed the problem of false rape/sex abuse accusations, saying that they could be traced back to the amending of the Evidence Act (which Credo Society had opposed) which determined that no corroborative evidence was needed in sexual cases.

I noted there that Gibson thought that the police, in planning a changed policy, seemed to have been considerably influenced by news that “Rape Crisis has dealt with 10,500 women in the past five years, two thirds of whom didn’t report it to the police.” Well, as we have already seen with the 1988 Telethon scandal, the police should have been taking those figures with a grain of salt; that is, dismissing them.

Yet even that aside, there is inherently more deviousness there and it is this :the cunning trick — surely little short of psychological blackmail – of claiming many rape/sex abuse victims do not make complaints to the police “because they are afraid of how they will be treated”.

As I pointed out in that Herald article, this self-same manipulative ploy is also used by domestic violence activists and homosexual activists, both in N.Z. and overseas : “Along with statistical hokum, the ‘not reporting to the police’ lament seems to be little more than a devious device to help produce radical change in society’s treatment of so-called ‘oppressed minorities’.”

By 1997 there had already been enormous concessions to feminist demands in the Police and Justice systems in relation to rape and sex abuse cases. Yet agitation continued for ever more change, so by 2004 (then) Prime Minister Helen Clark announced that a Commission of Enquiry would be held, the report of which now, in 2010, is out and under consideration.

Back in 2006, when it was eagerly awaited, the 29th May Dominion Post featured a typically emotive, pro-feminist, anti-police rant entitled : “Women are suffering rape in silence, support groups tell Yvonne Martin.” “Support groups”? Not one was named; there was simply “Support groups say that police ‘negative attitudes’ were keeping women from reporting rape”….and “Support groups say” that women were allegedly dropping out of the Justice system.

So this was clearly but a vehicle for more rabid anti-police propaganda, as Martin reeled off how “skepticism (by police) gets conveyed by their body language, the way in which they ask the questions, and what they ask….the negative attitudes are putting women off reporting rape. Police say the issue is of great concern; they are setting up a specialist squad to deal with rape cases in a bid to improve their image.”

The lone voice quoted there was that of Victoria University criminologist Dr. Jan Jordan, noted for her rigid adherence to radical feminist doctrinal thinking, such as the perverse dogma that a woman never lies about rape etc. No surprise, then, that she was quoted there declaring that “a culture of disbelief ran through the police, tainting how they dealt with complaints.”

Now, in 2010, we return to the current situation. Regardless of the pros and cons of the Louise Nicholas case, by her very action of opting to work for the radical Rape Prevention Education group and its highly manipulative acolytes, she has, wittingly or unwittingly, aligned herself with the wider leftist culturally subversive cause, thereby undermining her credibility.

Indeed at times she appears to leave no doubt that her role most certainly is that of a covert social change agent. Example : Radio N.Z. Checkpoint 25th September 2008 : “Victim calls for changes to courts dealing with sex crimes”. She expressed the view that the accused should lose the right to silence — a fundamental legal protection.

Why, then, should any news media report her arrogantly presuming to speak for the N.Z. public as she menacingly declared on 23rd June 2010 that “The (N.Z.) public is watching their (police) progress!”? Simply because certain media pander to covert leftist causes, and simply because the leftist N.Z.Herald saw fit to name Nicholas New Zealander of the Year in 2007 (N.Z.Herald 15 December 2007) is not sufficient reason to allow her carte blanche as a covert social change agent.

So, notwithstanding the sneering skepticism of Sean Plunkett in that Radio N.Z. interview with Police Minister Judith Collins, Police Association President Greg O’Connor would seem to have been well within his rights to suspect political correctness in the furore surrounding that commission of enquiry report.

Indeed it would seem that the N.Z. police should be ever on guard against too-readily kowtowing to the raucous demands of such crafty, manipulative activists and their equally manipulative news media sympathizers, as more and more social problems become politicised for the revolutionary cause.

by Barbara Faithfull