Opinion: Name suppression

By John Grant

I’m one of the many kiwi’s growing in complete frustration with the current interpretation by the courts of the suppression laws.

Earlier David Tilson wrote a story on this topic and you can review this here.

Firstly I would say that I’m not a radical, I don’t normally jump up and down on issues but I do strongly believe in fairness for everyone.

Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater pleaded not guilty to charges of breaching a suppression order when he appeared in the District Court on 9 February.

I’ve followed this case and did not support his approach. I thought it reeked of someone chasing publicity.

However the recent North Shore case has riled my sense of fair play. It involves a North Shore male teacher who is on six charges of indecent assault on boys.

He has been granted name suppression. This achieves a significant plus for this person who while ‘innocent till proven guilty’ has now brought the shadow of doubt on every single male teacher on the North Shore.

Thank god I am not a teacher! I guess I should also thank someone that I’m not a comedian or even worse a teaching comedian!

One can only look at these decisions and be completely puzzled by the courts rationale for granting suppression. The pluses seem to be;

All those male teaches on the Shore are no longer implicated
Any other issues are likely to come to the surface quickly
It provides relief to the parents of children who are not at the school where the teacher was based
It provides an opportunity to openly discuss the issue with children who knew the teacher
It creates speculation as to who it is, likely to target innocent people

and so on….

The reasons against;

It gives anonymity till the case is heard and dealt with through the courts
It protects innocent members of the family or the person on charges

What ever the reason the court gets zero marks for perception management. This is now clearly an issue for New Zealand. The suppression laws appear to be an ass and are not working.

It;s time for a change.