We’d love to tell you the name of the Queenstown woman who targeted a local teen in a nasty phone hoax.
But we can’t. The 53-year-old local mother, sentenced on Monday to 300 hours’ community work and two years’ supervision, has been granted permanent name suppression.
This is not the first time this woman has been convicted of a dishonesty offence – yet she remains in the community, free to go about her business without people knowing what she’s capable of.
The sentencing brings an end to one of the more bizarre crimes committed in the Wakatipu. The woman, pretending to be a sexual health worker, rang a private school in Dunedin and claimed a 13-year-old Queenstown applicant to the school had a sexually transmitted disease, needed support and was a lesbian.
It emerged the mother did this as she was trying to get her own daughter accepted into the school ahead of the victim.
Pretty devious stuff.
Should she have been named and shamed? I think so.
The judge reasoned permanent name suppression should apply to protect the identity of the offending woman’s daughter.
And that’s all well and good but realistically most people moving in similar circles to these two families are going to know who this woman is and thus the identity of her daughter anyway.
And I think most Kiwis are smart enough to realise the daughter isn’t in any way responsible for her mother’s actions.
So all the name suppression is really achieving is a level of secrecy that prevents people in the wider community knowing about who this woman is and what she’s been up to.
Given our society places importance on justice not just being done, but being seen to be done, suppression in such a case seriously impedes the latter.
On a national level, name suppression is coming under scrutiny.
This is partly due to it being granted in some cases when an offender has a high profile – say a sports person or entertainer – because the effect of publicising their identity would outweigh the offence.
So the fact is people with a profile are more likely to get name suppression – because of their profile. Conversely, your average Joe Blow found guilty of the same offence doesn’t get suppression because they don’t have a public profile that can be affected. Is that really fair?
Yesterday, The New Zealand Herald reported on two separate instances in the past fortnight of former All Blacks facing charges who both got name suppression.
One had pleaded guilty to assaulting a child, the other with assaulting his partner while out celebrating the All Blacks’ World Cup win.
A tightening of the procedure for applying name suppression is on the way.
The Criminal Procedure Bill passed last month makes it clear that wealth and public profile aren’t factors that should be taken into account when considering name suppression.
The bill, ensuring a stronger commitment to open justice, comes into effect in March.
