Radio silence from Defence Force

The New Zealand Defence Force needs a lesson in walking their talk – a kind of ‘‘put up or shut up’’, if you like. After a bruising week in which much has been revealed about its treatment of one of its own, former servicewoman Mariya Taylor, the Defence Force is still talking loud and proud about the changes its made to the way sexual crimes and harassment are handled in the forces. The problem is, that’s all they’re willing to talk about.

Most would agree they’ve come a long way in a short time. Far enough to make the Defence Force and their public representatives the darlings of the diversity speakers circuit, for sure. In May, I watched from the audience as Lieutenant Colonel Karl Cummins spoke at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the UN Women and the Human Rights Commission, on the topic of sexual harassment in the workplace.

Three months later, the Defence Force’s ‘‘Sexual Ethics and Respectful Relating’’ training, won the supreme prize at the 2018 Diversity Awards NZ. Rachel Hopkins of Diversity Works, which runs the awards, said the Defence Force had created ‘‘genuine social change with a simple training strategy delivered to a large workforce in a very short timeframe’’.

Cummins told the judges that ‘‘historic cases and reviews into NZDF contributed to recognising the need to undertake prevention activity’’. But this week, Cummins did not want to talk about the ‘‘historic cases’’ at all. That was when former airwoman Mariya Taylor waived her right to name suppression, and told me her story of being groped, ogled and locked in a cage by child rapist Sergeant Robert Roper at Whenuapai in the 1980s.

Cummins refused to say whether Mariya was due an apology, or why she has never received one.

He would say nothing about why Mariya faces a legal costs demand of more than $200,000. If granted most of that will go to the Defence Force, though $57,000 will go to her harasser, Robert Roper, who is serving a 13-year jail sentence for the rape and assault of his own children.

He won’t say why the Defence Force hasn’t apologised to Mariya, despite the judge in the case agreeing that Roper assaulted and humiliated Taylor on multiple occasions.

In addition, a report by Queen’s Counsel Frances Joychild clearly states Roper’s behaviour was well known on the base, and that complaints about him were made to Air Force officers. The report is clear that the whole sorry mess happened thanks to a hard-drinking culture that was within the NZDF’s control to fix.

The NZDF’s refusal to front on these issues has greatly upset a large number of former, and current, members of the Defence Force family, many of whom have contacted me in the past few days. They are angry that one of their own is being treated in this manner. ‘‘Mariya was one of us and after all these years we still have a special bond’’, one told me. Another described, with some sadness, the Defence Force’s ‘‘nasty habit of burying stuff like this’’. And as one former serviceperson pointed out: ‘‘Parents have entrusted the care of their much loved children to the Military and that trust has not been fulfilled, especially in this case (Mariya)’’.

Now Robert Roper’s daughters have demanded a meeting with the Chief of Air Force, to explain why it spent $600,000 fighting Mariya in court, and why it appears ready to ruin her financially with its claim for legal costs.

All great questions, but questions that the Defence Force does not appear ready to answer.

* Friends have set up a Givealittle crowdfunding page to help cover Mariya’s legal costs.