Ex-Craig ally tells of his chaperone
In the months before the Conservative Party imploded seven years ago, board chief executive Christine Rankin said she confronted party leader Colin Craig at least three times to ask him if he was having an affair with his press secretary.
“I believed they were having a relationship, an affair, whether Colin admitted it or not,” the long-time political operator told a judge yesterday as she was subpoenaed to testify for Craig’s latest defamation case.
While Craig denied the rumours, the concerns were high enough that an “unofficial chaperoning system” was put in place between Craig and employee Rachel MacGregor, Rankin said.
“I was very angry with Colin for what I felt he had done in destroying the party,” Rankin said as she testified via an audio-visual feed from Taupō. “I thought it had been ruined.”
Rankin was one of the final witnesses called by Craig to testify at the judge-alone trial, before Justice Neil Campbell at the High Court at Auckland. Craig is seeking defamation damages from former Conservative Party board member John Stringer. He has argued that Stringer unjustly accused him of sexual harassment through his blog and in emails to other party members.
Rankin yesterday said she never suspected Craig of sexually harassing his subordinate, but she did believe he was acting in a way that would be “unsafe and unwise” for a party that prided itself on family values.
“My observation was that you had a mutually consenting relationship,” she said when questioned by Craig. “I thought you were very flattered by it . . . and you loved the attention [from MacGregor]. I did not think you were in love with Rachel, but she was in love with you ... and that you enjoyed it.”
Craig has acknowledged having an “emotional affair” with MacGregor that involved writing her letters and poetry that crossed the line. There was also an incident on election night in 2011 in which they both crossed the line before he called it off, he has said. That doesn’t amount to sexual harassment, he has also said.
But Stringer yesterday cited judges in prior Craig defamation cases who ruled that it amounted to harassment.
“This proceeding is hopefully the final chapter in what can only be described as a Shakespearean political tragedy,” Stringer said, describing himself as having been a victim of Craig’s “lawfare” — involving “a creeping barrage of litigation” over the years that has amounted to an “abuse of the process of the courts”.
“All I ever did was stand up for Rachel MacGregor,” he said.
For her part, Rankin told Justice Campbell she couldn’t recall exactly how many times she had been called to testify at similar hearings involving Craig in the past seven years.
The trial, which started last week, continues today.
Rachel . . . was in love with you . . . [and] you enjoyed it. Christine Rankin