Those were the claims made to theRoyal Commission into Abuse in Care which, remarkably, reported on the allegations as “deeply suspicious” but lacking “direct evidence”.
It’s not the first time New Zealand has been rocked by claims of paedophile politicians.
In 1992, strikingly similar claims were made and investigated by police with detailed accounts of its findings laid out in a report obtained by the Herald through the Official Information Act.
Those findings can now be revealed and show that police went as far as debunking the allegations after a painstaking review of evidence which included scouring every police district in the country.
Similar or the same allegations were freshly raised with the Royal Commission’s expansive inquiry that identified 200,000 children had been abused in care - about a third of the children in care between 1950 and 2019.
The inquiry, which has made 138 recommendations including compensation for victims, detailed the allegations of a powerful cabal of abusers in the chapter of its report titled: “Types of abuse and neglect in care experienced by survivors.”
In it, it detailed claims that:
children were taken from state care institutions to private homes in Horowhenua and Wellington in the 1980s were “they were sexually abused by former central government politicians and prominent public servants”;
“missing children and young people” from state institutions “had been buried under trees or dumped in a lake”;
“former central government politicians” in Auckland abused children in care;
young people in care worked as “underage sex workers” in Wellington and Dunedin where they were abused by “prominent public servants”;
police officers abused girls who had run away from care before returning them to care”.
The inquiry report detailed difficulties its investigators faced including witnesses who did not want to engage - including those “fearful of repercussions due to the powerful position formerly or still held by their alleged abuser”.
“This included beliefs that NZ Police were aware of the paedophile rings at the time and had not investigated them,” the report said.
Others were too unwell to cooperate or did not have first-hand evidence to pass on, ultimately finding only one witness who was able to speak to “organised abuse” in care.
Survivors arriving at Parliament for the tabling of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, Wellington, 24 July, 2024. New Zealand Herald photograph by Mark Mitchell
The inquiry did note “direct information” from two people about sexual abuse by “different individual former central government politicians”. It said police were told of one allegation in June 2023 but by November “progress has been hindered by challenges in locating evidence”.
On a paedophile ring, the inquiry said “none of the allegations of organised group abuse in State care settings described above were able to be substantiated by direct evidence”.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has called on anyone with evidence to come forward - a similar call to that which went out in 1992 when an apparent whistleblower emerged claiming the most powerful in our society were preying on the most vulnerable.
‘Prominent NZers’ abusing children - claim
Then, it was Sunday News which brought the claims in a story focusing on the Australian current affairs show Hard Copy which had uncovered a paedophile network across the Tasman. Its first story in a series quoted a reporter from Hard Copy saying electronic files obtained during its investigation “contained the names of several prominent New Zealanders”, the police inquiry report said.
Sunday News was then approached by Nigel Hunter, an informant for police and Internal Affairs, and described him as “an agent who had worked undercover for the government and who had successfully infiltrated the paedophile network for two years”.
The newspaper’s reporting quoted Hunter saying:
Authorities had not acted on his reports of a paedophile network;
That child sexual exploitation photographs and video was “brought into New Zealand under diplomatic immunity”;
Two former politicians were paedophiles supplied children by a Wellington prostitute;
Paedophile videos were being made in Auckland motels and sold locally and overseas;
At least four paedophile investigations had been stopped after pressure on police from “some prominent people”;
That a police officer at headquarters had closed down a Christchurch investigation into paedophiles.
The Sunday News reporting also detailed a list of names taken during a raid of a video shop in Auckland to seize sexual films involving children. It was said to be a mail order list with details of 4000 people on it.
After the publication of a number of stories, Hunter and the reporter who wrote the stories went on Radio Pacific talkback repeating some of the claims. Hunter, at one point, said: “We had to get our fireman out of Police National Headquarters to go and shut the inquiry down.”
And then Michael Laws, then a new National MP earning the reputation of a maverick, asked questions in Parliament of then-police minister John Banks about the allegation investigations had been stopped by “prominent people” or that diplomats were smuggling sexual imagery of children.
Banks rejected the questions - and another from (then) Labour MP Richard Prebble - saying: “My advice is that those allegations are baseless and outrageous.
“But there has been no cover-up by the police of these matters. The police want all the information that they can get, and no pressure has been put on them for such a cover-up to take place.”
That didn’t settle it with Hunter appearing the next night on the top rating Holmes show - the influential 7pm current affairs show broadcast on TVNZ.
Hunter told Paul Holmes’ audience he had “evidence that the top echelon or strata of the paedophile network hierarchy contained former cabinet ministers, MPs and people in very high places”, the police report detailed.
Paul Holmes' 7pm show was the most influential of television current affairs shows during the 1990s. Photo / APN
He also claimed it was New Zealand diplomats - not those from other countries - who were smuggling child sex imagery into the country.
The claims came at a time when there was a heightened concern - and growing awareness - of sexual violence towards children. Author and researcher Lynley Hood, in her book A City Possessed which investigated the Christchurch creche case, wrote that the 1988 telethon highlighting sexual abuse of children “spread sexual abuse anxiety throughout the community”.
The night of the Holmes show led to a late-night Beehive meeting at which Banks and Customs Minister Wyatt Creech accompanied detective inspector Kevin Marlow to brief Prime Minister Jim Bolger on a month-long inquiry that had already debunked the claims.
The final report was still days away from being finished but Marlow’s findings appeared to lie behind the confidence Banks displayed when he described the claims as “baseless and outrageous”.
Herald obtains report
Police released the report to the Herald in 2021 during unrelated inquiries and it showed Marlow had demolished Sunday News’ reporting and the source - Hunter - who had made the claims.
Each police inquiry specifically nominated to Marlow as interfered with was scrutinised and found no evidence of interference or police holding back. Rather, they foundered on a lack of evidence or were otherwise unsubstantiated.
When it came to Hunter, Marlow said “he was a civilian” who had never been a police officer or undercover agent - as he had been described - for any government agency. He also reported there was no truth to Hunter’s claims of being in the NZ Army, an agent of the NZ Security Intelligence Service or an agent for the CIA.
Marlow interviewed Hunter who repeated his claims - but was only able to offer hearsay allegations - those that had been made to him by others. “He could not offer any evidence to support the claims,” the inquiry report said.
Aside from Hunter having purchased videos of child sexual content which were then provided to authorities, he had “no credibility”.
Police inquiries further demolished the claims - Hunter’s claimed sources denied that to which he had attributed to them and the Hard Copy show undermined Sunday News’ original story, telling police its reporting exposed no New Zealand names.
One of the most stunning nuggets of information was also not what it seemed. A list of 4000 people seized from an adult movie dealer was said to be a list of those who had ordered child sexual content.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry found 200,000 children and young people had been abused - about a third of those in care over seven decades.
In the end, it turned out to be people who had written to ask for a catalogue of adult movies. And, investigators found, when the content was scrutinised, none of it contained imagery of children although some did feature sexual contact with animals.
Marlow threw his net wide, seeking from police districts any inquiries that fit the description of organised abuse of children.
This brought forth inquiries into an organisation which called itself the Aotearoa Man Boy Love Association - an antipodean version of a US group that advocated for laws prohibiting sex with boys to be scrapped. One police district reported that the group had claimed to have 70 members yet it was found there were only two people involved - and both were facing charges.
Marlow’s report identified an investigation in Christchurch as the one Hunter claimed to have been shut down by the “fireman” from headquarters.
Rather, he said 28 police staff carried out simultaneous search warrants at eight different places in relation to 12 suspects and “no evidence was found” to support claims of organised preying on children.
In summary, Marlow reported evidence that paedophiles across the country were in contact with each other and exchanged child sexual imagery and writing - but nothing that came close to claims of a cabal of the powerful preying on children.
And he reported that police and Customs were frustrated that the current law did not make possession of child sexual imagery a crime. It was a call Parliament heeded with legislation introduced a few months later.
The Herald asked the Royal Commission whether it had the benefit of the 1992 police inquiry when carrying out its own investigation. A spokesman said: “There is no comment. The inquiry is now closed.”
Luxon calls for witnesses
When the Royal Commission reported having received “deeply suspicious” evidence, Luxon called for witnesses.
“On that particular issue ... there were deep concerns about those allegations but the Royal Commission of Inquiry itself was unable to make a finding on that because there wasn’t substantiated evidence.
“We do encourage people to come forward to police so they can fairly go through a process of investigation.”
Banks told the Herald he had only a fleeting recollection of the matter but said he and then-Commissioner John Jamieson would not have stood by why children were being abused - particularly with himself being a victim in his own childhood.
“What I do know is if there was a cabal of paedophiles operating in New Zealand and I thought there was any substance to this murmuring then I would definitely have chased it.
John Banks was Minister of Police in 1992 and says he would not have stood by while children were abused.
The Royal Commission’s framing of the evidence and its inquiries was far stronger than the police debunking in 1992 although it got to the same place - no evidence.
The unproven claims have the possibility of living on in the public psyche such as the Pizzagate conspiracy theory in the United States leaving people convinced that senior Democrat politicians were using fast food “code words” to order up children locked in the basement at a pizzeria.
Otago University lecturer Dr Deane Galbraith, who specialises in conspiracy theories and religion, said allegations about indecencies towards children always caught the public’s ear because such behaviour was an affront across civilisation.
There was also a unifying aspect to concerns about “shadowy elites” behaving out of step with society, or against society’s best interests.
“A conspiracy theory is generated by imbalances of power in society.”
David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.
