Note: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Comment: Seven years ago, I was a wanted man.
Not by police, but by a clan of fringe conspiracy theorists who believed I had prior knowledge of the March 15 terror attack – or even a role in organising it as a “hoax”.
It was in this context that I interacted with Kevan Verry, the police detective inspector who is now reportedly under employment investigation as dozens of cases he oversaw are being re-opened.
Stuff reported last week that concerns were raised in May about Verry’s handling of a historic case, prompting a review identifying 13 sexual assault and child abuse cases as needing to be investigated further. A second look at more than 1000 case files saw the number of cases being re-opened swell to 54.
The details of Verry’s handling of these cases and why they are being looked at again are not public and I’m not privy to them. As far as I’m aware, my own case has not been involved in this at all – it seems outside the scope as it’s not about sexual assault or child abuse and pre-dates May 2023, which Stuff reports is the period covered by the review.
Chief Victims Adviser Ruth Money told Stuff she understood there were cases where alleged perpetrators had been improperly let off the hook without charge.
“I suspect ultimately it means that victim-survivors haven’t had a voice, haven’t been seen, and haven’t got justice that I believe they were entitled to,” she said.
Verry has declined to comment to media.
I have written previously about the alienating and dismissive way in which police handled an extended and intense campaign of harassment and threats against me.
When I saw the reporting on Verry last week, it took me some time to remember why it rang a bell: He was for a time at the forefront of that police response, which left me little better off and saw no one charged or even formally warned for their involvement in the harassment campaign.
This is how I met Kevan Verry.
Less than three months after a white supremacist terrorist killed 51 worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, a post seeking to link me to the attack went viral. Made by someone who had been visited by police after the attack for their online posts about Islam and immigration, it posited that I had been sent to New Zealand by a global cabal to sow racial division.
A deluge of comments followed, with threats to beat, rape or kill me or my family members. Some were sent directly to me. Most were on posts about me, leaping through the ecosystem of far-right and anti-immigration Facebook groups I had reported on in the months before the Christchurch attack.
“Start sharing it everywhere for people to know what he looks like he wont last in the public,” one wrote.
“Like a kid that just needs a really good fukken hiding.”
“oh I’d love to fuck the leftist little cunt up. Turn that pretty little mouth into smashed avocado.”
“Find the f….. he needs to be held accountable.”
“Oh he has a fiance. We now have something that will bring ransom money…”
On and on it went.
“Watch you back,” one person messaged me.
“Id fuck him just for fun,” another wrote. “He looks like he enjoys being punished,” someone replied.
I reported the messages to police, who contacted me a couple of days later to say they did not appear to be offences, but to continue to submit any threats and that they hadn’t yet made a final evaluation.
Days passed, with me continually supplying new threats to the police. The conspiracies about me made it to 8chan, the website where the March 15 terrorist had posted his manifesto, prompting a new wave of threats with an increasingly antisemitic overtone.
“He looks easy enough to kill, a good swing of the hammer to his gut, so he’s shitting blood as you bury a nail through his kippa,” wrote one.
“How can we strike back at this filthy kike without furthering the tyranny?” another asked.
Finally, more than two weeks after my first police complaint, then-detective senior sergeant Kevan Verry formally confirmed police would not prosecute anyone involved.
“I have considered all the posts and their content and it is unlikely that police would be able to prove the person making the comments had the intention to cause serious emotional distress to you,” he wrote.
This was for two reasons. First, given I was a journalist, “it would be expected that a journalist may attract a certain level of public criticism from people that disagree with their views. This is similar to public officials and members of government.”
Nevermind that I was a 22-year-old student researcher writing the occasional freelance article on the side, not a full-time journalist. “He won’t last in public,” apparently, was a fair comment.
Second, Verry wrote, most of the posts were about me rather than direct messages to me. “This also makes it difficult to infer the posters’ intention was to cause you serious emotional distress,” he wrote.
What about the direct threats?
“There were several messages to you telling you to ‘Watch your back’ but again these fall short of being able to show the intention is to cause harm to you specifically and may be explained as an intended warning by the poster to express dislike about your journalistic activities.”
This continues to be a joke in our household – the concept that “watch your back” was simply short for, “watch your back, I may express an opinion that disagrees with you” is just laughable.
Verry asked me to continue sending in material as it could potentially shift the dial or form the basis of a criminal harassment case against the individual directing the campaign. That saw me trawling through pages of odious and threatening comments about me and my family for hours every week in order to send police a bundle of the latest posts.
Nothing ever came of it. I met with Verry in July 2019 to press my case and he reiterated that there was a different standard for journalists – as well as the “watch your back” rationale. (Police later told me there is not a different standard for journalists.)
My last interaction with Verry was in October of that year. Later that month, an officer from the National Security Investigations Team rang me to say he was handling my case. In November, he told me police had considered whether to lay a criminal harassment charge and decided not to. By this time, the individual leading the campaign had posted more than 300 times about my family and me.
I wasn’t let down by a single officer, but by a system the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch attack would later hear fostered “a lack of trust that police will act on reports or claims. People eventually choose not to report their issues or experiences because they feel nothing will be done.”
Or, as victims adviser Money told Stuff: “Victim-survivors haven’t had a voice, haven’t been seen, and haven’t got justice.”
Police encouraged me to continue reporting threats I received or viewed. For a while, I did so. It wasn’t out of any faith that police would take action. Instead, I told friends and family, it was so that if something ever did happen to me, at least there would be a paper trail.
These days, things are quieter. By and large, the conspiracists have moved on to new targets. Every once in a while, however, a death threat comes across my desk. I pause and consider what to do.
I could fill out the online 105 report, attach the screenshot, talk to a junior officer about why I think this person is upset at me and what could be done about it.
Or I could just close it and carry on.
