The Independent Police Conduct Authority Report on Police’s handling of the alleged offending by ‘Roastbusters’ has been published, and it is damning.
It finds that police handled the seven serial complaints carelessly, and that they communicated poorly with each other and with the complainants and their families and schools. They failed to connnect complaints about the same group. In some cases, they simply did not seem to care enough, and as a result, failed to protect children they should have had cause to fear were being systematically sexually assaulted.
Moreover, it's not clear that individual officers have properly been held responsible.
I feel angry about this case, the more so because I know a young woman caught up on the periphery of this scene; the daughter of a friend. I have a sense of the dread that ran through it.
Jacinda Ardern's speech in the urgent debate today gives voice to some of the anger I feel.