The man at the centre of the Young Labour summer camp scandal has been granted permanent name suppression.
Photo: RNZ / Dan Cook
The 22-year-old stood trial last year accused of indecently assaulting four teenagers - two male and two female - at a camp party near Waihi in early 2018.
He reached a plea deal with prosecutors mid-trial; admitting two charges of common assault against the males while the Crown withdrew the indecent assault charges.
The young man was eventually discharged without conviction and has since taken his fight for name suppression all the way to the Court of Appeal - and won.
In a decision released this morning, the court found the public interest in knowing his identity was disproportionately and illegitimately high, given the political context.
Judges Justice Gilbert, Justice Ellis and Justice Katz ruled publication of the man's name will cause extreme hardship and granted him permanent name suppression.
At June's appeal hearing, the man's lawyer Emma Priest argued her client would be unfairly vilified as a sexual predator - despite his acquittal on the sex charges - if publicly identified.
The thrust of her submissions was that the High Court had erred in finding the young man's case did not meet the threshold test of 'extreme hardship' required for permanent secrecy.
In today's decision, the judges found "no real weight" was given to the fact the young man had been, for all intents and purposes, acquitted of the charges first laid against him.
It found this acquittal status, the man's youth, and his lack of a criminal history all weighed strongly in favour of permanent name suppression.
The court also went further to say it didn't agree with the High Court that there was any compelling public interest in knowing the man's identity.
"In reality, the public interest lies elsewhere: in the events themselves, the circumstances in which they occurred, and in the criminal process that led to [the man's] discharge without conviction."
It acknowledged any future employer's wish to know of past sexual offending but reiterated the man had been acquitted on the indecent assault charges and had been assessed as posing a very low risk of reoffending.
"We do not consider that permitting publication of his name will assist in achieving any legitimate social objective. As we have already said, open justice is not and should not be concerned with public shaming."
It said any suggestion defamation may be an answer to misreporting was unrealistic and pointed to social media, rather than mainstream media, as the area of risk if the man were to be named.
"Putting to one side the point that [the defendant] is unlikely to have the wherewithal to bring such proceedings, the real potential for misreporting and for harm here arises not from the fourth estate but from social media: it may not even be possible to identify the perpetrators of misinformation."