Dunne-Powell: I wanted him to say he was sorry

Kristin Dunne-Powell tells her side of the very public Tony Veitch story. Photo / Kenny Rodger

Tony Veitch has spoken out frequently in the media since pleading guilty this week to an attack on his former partner. Now Kristin Dunne-Powell tells her story.

Q: It has been a long and public process to this point. How was that?

A: The most difficult part was the role of the Sunday media. I felt that it effectively puts the victim on trial and the victim becomes guilty until the defendant is found guilty. They were very aggressive.

Every day was touch and go for me, up and down. I lived my life like this. But I had done my court visit in preparation for the depositions hearing and at that visit I was very determined I would go through with it.

They could say what they liked about me, and that's what defence lawyers do. So, I was determined to be there at depositions.

Q: You are a private person. What was it like to see yourself become a fixture in the media?

A: When it first started I was just so shocked that it was allowed. I couldn't see how it could possibly be part of the process. I was told that it would stop once the charges were laid and they didn't stop.

The first six to eight weeks were just horrendous. Particularly on Sundays. Sometimes I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't believe the things, the lies that were being told, the lack of verification.

The calls would come on a Thursday or Friday and those media would throw [questions] at me to try to get me to speak. I was determined to hold my dignity because I didn't want to have a public she-said, he-said. They were ringing everywhere. Cellphone, home. They would say things to try to get a bite. And they were nasty things, like that they had heard that my marriage was over, that Morgan, my husband, had left me. They did it to Morgan too, would ring him and say 'We hear you have financial problems'. Rumours about past relationships. They were baseless the whole time and much of it wasn't published but it was repetitive and constant.

There were lots of days I didn't cope at all well. I'm a person who cares what people think of me, I have always done my best to be a good person, be a good daughter, good wife and a good boss and all of a sudden I was being portrayed as someone who wasn't.

I had to force myself to detach from that person portrayed in the media. When I gave up buying the newspapers I would walk past the newsstand and see my picture and it was almost as though I would think, 'Oh, that poor girl'.

It was as though for my own sake I had to get to the point where I had to see myself as a character in a soap opera that is out of control and is absolutely nothing to do with me or my family.

Q: Do you believe there was a campaign?

A: Absolutely. A couple of things confound me. I have no media savvy, apart from what was required in my jobs [general management roles at Woosh and Vodafone] and I managed to go nine months without making a comment, and the questions and approaches were relentless.

I don't believe that the comments that appeared in the articles almost weekly happened by chance. Tony had a paid PR adviser.

Q: Why did you decide not to comment?

A: I didn't want to lower myself to that level. I had truth on my side and I knew that one day I would get to turn up and say that and that was to be at depositions. I didn't need to have a campaign around me. I didn't want to end up in tit-for-tat-type comments. I think that would have made it worse. The only time we responded, putting a statement out, was about a false story saying Morgan and I were moving to Wales and that the taxpayer would have to foot the bill to fly me back for the hearings. The reason that we responded that time was that it wasn't directly related to the case.

Q: Do you suspect that stories were being seeded in the media to show you in a bad light?

A: There is no doubt in my mind.

Q: Did you or anyone you know leak the first story that appeared with the allegation that Tony Veitch had assaulted you?

A: No.

Q: Do you have any idea how it came about?

A: No. More and more people were aware there had been an assault. The agreement regarding confidentiality was done late in 2007. Prior to that Tony and I would have had three or four contacts from journalists. Sometime in late 2006 when I was on the Waiheke ferry going to look at a possible wedding venue for Morgan and I, Tony rang and said a journalist had rung him and asked about an assault and my back being broken. Tony begged me not to say anything and briefed me to say no comment if the reporter phoned me.

In some ways it was the worst kept secret in the world. Another journalist started to approach my family and friends. Bear in mind that I knew nothing at the time about this media world. I thought it was best to talk to him. It was about March 2007. He'd been to the house of one of my sisters, rung my other sister, tracked down my parents and he came to my door. I'd become aware of how long what happened to me was going to affect me. It wasn't just the fractures, there was a lot of damage and I was in a pretty bad state. In a way it felt good to tell someone something. He signed a piece of paper to say that he wouldn't disclose to anyone else what I told him. My lawyer has that piece of paper. As far as I know he has honoured that. I told Tony about that approach.

I've since learned there were a lot more people who knew about it. Four executives at TVNZ knew, for example, and apparently others.

Q: What was your relationship like with Tony Veitch early in the relationship?

A: I honestly don't know how to describe Tony. He's a charming man. He has a really likeable personality. He attracts people to him. Initially I wasn't very interested in him. I had come out of a long-term relationship (I've had three relationships of about three years). We met at a TVNZ function in Wellington, I was TVNZ marketing manager for sports. He fought quite hard to form a relationship with me. It was his first relationship in many years.

Q: How did it change?

A: I committed to a relationship with him.

He simply couldn't cope with an intimate relationship at that time.

As I got to know him more I noticed much more his highs and lows. Publicly he was a very energetic and happy sort of guy. Privately he was very unconfident and could be very very depressive. There was a public Tony and a private Tony, absolutely. More so latterly.

When I met him, he was a journalist in the newsroom. Then he went on to Holmes as a reporter and then he got the Game of Two Halves job and, later, the job on radio. He struggled with the public figure thing. He was a perfectionist in his work. He worked himself into the ground. That was a really difficult time for him. You can't just walk into a radio slot and be great at it. It takes time. He is incredibly talented, I'll never take that away from him.

Q: Did you feel he had issues?

A: Yes.

Q: Why did you go back those times that you did?

We had relationships of three or four months [with gaps in between]. We both felt confused. We thought maybe we had both learned something. So we tried again and broke up after a few months again. Before I moved in with him in 2005 we had been apart for a whole year. I was dating someone else. We ran into each other and we went out to dinner and he said he had changed, really looked at his issues and would I give it another try.

There was something about him that I did love. He could be charming and intelligent and articulate and talented. He was all of those things. Unfortunately, he was also a lot of other things.

Q: Why did you take a payment from him?

A: I'd been doing all the recovery that I could think to do and part of that was counselling. I got to a point where I really wanted him to say he was sorry. He had earlier said he was sorry but to my mind he was sorry about the incident only to win me back or to ensure my silence.

The point I came to was that I needed to say 'What you did to me wasn't okay'. I can see more clearly now, this kind of spider's web I was stuck in. What he'd done to me was so wrong ... this incident is going to affect me for the rest of my life and I wanted him to say he was sorry. I sought a lot of advice ... including seeing the head of the police family violence unit and a family lawyer.

Keitha Lally [a policewoman] goes to the same gym as I did and she had asked why I hadn't been there. Maybe because she was a cop, I told her the truth. She referred me to Vaughan Graham, the head of the family violence unit.

Q: Why did you not tell the police much earlier?

A: In the year after the incident I was an absolute wreck. I couldn't go to the supermarket let alone the police station. People can't expect women who have been violently attacked for something as simple as saying or doing the wrong thing to then go to the police.

On the scale of doing bad things [in his eyes], going to the police would be right up there. I was terrified of what he would do to me. When the news first broke [of her back being broken in an assault] he said, in that Paul Holmes article, that I was a good person [and] he had loved me. Well that went out the window when charges were laid.

At the time of the settlement agreement [December, 2007], that had seemed the only option. Going through with a police complaint was going to be very public, very scary. The media terrified me and I didn't feel strong enough to do it. And I didn't want to have his life ruined.

So my lawyers sent a letter asking for an apology, a donation to Preventing Violence Within the Home and outlined the costs that I had incurred to the dollar. I added everything up [medical expenses, lost income]. I hadn't claimed ACC other than a contribution to physio and counselling.

That negotiation took three months. Tony initially refused and while it was stalled I decided I wasn't going to get what I needed and I rang the police and said I wanted to make a statement. My lawyers then sent my whole file to the police. After that and after the lawyers sent a one line letter [to Tony Veitch's lawyers] saying discussions were over, he paid [$150,000 plus an anonymous donation of $5000].

The agreement was that I not speak about the incident to media and I have stuck by that. Today [Thursday] after sentencing was the first time I have done an interview but I have not referred to that incident in any regard.

Q: What happened next?

A: It was [New Year 2008] and I had decided to move on with my life with Morgan. We had bought a house together. Then [some months later] the story broke. The next thing was the police were ringing me. They had everything because we [her and her lawyers] had shipped them my whole file even though I hadn't gone ahead and made a complaint. The police believed there was a prima facie case.

Morgan and I went to Northland to get away from media that had besieged us. Talk about me taking the money and questions about why I hadn't gone to police were already becoming public. Privacy was no longer an option.

I could try to explain through the media why I took the steps I did, and end up in a she-said, he-said situation. Or tell it to the people I should have told it to the police.

It's the facts that matter and it's the guilty plea today [Thursday] that matters.

Q: What is the future for you?

A: Well, Morgan and I are not going overseas, not going to Wales. We will be selling and moving. I worked hard to get that place and it was a sanctuary but since the story became public it's not been any more. Media can turn up at any time. But my family are here in New Zealand and so are my friends and supporters.