Paul Holmes: All Black drops ball on apology

Should Robin Brooke have apologised? Photo / Paul Estcourt

All right. I'll say it. I feel a bit sorry for Robin Brooke, especially after last weekend's photograph on the front page of the Sunday News.

I don't blame the Sunday News for printing it. It was probably too good to ignore. And now comes the news he and his wife are nursing a sick four-month-old baby girl. And there is nothing quite like the pain a parent feels when a child is sick.

But that party picture. It is par for the course in the world of Sunday newspapers. It is not always a nice or savoury world.

But that photograph, with Brooke almost naked, wearing a bra and what appeared to be a g-string with a tampon as an earring hanging from his left ear, coming as it did after the reports about the 15-year-old girl and the 17-year-old boy at Denarau on New Year's Eve, could have painted him, in my opinion, as some kind of deviant.

The photo's front page caption didn't help him: "This is the photo that shows Robin Brooke hours before he was accused of groping a teenage girl."

I think readers will interpret that as: "Here is the deviant predator already very weird at the start of a wild night".

Never mind that the story has other holidaymakers saying it was all good fun and that Brooke was with a crowd of people of all ages simply having an evening of laughter and friendship. In my view, the picture convicted him of all manner of sins.

But there are two other things about the front-page picture and the other inside on page three. The body language shows his companions nestling up to him in some hilarity, not running away from a weirdo. It is obviously huge high-jinks.

And, we learned, he was dressed this way because he lost a bet. He is, in this sense, honourable. He honoured a bet even if it meant dressing up as he did, his eyebrows apparently shaven, lipstick splayed across his mouth and a tampon hanging off his ear.

For a great All Black, it was gutsy stuff. But it remains a hell of a photo to have hanging around when, it is alleged, you have the other serious business going on later that night.

The other question the release of the photograph to a newspaper raises is one about loyalty, or lack of it. Those blurred people all over him, were they friends or sycophants?

I think at least one who was there, obviously, is disloyal. Sending the photos to the newspaper seems to me to be a gross betrayal of intimacy. It demonstrates again the perils of fame.

Brooke should not have touched the girl and should not have grabbed a teenage boy's throat as is alleged, even if it was true there was a bit of lip being proffered from the kids at the centre of the incidents later that night.

Brooke is a grown man with his own family.

The alleged "groping", as the Sunday News called it, or the alleged grabbing of the backside or whatever it was, is claimed to have happened at 2am and we know, after New Year's Eve, what that means.

Whatever he did to the girl's backside, he is accused of doing it twice, even - it is alleged - after she asked him to desist the first time. Certainly it seems to have been enough for the 17-year-old boy to remonstrate with him.

At that, it is claimed, Brooke grabbed the boy around the neck and pushed him down. That claim - grabbing the boy's throat like a big bully - is as disturbing as the rest of it.

So, if true, Brooke was out of order. If that's the case, he should have apologised next day to the girl and the boy and to their families. The girl's family said that was all they wanted; a sincere, heartfelt apology. However, the boy's father says he spoke to Brooke next day, urged him to apologise and Brooke refused.

This may have been Brooke's first big mistake. Next thing he had a major public relations disaster on his hands and his reputation is deeply sullied. Now he's being sued by the boy's family for $200,000. The girl's family may yet join the civil action or instigate action of their own.

The more time went on, the more chance there was that lawyers would get involved. I think Brooke should have faced up publicly, admitted what happened and apologised fully.

If the allegations are accurate, then there was nothing to be gained for him by dragging this thing out. Nevertheless, the bear went into his cave, laid low, said nothing. His lawyers in Tauranga started masticating on the problem and kept him silent.

Lawyers can offer wise and good counsel. But they are lawyers. They have studied law, not public relations. They tend to be conservative in their actions. They do not tend to be proactive. They advise caution. They have not studied the ways of the media. They have not studied the ways by which the public can be assuaged.

I always say that if you listened to your lawyer's counsel all the time you would never cross the road for fear of being struck by a bus. There are times you have to act for yourself and do what you know is the right thing.

Sometimes when those wheels start turning legal advice stands in the way of common sense.

The girl wanted a sober, reflective apology. She did not get one. My view? Dumb, Robin. You're a name, a former prominent All Black.

The boy's father wanted a sincere, apology. It was New Year's, for God's sake. Things happen. Things you wouldn't normally do or say get done and said.We all understand this. That's the main thing you've got going for you.

Now Brooke's lawyers say there can definitely be no apology because legal proceedings are under way. Nonsense. There is also a life under way. There is also a world going on.

Brooke's Tauranga law firm are wrong in their advice to him, I believe. He should sack them. Or rather, he should let them do the legal work for his New World and let them handle the groceries but he should much earlier have contracted the services of a trouble-shooting PR woman.

And just apologise. I can't see how defending the imminent proceedings "vigorously" as his lawyers declare they intend, will in any way enhance Brooke's position or reputation.

But that photograph! It was terrible timing. It made Brooke look like he was out of control up there.

The two shots were irresistible to the Sunday News and they may have proven irresistible to this newspaper and to the Sunday Star-Times, had they been offered them, as they all struggle to get the strongest lead at the start of the week.

Certainly the British tabloids would have had no hesitation in publishing. They would have danced with glee in their newsrooms when the photos came in. I do not think TVNZ would have carried them.

But their publication was so strongly negative for a man who is in hot water for allegedly touching a teenager inappropriately, a man who nevertheless works hard, is not a bad man, has achieved ownership of a New World and a man who has a wife and small children.

The children will go back to school in the next few days where many other kids will have seen the photograph. I bet, in fact, every kid in that school will have seen the picture.

Brooke's offence was not the crime of the century but what he is accused of was very unpleasant. We have a very upset couple of teenagers.

But the front-page picture robbed Robin Brooke of dignity in a way that was well out of balance with what happened in Fiji on New Year's Eve.

With all of that and the sick baby daughter, Robin Brooke and his family have had a fortnight from hell.