Police referring Benson-Pope assault claims to commissioner

David Benson-Pope

Police say they have finished their inquiry into claims that former associate education minister David Benson-Pope assaulted pupils when he was a teacher at Bayfield High School.

Dunedin police interviewed Mr Benson-Pope on Wednesday as they investigated allegations raised in Parliament that he gave a pupil a bleeding nose and stuffed a tennis ball in another pupil's mouth when teaching at the Dunedin school in the 1980s.

Detective Sergeant Malcolm Inglis said that no decision had been made about whether charges should be laid.

That would be up to the Commissioner of Police, who would receive the completed file by early next week. It would likely be referred to the police legal section, and would be peer reviewed.

If there was a recommendation that charges be laid, police would have to decide whether there was enough evidence to proceed, Mr Inglis said.

Police Commissioner Rob Robinson would review the case and it would then be passed to the Crown Law Office and to the Solicitor-General, Terence Arnold QC.

Five former pupils detailed their abuse claim on television in May, and Mr Benson-Pope, then minister of fisheries, and associate minister of education, environment, and justice, stood aside from his portfolios.

Prime Minister Helen Clark reinstated him in June, except for his associate education role, when Speaker Margaret Wilson decided against referring to the Privileges Committee claims he had misled Parliament when he denied the incidents happened.

The police investigation of an allegation Dunedin North MP Pete Hodgson assaulted protester Madeleine Flannagan outside a public meeting had slowed, Sergeant John Ferguson confirmed yesterday.

About half a dozen people who claimed to have seen the end of the alleged incident contacted police soon after, but no one had since contacted police with a complete picture of what happened, Mr Ferguson said.

Mr Hodgson, who after the incident acknowledged he had grabbed Mrs Flannagan's arm as she held a protest sign near Helen Clark, was yet to be interviewed.

- NZPA