David Seymour was asked if he would do anything differently, including referring the survivor to speak to the police at the outset. Photo / Mark Mitchell
David Seymour was asked if he would do anything differently, including referring the survivor to speak to the police at the outset. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Act leader David Seymour stands by the party’s response to warnings about ex-president Tim Jago.
Jago was convicted of indecent assault on two teenage boys from the 1990s.
Seymour stated the party followed legal advice and could not have known about Jago’s past offences.
He was convicted of eight charges of indecent assault last year and was finally named on Friday, when he abandoned a years-long fight for ongoing name suppression.
Jago had been the Act Party president for nearly four years when he resigned from the role in late January 2023.
RNZ has previously reported the survivor’s wife contacted the Act Party on Facebook three months before Jago was charged, warning Jago was a sexual predator.
A party staffer initially dealt with the message before Act leader Seymour personally responded and advised she contact a lawyer.
Tim Jago has been convicted of abusing two teenage boys in the 1990s. Photo / RNZ, Nick Monro
He gave the woman the phone number of an employment lawyer and said she and her husband were free to contact them.
The survivor’s wife wrote back to Act, saying her husband had decided to go to the police instead in the hope he could prevent further offending.
Speaking on RNZ’s Nine to Noon on Monday, Seymour was asked if he would do anything differently, including referring the survivor to speak to the police at the outset.
“No, we wouldn’t and again, you know, it will be easy for people to speculate without full knowledge of the facts, without having been there,” he said.
“I’m very confident that facing a very difficult situation, which, as it turns out, turned on some tragic circumstances, we did everything that we could that an organisation in our position faced.”
The party first addressed the Jago case on Friday, saying it had sought guidance from Paul Wicks KC at the time and followed that advice “to the letter”.
Last week’s statement said there was “no way” Act could have known Jago was an abuser as the offending occurred 20 years before his involvement with the party.
Speaking today, Seymour said attempts to link Jago’s sexual offending to the Act Party were “shameful”.
“The people who are out there trying to somehow drive guilt by association when there were 20 years separating the events, frankly, I think is shameful.”
Jago, currently in jail serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence, plans on appealing his convictions and sentence later this month.
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