Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was.
“Did you know?”
That’s often the first question asked of each other when someone we considered a friend reveals themselves to be a stranger. An opener of “did you know?” is rarely prompted by good news. Instead it will be heard at the funeral of someone who kept an illness private, or the first gathering following a surprise and acrimonious divorce. And this week, it was the question whispered around the Auckland arts community, parliament and national newsrooms.
Who knew?
Who knew that Michael Forbes, a former journalist and deputy press secretary to the prime minister, allegedly secretly recorded sessions with sex workers and covertly took photos of women in public – at the gym, at the supermarket, or filmed through a window of women getting dressed.
The prime minister says he didn’t know as it was not uncovered by standard DIA vetting when Forbes joined ministerial services (prior to the alleged actions). The former police commissioner also didn’t know Forbes was being investigated by police, and so didn’t notify the prime minister’s office. In the end, police have not charged Forbes but he was swiftly stood down and resigned from his role in parliament.
There’s plenty more to be questioned about privacy laws, the police work in this case, and DIA vetting of parliamentary staff. And all the while, everyone wants to know who knew what, when. What about his friends? Surely they knew what he was up to? Does someone who does that even have any friends?
At the exact same time in Auckland, the same questions were being asked of someone who was known to have a lot of friends.
This week, name suppression was lifted for Auckland film-maker Rajneel Singh, and dozens of friends and acquaintances learned that Singh had, for years, possessed and distributed child sex abuse material. He pled guilty to two representative counts of possessing and distributing it and was sentenced to three years, three months in prison.
“Did you know?”
What sets Singh’s situation apart is the volume of responses to the news of outright shock. Having scrolled through dozens of posts and hundreds of comments about his case, I have yet to see a single “I always had a feeling about that guy” remark, which are so common when open secrets are finally reported. People really seemed to have no idea. Former friends of Singh have expressed anger, disappointment, and shock, but have been open in discussing their own closeness with him over the past three decades.
There’s something hopeful in that sort of response. Not for Singh personally, who has committed horrific acts and likely lost all of those friends, but for the community as a whole. It’s so easy to rewrite history when we realise we’ve been misled. Failed relationships, no matter how great at the time, become cautionary tales; former friendships are erased to avoid association in the present day; and all the bad in the world is kept at a distance, unfamiliar to us personally.
But to genuinely achieve that would be to live a life of reclusivity and denial. It is likely that every one of us is friendly with someone who we do not know near as well as we think. More commonly, that will result in finding out that a colleague has a tough home life, or that someone’s sexuality is not as we assumed. Maybe we are dismayed to learn that a dear friend votes differently than we thought. And in the most dreaded cases, we discover that someone we love has committed a horrific act, one that is impossible to see past.
And then what? In Wellington, the response to Forbes’ actions has been a government-level discussion of privacy laws and vetting processes, to effectively “catch” this behaviour more effectively.
In Auckland, the response to Singh’s crimes and conviction has been to rally around those who were closest to him and have been most impacted by the revelations, and a sense – for better or worse – that there’s little that can be done in extreme situations like these. There is a bit of “how did you not know?” but not enough to become a secondary litigation. There has been no “my friend wouldn’t do this” and no “there must be an explanation for this”. Simply anger and disappointment at a former friend, and support for other friends still shellshocked.
It’s unclear whether Singh’s secrets will lead to an increased wariness from those who knew him, or whether he has simply reminded us all, in the darkest way possible, that you can never truly know anyone but yourself.
The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week
- After Don McGlashan called Chris Bishop a dickhead at the Aotearoa Music Awards, Hayden Donnell ranks the worst things that can happen to you as a New Zealander
- A Jacinda Ardern biographer (me) reviews Jacinda Ardern’s new memoir
- Diary of a Junior Doctor will make you cry – and it should, writes doctor Emma Wehipeihana
- Duncan Greive earnestly attempts to figure out what Chris Bishop was thinking at the AMAs
- Lyric Waiwiri-Smith observes the Act Party leader misspeaking and his three untouched glasses of water in Wednesday’s Echo Chamber
Feedback of the week
“Really happy to see this given recognition. My partner has been grappling with ME/CFS since she was in high school and I think something not mentioned in this is the amount of pressure and strain on loved ones. Family is usually a first port of call and luckily her’s has been very supportive, I also help her whenever and wherever I can but the mental and physical toll can be too much sometimes. Needless to say, some people don’t have family or partner support either… It will be a better Aotearoa once we actually give the condition the weight and recognition it deserves rather than dismiss people as being ‘tired’ or ‘burnt out’. ”
“I love cats but have more than I planned on through cat abandonment. When I sought help for the strays, no one was interested. Currently I’m struggling with neighbours who don’t provide sufficient food or toileting facilities, so their cats end up on my property causing trouble. We need to eliminate feral cats and promote what responsible cat ownership looks like.”
