The ACT Party says it took immediate action after learning its former president had been charged with sexual abuse.
Tim Jago can now be named as the former political figure found guilt of abusing two teenage boys in the 1990s.
The boys, now men, gave evidence at trial in 2024, saying they had partied with him on separate occasions and woken up in his bed to him assaulting them. The pair had known him as a mentor figure through a sports club.
The second survivor came forward immediately in 1999 and the police investigated the complaint but laid no charges.
It was not until more than 20 years later when the first survivor, assaulted in 1995, saw Jago in a news article that he came forward to the police.
A jury took three hours to come back with unanimous guilty verdicts to all eight charges of indecent assault after a week-long jury trial in the Auckland District Court last August.
Jago had been the ACT Party’s 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 David Seymour personally responded and advised she contact a lawyer.
He gave the woman the phone number of an employment lawyer and said she and her husband were free to contact them. He added he hoped the pair found a satisfactory response.
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.
The ACT Party addressed this exchange for the first time on Friday, after Jago abandoned his name suppression appeal and could be publicly identified for the first time.
The statement, attributed to the party, said it had taken the original allegation “extremely seriously” when first made aware of it in November 2022.
“We took immediate steps to check the authenticity of the claim and questioned him about it. He categorically denied the allegation.
“We were deeply shocked to learn that the complaint was real and a police investigation was underway.”
“When we learned that Mr Jago had been arrested and charged we asked at once for his resignation from the board and the party, and accepted it.
“He has had no involvement with the party since this date.”
It was the Crown’s case that Jago “took advantage” of the two teenage boys by giving them alcohol and abusing them when they were “intoxicated, vulnerable and alone”.
The police investigated one complainant’s story in 1999, speaking to more than half a dozen witnesses and recording a statement from the defendant, but never charged Jago.
Jago is currently in prison serving a two-and-a-half year sentence.
