The inside goings-on from the long-running disciplinary hearing on the former Factory Partner

Sasha Borissenko NZ Herald column looked at what the five complainants in the Russell McVeagh hearing had to say, with references to sexual innuendo, alcohol issues and ‘drinking Tiger’s blood’ as signs of a workplace culture that created confronting issues. She noted that the former partner who did not plead guilty, but acknowledged that he had no intention of “creeping on them” (the complainants).

The 5 day hearing could, she said, be described as five womens’ accounts of alleged sexual assault, “another man’s form of exhuberant dancing.” The key question is whether it can happen again.

The column noted the evidence relating to the lack of sensory feeling in his hand, as a result of an injury but “derived no pleasure from”. The quotations derived from her own experience reporting on the Russell McVeagh goings-on during 2018.

Quoting from the complainants, the office had a list of characters in a piratical sense.

Quoting the former partner, she reported – “We had a lot of nicknames for people . . There was a Fijian guy who had a beard and had long hair and he looked like Jesus except black, we called him ‘Black Jesus’.

“He called himself Black Jesus.

“We had an Asian gentleman who was part of our group, we called him ‘Bad China’. He called himself ‘Bad China’, the man said.

“There was possibly a time Charlie Sheen was in the media a lot and there was some quote he had about drinking tiger’s blood and it helped with his libido, and so sometimes we’d say ‘oh, you know have you been drinking the tiger’s blood?’ if someone was getting excited about something – not suggesting they were getting sexually excited, but as our equivalent for ‘are you drinking the Kool-Aid?” he said.

“When I tell people I summer clerked at Russell McVeagh Wellington they [do the maths] and go quiet . . I have lost an entire network of people who canno separate what happened from the work I tried to do well at.”

The decision his awaited.