SIR JAMES WALLACE

The NZ Herald has a distasteful obsession with James Wallace, periodically regurgitating his downfall on the flimsiest of excuses, most recently a couple of weeks back.

To recap; Wallace was a wealthy man and a very generous, large scale public art donor, to such a degree he deservedly received a knighthood. He was also homosexual.

Early this century, on three occasions he had adult male guests in his home to whom he made sexual overtures, and was duly rebuffed. These adult males were apparently so traumatised they complained to the Police and Wallace was charged with sexual assault.

Wallace then, through an intermediatory, offered them cash to withdraw their complaints. They declined and instead told the Police of this, resulting in further criminal charges of attempted bribery of witnesses.

Eventually Wallace was sentenced to a couple of years imprisonment and had his knighthood stripped from him.

I believe this whole affair has been a disgraceful miscarriage of justice. Here’s why.

Since the beginning of time, every day throughout the world, thousands of men are putting the hard word on women, to various degrees. And in these liberal days, oftentimes it’s women who are the promoters.

In social situations where everyone has drinks aboard and inhibitions are relaxed, sometimes such overtures can involve varying degrees of physical contact. Most young women have numerous experiences of that and are used to rebuffing these approaches. They certainly don’t run to the police.

Doubtless, the same scenario plays out in the homosexual community in their numerous bars and gathering places. In short it’s normal age-old human behaviour.

And what of the attempted buying off of complainants to withdraw? That’s a regular event in New Zealand by the NZ Police themselves no less.

I don’t know the current situation but I recall a Commissioner of Police moaning to me late last century at a passing out Police College graduation function for which I was the guest speaker, that the one million dollars annual budget for our Police to pay off ratbags who had been beaten up by policemen, was hopelessly inadequate, and on a population basis, significantly less than the amounts allocated in Australia and Britian for this purpose.

To explain, there are no particular qualifications to become a police officer for which we have a desperate shortage. Thus fairly ordinary folk with no particular intellectual or other skills are put into a uniform and of necessity, then endowed with enormous powers.

Given, as our newspapers constantly report, the number of sub-human low-life’s in our society, busy robbing, assaulting and so forth, it’s understandable that in some circumstances, police officers occasionally beat the crap out of them when under extreme physical duress. Payouts from the fund are then made to the lowlifes, thereby saving the taxpayer the more costly option of court cases. So if it’s okay for the police, then I fail to see why it wasn’t for Wallace.

I say it again; the Wallace prosecutions and his imprisonment were in my eyes a disgrace. My explanation for it happening and the NZ Herald’s obsession with regurgitating it, can be readily explained by my life-long observation of the most powerful human emotion of all, namely envy, in this case of Wallace’s wealth.

In my view Wallace is innocent of any criminal behaviour, but as a tall poppy he was a sitting target for media persecution.

Finally, in case you’re wondering, I’ve never met him thus my observations are as a detached outsider with no other agenda than fairness.