Robert Roper's daughters say 'the gloves are off' when it comes to helping fellow victim
Monday, 19 November 2018
The daughters of former Air Force Sergeant and child rapist Robert Roper have demanded a meeting with the air force's top brass, to protest the Defence Force's treatment of fellow Roper victim Mariya Taylor.
Karina Andrews and her sister Tracey Thompson say they have been told Chief of Air Force, Air Vice Marshal Andrew Clark will meet them in Auckland later this month to hear their concerns.
Taylor sued the New Zealand Defence Force in March 2018, for failing to keep her safe from Roper, who repeatedly sexually harassed and assaulted her while she worked for him at the Whenupai/Hobsonville base in the late 1980s. Taylor lost her case after it was ruled she had run out of time to bring the claim, under the statute of limitations.
Roper was found guilty in a 2014 criminal trial on 20 counts of raping and sexually assaulting both his daughters, their friend Cherie Ham, and others. All three applied for their court-imposed name suppression to be lifted after the guilty verdicts. Roper remains in jail serving a 13 year sentence.
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Karina Andrews said she is appalled and angry the Defence Force is asking Mariya Taylor to pay court costs of more than $200,000 - $57,000 of which is being claimed by Roper himself, from prison.
'The NZDF owe that woman a life, they owe her the life that her stole from her', Karina Andrews, 47, said. 'I'm disgusted they have gone after her for money. The cheek of it.'
Andrews, Thompson and Ham pushed for a probe into the complaints against their father's behaviour, and the culture of the air force in the 1970s and 1980s, and assisted Queen's Counsel Frances Joychild when an independent inquiry was set up in 2015.
Andrews said it was important to acknowledge the effort the NZDF was now putting into changing their culture. She said Operation Respect, set up to change the way the NZDF dealt with complaints of sexual offending and harassment, was praiseworthy and deserved time to work.
'It took the police 10 or 15 years to get this kind of thing right and it is still going to take the RNZAF some time to do it as well, and they are doing a really good job.'
But Andrews says the force is in danger of undermining the changes if they do not properly acknowledge and compensate past victims.
'She (Taylor) was victimised then, and she is being revictimised now by my dad and the NZDF, and has to go through all of this again to make her point.
'I'm so angry about the money. It makes me feel that all the work we put in for two years over the Joychild report means absolutely nothing to the powers that be. She lost and they could have left it at that. Instead they did this? That is pathetic'.
Andrews said the news that the NZDF was asking for costs from Taylor had made her change her mind about testifying for Taylor. She did not appear as a witness for Taylor in her High Court trial, as she did not want to delay the release of the Joychild report. The NZDF held back the report until after Taylor's trial.
'I needed to think about the greater good and it ripped me to pieces. Because I still had to think that there were more young women and young men going into the forces and they needed this report out. They needed the recommendations.
'But the gloves are off. Whatever she wants, whatever she needs she can have it.'