Stalking victim says directors’ home addresses should be private

Friday, 24 November 2023

An Auckland company director felt forced to break the law to keep her home address off the Companies Office register when she was persecuted by a man with a history of violence towards her.

The woman secured a permanent protection order against the man, allowing her to have her home address off the public-searchable Companies Office register.

The Institute of Directors’ annual sentiment survey of the mood of the boardroom has catapulted the stalking and harassment concerns of directors back onto the political agenda.

It’s a sobering document, illustrating the devastating range of psychological terror tactics stalkers target their victims with.

But the woman said she should not have had to go through the cost and delay of seeking a protection order to get the Companies Office to keep her address off the public record.

The very process of getting the protection order to get her address removed looked set to bring her face-to-face with the man harassing her, though he chose not to go to court to contest the order.

“It’s completely unacceptable,” she said.

Being able to keep their home addresses off the register topped the list of personal concerns for directors in the institute’s survey - supported by 44% of directors, and 61% of directors on high-profile NZX-listed companies.

An unscientific online Stuff survey in 2017 found the majority of people expressing a view saw no purpose for the public to know directors’ home addresses.

But the survey comes after the Labour MP championing a change in the law lost her seat in Parliament.

That does not leave company directors’ privacy hopes dashed completely, as they may have a new champion in ACT Party’s Brooke van Velden, who won her electorate seat in Tamaki, beating incumbent National MP Simon O’Connor.

Van Velden had a private members’ bill in Parliament that, had it become law, would have allowed directors to have the Companies Office leave their home addresses off the register.

She withdrew when it as Labour’s Sarah Pallett put up a similar bill, but Pallett’s departure means her private members’ bill will die a death, unless another MP decides to pick it up.

“The reason I brought it was that I heard from people who were afraid of sitting on company boards because they felt fearful about their privacy, not because they felt threatened,” she said.

The privacy ante has also been upped, said van Velden.

Social media makes it easier for people to have their private details shared online by others seeking to intimidate them , a practice known as doxxing.

People should be able to join boards and play their part in lifting the economy without being hindered by privacy fears.

The threat of being stalked was having an economic chilling effect, according to van Velden.

But the stalking victim’s experience indicates there was also an economic chilling effect of being stalked.

She had planned to go public with her name in order to give impetus to law change, but changed her mind after friends warned her that the stigma of being a victim would further harm her business.

The harassment had already hurt her financially.

She said she had kept a low profile, and stopped holding public workshops for her mortgage business, because she feared her stalker would turn up at them.

“I have been looking over my shoulder whenever I go out,” she said.

There have been instances that the current law has left people feeling compelled to break it.

In 2018, directors of British American Tobacco were caught listing their residential address on the Companies Office as the company's New Zealand headquarters in Parnell in Auckland.

None were prosecuted for breaking the law.

The Auckland director intentionally left her home address unchanged, even when she moved house.

Van Velden said she had found greatest concern among women about home addresses being listed on the Companies Office register, with some being left with a feeling of dread because of it.

However, men had also raised their concerns with her.

“It’s not always gendered,” she said.

Institute chief executive Kirsten Patterson has been campaigning for change, saying the current law serves no legitimate public purpose.

She said other regulated professions such as police, teachers, MPs, councillors, or doctors did not have to have their home addresses made public.

She was hopeful the change of government was an opportunity.

“We had good engagement with ACT and National with regards to this issue pre the election, but as you would expect it won’t be high up their advocacy agenda given the range of issues and changes they are looking to make, but we will continue to push those conversations,” she said.

“We will be highlighting this really clearly as part of the briefing to incoming ministers as the number one issue from an advocacy perspective,” Patterson said.

The institute is pushing for director identification numbers like those introduced in Australia, which are designed to make it easier for people to see the full extent of directorships held by individual directors.

Director ID numbers would remove any concerns government departments had over the Companies Office no longer publishing directors’ home addresses, Patterson hoped.

For Pallett, the director privacy issue was just one aspect of New Zealand’s weak harassment law protections, which she called “not fit for purpose”.

The Auckland company director agreed, but felt let down by authorities, who did not seem to be resourced or willing to investigate her complaints.

“He is a certified criminal with multiple police reports made by me that he has stalked me,” she said.

“They didn’t even investigate. They take the complaint, and it goes into the system.

“He could have cruised in the next day to murder me,” she said.