SHAME

We reckon that kindred blogger Cam Slater, aka WhaleOil gave a very good account of himself on Breakfast this morning. We'd far rather Paul Henry had done the interview though, but that's digressing!

But the upshot of Cam's TV appearance was the launch of a new lobby group - SHAME - Suppression Helps Abusers Make Excuses. We reckon that it's an excellently-titled group, and we also believe that Cam is heading in the right direction in his campaign against "celebrity" name suppression. But we'll let the Whale himself tell you about the purpose of SHAME:

SHAME has been estab­lished for two main reasons.

1. To Pro­vide a Lobby Group to enable changes to our Name Sup­pres­sion laws that make our court sys­tem more open to scrutiny and at the same time bet­ter pro­tect victims.
2. To assist with Fundrais­ing for Whaleoil’s legal defence against the 5 charges he faces for breach­ing name suppression

We belive that the ONLY solu­tion to our sup­pres­sion laws, lies not with the Law Com­mis­sion report cur­rently with the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, but rather a sim­pli­fi­ca­tion remov­ing name sup­pres­sion for all except for vic­tims and to add the sup­pres­sion of the nature of the rela­tion­ship between the offender and the victim.

This is know as the Capill Prece­dent where the Judge in place Name Sup­pres­sion in the case of Gra­ham Capill a promi­nent chris­t­ian politi­cian. The Judge sup­pressed all details of the vic­tim includ­ing the vic­tim and refused name sup­pres­sion for the offender.

We commend Cam for taking the stand that he has. It is something that he believes in with a passion, and we're delighted to see him channelling his energies into achieving change. We're with him 100%. We've already joined the SHAME Facebook Group, and ask that you consider doing likewise. And the SHAME website is already up and running.

As Cam said on Breakfast, he is back in Court today to face the charges relating to breaches of suppression orders in the cases of The Entertainer and The Olympian. We wish him well, and wonder at the wisdom on the NZ Police for giving Cam the forum to take on the establishment. Cam Slater is now a rebel WITH a cause, and a rebel with a cause can be a very dangerous beastie indeed - rather like an Orca!