Stadium Southland harassment victim’s family mistrusted mayoral motives, documents show

Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark at one stage made an offer – emphatically rebuffed as inappropriate – of personal counselling for the teenager who quit her Stadium Southland job in distress at the behaviour of its then manager and city councillor Nigel Skelt.

Documents released to Stuff on Monday, following a Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act request, have revealed that Clark handled her February 19 complaint – a process which resulted in a warning to Skelt, an assurance of monitoring of his behaviour, a $3000 payment to her, and a confidentiality agreement.

Skelt has since departed his long-held role at the stadium, though he remains on the council.

The released material relates only to recorded mayoral correspondence and some identities have been redacted, so it does not give a complete picture of the dealings.

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It does show family representatives (the teenager did not, herself, take part) at times suspicious of the mayor’s motives, and also makes clear his efforts to require confidentiality from all parties.

One document reveals an immediate response from Clark when he was contacted by a family member on February 19. He said that this was a stadium management issue, not a council one, but had added “I can deal with the matters you raise as I am an ICC representative on the stadium trust.’’

Clark’s past background as a Department of Labour industrial inspector was also cited in one document as showing he had “experience in such matters’’

On February 21 Clark wrote to a recipient whose identity is redacted that he had left two family relatives to consider an offer of her coming back to work at the stadium, but in a role not overseen by Skelt. He added he would like to talk with her first, with family support, “so she knows she will be welcomed and that she did a brave thing by standing up – and that she will be embraced and safe in future.’’

At one stage in the process an undated document shows her mother responding to an offer from Clark of what she called “counselling from you personally’’.

The mother responded: “There is no way that I would put (her) in the intimidating position of having to meet with the mayor of Invercargill to discuss the potential of returning to work somewhere she doesn’t want to work

“Your offer may have been well intentioned but given the situation she has just been in, with a male in a position of power, I believe that this would be very inappropriate, especially given your close relationship to Nigel.

“Personally I doubt very much that this suggestion was made for the benefit of (the teenager) and more to try to smooth over this whole situation for yourself, Nigel and the Stadium.’

Other communications showed an indicated acceptance from the complainant, through her family, of counselling from an independent specialist, funded by the stadium trust.

Under a separate heading regarding disciplinary procedures against Skelt, the mother said she hoped “you take this opportunity to not only deal with this particular incident for the sake of everybody’s public image, but to learn from it and put measures in place to prevent it ever happening again.

“Quite frankly it was obvious at the meeting that both yourself and (redacted) were more worried about looking after Nigel and the Stadium’s reputation than in actually worrying about what damage this incident has already done to a young girl and the potential for it to happen again to another young girl.”

The initial approach to the mayor from the family appears to have been separate from the action of another party who had contacted the Invercargill Licensing Trust and its chair Paddy O’Brien apparently on behalf of a family member, in the mistaken belief the ILT owns or manages the stadium. It is a named sponsor but the stadium’s owned by a trust, which sits above the board of directors. Both trust and board were chaired by Alan Dennis. The ILT directed that caller to Dennis.

Clark and Dennis have declined comment on the handling of this issue, which the stadium board of directors has made subject to an independent review.