Survivors call for removal of Solicitor-General

State abuse survivors are calling on the Attorney-General to remove Solicitor-General Una Jagose from her position, as the Government moves forward with its response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.
Survivors, who have been re-traumatised by the state’s decades-long effort to cover up the abuse and torture they suffered, say Jagose is compromised by her track-record of how she has dealt with survivors and their claims during her time at Crown Law.
“The solicitor-general must stand down. She has no right to be in this position that is so influential; so powerful,” Lake Alice survivor Leoni McInroe told Newsroom.
“She has failed repeatedly, continuously. It’s not one mistake, she just continues to fail.
“She has made it very clear in all of their legal technicalities and assault on children that were abused – either in Lake Alice or in other situations – legally, she has fought vigorously and aggressively to have us go away,” McInroe said.
Jagose was appointed solicitor-general in 2016, and was re-appointed by Judith Collins in May, for a two-year term.
Jagose is the Government’s chief legal adviser. The only legal officer senior to Jagose is Collins, as the Attorney-General.
As such, Jagose has been responsible for heading the Crown’s response to survivors’ legal claims. Before her time as Solicitor-General, she worked on state abuse cases at Crown Law.
The commission’s redress report, released in 2021, laid out the Crown’s aggressive legal strategies – things like using the statute of limitations to try to block survivors’ civil claims, withdrawing legal aid funding, and not being forthcoming with discovery of documents.
“Significant resources have been used to deny survivors their voice and to defend the indefensible. This must stop,” the commission’s final report said.
“Political and public service leaders spent time, energy and taxpayer resources to hide, cover up and then legally fight survivors to protect the potential perceived costs to the Crown, and their own reputations.”
While Jagose is ultimately responsible for the Crown’s conduct and how it pursued many of these cases, she was also directly involved in a number of cases, with her name coming up repeatedly in the Royal Commission’s report – as detailed in Newsroom’s Crown cover-up? series.
In McInroe’ case, Crown Law and Jagose fought her claim over years in the court, and withheld crucial documents from the police.
McInroe was the first of the Lake Alice survivors to file a civil claim in the 1990s. And despite Crown Law and Jagose having evidence to show that Dr Selwyn Leeks’ use of ECT and other methods at Lake Alice were unacceptable as medical treatment and qualified as torture, the now-Solicitor-General responded to victims in ways that put them through more trauma by denying their allegations or expecting them to prove them in a court.
The Crown held overwhelming documentary evidence these allegations of torture were true but withheld this evidence on numerous occasions.
In 2020, when the UN found that New Zealand was in breach of the Convention Against Torture, police launched an investigation.
The investigation found there was more than sufficient evidence to prosecute Leeks and other Lake Alice staff, but it was too late because Leeks was unfit to stand trial and died shortly after.
Despite this, when police made formal requests for specific categories of documents to Crown Law in early 2020, some crucially relevant documents were not given to police. This included McInroe’s file that included a medical report stating unequivocally that what happened to her at Lake Alice was not medical treatment, it was medical misadventure. 
This report was written in the 1990s and had it been acted on in the legally appropriate way, the outcomes would have been different for both McInroe and other survivors.
“She is a servant of [the] Crown; the malignancy of [the] Crown protecting of their own,” McInroe said about Jagose.
“Really, what is the Crown’s role? Is to preserve and protect the image and the finances – that’s what she does; that is whom she serves, only.”
In 2018, an inquiry by the State Services Commission (now the Public Service Commission) revealed Crown Law and MSD had spent $90,000 on private investigators in a landmark civil case, known as the White case.
When agencies were asked to provide information to that inquiry, Crown Law and MSD initially weren’t forthcoming about what had happened during the White case. It was only after the lead investigator was tipped off that the agencies were then asked again and disclosed what should have been provided immediately. Una Jagose was Solicitor-General at the time. Peter Hughes, who was the Public Service Commissioner, had been the head of MSD during the period in question.
Earl White said that of all the terrible things he was put through while in state care, and subsequently when fighting his claim in the courts, the use of the private investigator “was disgusting and unforgivable”.
In White’s precedent-setting civil case – which Jagose worked on – the lawyers instructed by Crown Law pursued re-traumatising lines of questioning.
In his statement to the Royal Commission, White said the lawyer acting for the Crown suggested he had consented to being sexually abused as a child (something that is legally impossible, and was ruled out of order by the judge), she asked why he had allowed the sexual abuse to happen so many times (13), and suggested his life before going into care wasn’t that bad despite his father’s frequent, severe physical abuse.
Crown Law also withheld the fact that White’s abuser at Hokio Beach School had a been convicted in 1976 of similar sexual abuse convictions.
Despite knowing about his abuser’s history, the Crown refused White’s early settlement offers, and even denied his claims of sexual abuse.
A judge eventually accepted the abuse occurred, but said he could not seek damages because of the statute of limitations.
White told Newsroom:
“None of the people that were involved in that trial should be anywhere near passing any sort of judgment on anybody because it’s obvious that their judgment is flawed,” he said.
In the case of survivor Keith Wiffin, who was physically and sexually abused at Epuni Boys’ Home, Jagose and Crown Law again withheld details of Wiffin’s abuser’s history of sexual abuse.
In 2011, Alan David Moncreif-Wright was convicted of sexually abusing Wiffin. In 2009, MSD provided Wiffin with details of Moncreif-Wright’s prior convictions for sexual abuse. These details were withheld by Crown Law when Wiffin’s lawyer first asked for them when pursuing a civil case years earlier.
When speaking about Wiffin’s case in internal emails in 2006 and again in 2009, Jagose suggested putting psychological stress on survivor claimants as a strategy to help the Crown win its legal battle.
In 2009, Jagose wrote to MSD, noting a deterioration in survivor Keith Wiffin’s mental health “on account of having to give evidence” and wondered how tenaciously he was pursuing his claim and whether, if offered psychological services, “he would settle or give up?”.
The same logic was expressed in an earlier email to MSD that “some plaintiffs may give up along the way … if they see another plaintiff having to go through the litigation process, face cross-examination etc”.
While Jagose admitted to the Royal Commission that what happened at Lake Alice met the definition of torture, and has since said that Crown Law had changed its approach to litigation, McInroe, White and other survivors say they haven’t seen any evidence of that change.
Without change – which includes removing Jagose as Solicitor-General – survivors say they don’t have confidence that the Crown is taking accountability.
Newsroom approached Crown Law for comment for this article. The agency referred Newsroom to the Attorney-General. Collins’ office has not yet responded to requests for comment.
But in August, Collins told Newsroom she retained confidence in Jagose.
“I am confident Crown Law has listened to, and learned from, survivors and the Royal Commission and made significant changes in its approach to the litigation it conducts on behalf of crown agencies.”
In 2021, upon the release of the redress report, which shows how the state has sought to minimise and cover-up abuse in an effort to avoid offering survivors fair and full redress, including compensation, Crown Law issued an apology.
“We at Crown Law have listened to and learnt from survivors. The Crown sets itself high standards and, in most cases, we meet them. However, we have not always met the high standards people expect of us, and we apologise for that,” Jagose said at the time.
She said there had been changes to Crown Law’s approach to civil litigation since the early to mid-2000s to recognise “the sensitive subject matter and the vulnerability of the claimants and balances Crown Law’s role representing the Crown’s legitimate interests and upholding the law”.
The changes include an agreement to stop using the Limitation Act clock for cases concerning the Ministry of Social Development (it takes on-average 22 years for survivors to pursue a claim); a more survivor-focused approach to name suppression; agreement by the Crown to repay a claimant’s legal aid debt; streamlining discovery processes; endeavouring to settle claims promptly; and improvements to informal processes.
However, survivors who spoke to Newsroom for this story said that was not enough. Jagose was compromised by her decades of dealings with survivors’ claims, and they could not have confidence in the redress process moving forwards while Jagose remained in that top role.
Given these concerns, survivor Toni Jarvis wrote to Collins in August to request Jagose be removed from her role.
In his email at the time he said Jagose no longer provided the level of “honesty, confidence and transparency” required of the solicitor-general.
Late last month, Collins wrote to Jarvis backing her solicitor-general. That was before the controversy over the Crown’s new prosecution guidelines.
“The Solicitor-General has acknowledged that the Crown, as litigator, has not always been survivor focused when responding to abuse in care cases,” Collins said in the letter.
The Solicitor-General has also acknowledged that Crown Law has not always met the high standards people expect of the Crown, and she has apologised for that.
“The Crown has listened to and learned from survivors and the Royal Commission. I am confident that the Solicitor-General has, as she has said publicly, led changes to the way the Crown’s lawyers conduct abuse in State care litigation.”
Jarvis said for the Government’s apology to be robust and meaningful it had to be transparent, have integrity, and be backed by action.
“It’s about cleaning house. It’s time; it’s well overdue.”
Jarvis said he would continue to call for truth and accountability, not just to hold the Crown accountable for the past, but as a reminder that things needed to change in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future.
“I’ve never wavered away from challenging those that were pivotal in the abuse of people,” he said, referring to Jagose and to Collins herself and her denial of torture before the UN in 2014.
“They’re people, and I don’t have fear of them. I don’t have fear of anything anymore, because I found my voice years ago. I will not be shut down, and I will continue to speak out in any avenue to hold those accountable for what they did.”
The survivor, who was illegally put up for adoption at 10 days old, which started his abusive and traumatic journey through the state system, met the Prime Minister on the day the Royal Commission’s report was tabled in Parliament back in July.
He told Christopher Luxon survivors didn’t want to hear the Prime Minister get up on November 12 and apologise “without meaningfulness; without action”.
“No more politics,” Jarvis said.
Survivors, and the public, wanted to see the Government make changes to ensure those with power and influence over the law were the right people for the job, he said.
McInroe agreed the Government’s apology to survivors would be hollow without action.
“The words are scripted; the words are manufactured – the words of apology. They have wordsmiths working on it, on behalf of this national shame; this national disgrace. The Solicitor-General is our national shame and our national disgrace. The way the Crown has behaved is our national shame and national disgrace,” she said.
“If the Attorney-General believes that the ongoing, appalling, deceitful behaviour of the Solicitor-General is acceptable, they both need to go. Because it is not; it just isn’t.”