assaulted two teenagers he met through Surf Lifesaving between 1995 and 1999.<\/a><\/p>\nMedia were not able to identify him during his trial after he was continually granted interim name suppression.<\/p>\n
It took a jury two hours to return unanimous guilty verdicts on all eight charges of indecent assault.<\/p>\n
The Crown\u2019s case was that Jago \u201ctook advantage\u201d of the two teenagers by giving them alcohol and abusing them when they were \u201cintoxicated, vulnerable and alone\u201d.<\/p>\n
Both complainants told similar stories; that they had got drunk at sports club events or social gatherings and woken up in bed with the defendant abusing them.<\/p>\n
The police investigated a complaint in 1999.<\/p>\n
They spoke to more than half a dozen witnesses and recorded a statement from Jago but did not charge him at the time.<\/p>\n
The complainant told police he\u2019d been intoxicated at a social gathering, and woke up in Jago\u2019s bed to find Jago squeezing his groin area and putting his own hand on Jago\u2019s pubic area.<\/p>\n
The file was re-investigated when a second complainant came forward in late 2022 after seeing Jago in a news article.<\/p>\n
The second complainant told police he was assaulted on two separate occasions, when he had been drinking with Jago and others, become drunk and found himself in bed with Jago.<\/p>\n
He told police the man touched his penis, put his own penis on the complainant\u2019s anus and touched the complainant\u2019s anus with his hands.<\/p>\n
The second complainant had not disclosed the abuse to the police when he had been contacted in early 2000, as part of the 1999 police investigation.<\/p>\n
Jago\u2019s lawyer Ian Brookie suggested the second complainant made his allegations up because Jago had done well for himself in a political role.<\/p>\n
Crown prosecutor Rebekah Thompson later pointed out this did not square with the fact the man had told his sister about the abuse in the 1990s.<\/p>\n
Jago had been the Act Party\u2019s president for nearly four years when he resigned from the role in late January 2023.<\/p>\n
Timeline<\/p>\n
1995 – Jago indecently assaults 15 year old1997 – Jago indecently assaults same teenager1999 – Jago indecently assaults second teenager1999 – Second teenager makes police complaint, police investigate, no charges7 November 2022 – Complainant\u2019s wife messages Act Party leader David Seymour19 January 2023 – Jago arrested, charged and bailed25 January 2023 – First court appearance26 January 2023 – Jago reported as resigning as ACT president19 August 2024 – Jago\u2019s week-long jury trial starts at the Auckland District Court26 August 2024 – Jury returns unanimous guilty verdicts to all eight charges of indecent assault22 November 2024 – Jago sentenced to two-and-a-half years\u2019 imprisonment31 January 2025 – Jago abandons appeal of district courts decision to decline him ongoing name suppression<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSince that time, the Northern Region has been formally incorporated into Surf Life Saving New Zealand.\u201d Fisher said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322505,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,10779,1558,5767,7560,174230,424,4761,111,43,139,69,1118,17699,915,7680,34703,34699,18694,46001,107973],"class_list":{"0":"post-322504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-awards","10":"tag-been","11":"tag-convicted","12":"tag-honours","13":"tag-jago","14":"tag-life","15":"tag-membership","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-newzealand","19":"tag-nz","20":"tag-of","21":"tag-offender","22":"tag-saving","23":"tag-sex","24":"tag-stripped","25":"tag-strips","26":"tag-surf","27":"tag-tim","28":"tag-timothy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}