Police have laid several serious charges against a man connected to a religious organisation with links around the Pacific.<\/p>\n
Detective Senior Sergeant Colin Baillie said a 45-year-old man would appear in the Christchurch District Court on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
“Police executing search warrants have arrested one person from a religious organisation that has a presence in New Zealand, Australia, Samoa and Fiji,” Baillie said.<\/p>\n
The man has been charged with unlawful sexual connection, indecent assault, strangulation and rape.<\/p>\n
“Today’s arrest follows a number of allegations, and partner agencies are supporting those that have come forward.<\/p>\n
“It is possible there may be other allegations that we are not yet aware of, and I strongly encourage any survivor to speak with us, should they wish to. Your voice matters, and you will be treated with respect.<\/p>\n
“Our staff who work in this space are specially trained, and any reports will be made in confidence, and we will provide wraparound support.”<\/p>\n
Baillie asked for anyone with information to make a report by calling police on 105 or using police’s online service referencing Operation Aurora, or file number 260319\/8197.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have laid several serious charges against a man connected to a religious organisation with links around the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-345082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345082","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=345082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}