Corrections began funding the service in November 2022<\/a>. Since then, it had contributed around $3.9 million in ongoing funding, with a current agreement to fund $800,000 per year until 2027. About $880,000 of the $3.9m was part of a conditional grant for infrastructure upgrades.<\/p>\nIn a statement to RNZ on Monday, Corrections deputy chief executive of communities, partnerships and pathways Juanita Ryan said it \u201cterminated\u201d its contract with the reintegration service on Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs soon as we became aware of the serious sexual allegations made against a P\u016bwhakamua staff member on Monday, March 16, 2026, we requested that the staff member be stood down and replaced immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the sexual nature of the allegations and the potential conflict of interest in delivering a rehabilitation service, we urgently sought further information and assurances from the Tikanga Aroro Charitable Trust (Tact), who is contracted to deliver the service.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan said Corrections had not received these assurances, nor confirmation on whether the trust stood down the staff member.<\/p>\n
Macfarlane told RNZ he had sex with the woman, who had been released on bail to a property in Auckland, on one occasion.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just two consenting adults, and it had nothing to do with Corrections … \u201d<\/p>\n
He said he had consulted a lawyer to see whether he had broken any rules, and that it appeared he had not. He said the property the woman was bailed to was a \u201cprivate address\u201d where two others had also been bailed to.<\/p>\n
He said the property was not associated with the Tikanga Aroro Charitable Trust or the P\u016bwhakamua rehabilitation service.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy organisation has had their funding stopped due to somebody\u2019s false allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n
He believed Corrections was \u201cjust looking for any excuse to stop our contract\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not the only ones who had their contract stopped … I\u2019ve [been] working in the correctional space for 14 years now, and no one even had the decency to talk to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one from Corrections asked me what happened. They\u2019ve just taken it off social media post. That\u2019s really unprofessional. No one\u2019s asked me for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Macfarlane said before he went to visit the woman in prison, he met with the prison director \u201cto declare my conflict of interest, if there was any …\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe prison director told me I need to come in either professional visitor or personal visitor. I can\u2019t do both. I can\u2019t blur the lines … so I chose to go in there as a personal visitor and visit her in the visiting room with other inmates.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said it was not a sexual relationship at that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI slept with her one night following her release …\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he \u201ccategorically\u201d denied any serious sexual allegations.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, a police spokesperson confirmed a complaint had been received \u201cwhich is in the early stages of investigation by the Counties Manukau Adult Sexual Assault Team\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday, Corrections commissioner custodial services Sean Mason told RNZ that because of the \u201cserious sexual nature of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,26676,19363,111,43,139,69,20937,184860,53545,17703,15768,185981,44093,3590],"class_list":["post-350770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-allegations","tag-founders","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-prisoner","tag-reintegration","tag-revoked","tag-sexual","tag-sherwood","tag-specified","tag-status","tag-visitor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350770","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=350770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}