By Michael Laws
It is often undertaken under the influence, with the readymade excuse that you were not sensible or even sentient when you made the decision to have sex with a stranger. Neither were they, and it is something of a race in the morning to escape the other and flee.
That said, there are a number of serial one-nighters who haunt the clubs and bars of every weekend looking to add to their score.
Although it is too easy to condemn such activity in the cold light of a wintry Sunday morning. We have all made bad or mad mating choices and it is too easy to be judgemental in retrospect.
Cue young Maori political wannabe Haimona Gardiner. Currently on an all-expenses trip to the United States on a parliamentary young leaders delegation. The 25-year-old tyro is the only non-MP because he has been identified by his Maori Party leaders as having the right stuff. And, to be fair, he probably has.
Except Haimona would appear to have an odd peccadillo. He likes to video himself having sex with women. Or at least one of them.
So read the Dominion Post lead story last week in yet another example of good papers gone bad. At first glance, a slightly updated and ethnic version of the "Robin Brooke slapper's remorse" tabloid grubbiness of the previous week.
Except, in this case Gardiner ended up facing a criminal charge and receiving police diversion as a consequence. And, as it transpired, the young Maori leader saved himself from potential allegations of sexual violation or even rape by his illegal act.
Because according to the press report, Gardiner had gone to a Wellington bar a couple of months ago, pulled a woman "aged in her 40s", and taken her home. She was later found wandering by a police patrol, in some distress, and tracked back to Gardiner's home. Quite what she alleged we do not know but it was reported that the police were considering "laying more serious charges".
At which point Gardiner headed for his sex tape – proving that the congress between them had been concensual – and ended up being prosecuted for making the tape in the first place. Which seems extraordinarily odd given that, if he hadn't, he definitely would not be in the United States today. And Aunty Tariana would not be telling the media that she was going to be having a nice cosy prophylactic chat with his parents at some time in the distant future.
Quite how this story featured as a broadsheet lead – and then a political lead story the next day by simply regurgitating these events – I will never know.
One could mount the defence that this contemporary case of slapper's remorse at least had a police intervention and a political currency but, gee, is that all that happened in New Zealand that day? And the next? And if it is OK to blacken the reputation of Haimona Gardiner then how come the accuser, yet again, gets to slink back into the shadows?
This double standard is now becoming a feature of New Zealand tabloidism. The accused gets the story, the photo and the bad rep. The accuser, even when proven to have cried wolf, gets nothing.
There have been exceptions, when women falsely claiming rape or sexual assault, have ended up in the judicial system. But, as often as not, they are granted name suppression, and their defence lawyers are pleading some kind of mental affliction. Meanwhile, the man they accused has a life, a bank balance and reputation still in tatters.
Given also the media tendency to play goodies and baddies, the Dominion Post clearly endeavoured to portray Gardiner as a sleaze. They have now been making inquiries as to whether he will retain his parliamentary job. They clearly implied to Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia that he should be instantly recalled from the US.
And they deliberately put the case to the Sexual Abuse Help Foundation hoping to excite a negative comment. Sure enough, they got one – the spokesperson suggesting that Gardiner had left the woman with "feelings of guilt and shame" as a result of the secret recording. Despite the foundation never having met her.
So what are the moral lessons here?
First, that one night stands can be fraught. But that's a lesson you learn from experience – it's like telling a child that sweets are bad for them. And second, that if you do indulge, get a written consent form and do situate that spycam. You just never know when you're going to need it.
Sunday Star Times July 11, 2010