From 1999, former Christian Heritage Party leader Graham Capill's career descended into a mire of scandals and allegations, culminating in his exposure as the sexual molester of a small child. For many New Zealanders, waking up to the radio in the morning is part of our daily routine, and perhaps recognising this, Wellington's 2ZB came up with the ideal alarm clock one late January 2001 morning. "The Christian Heritage Party leader is to view an erotic art exhibition called Group Sex," their 6am bulletin reported. Ten years into his leadership tenure of Christian Heritage, Graham Capill never failed to disappoint those who accused him of having an obsession with all things sexual. “I certainly will investigate it further,” he said of the art exhibition. “I just think the subject matter is unsuitable. These days we ought to be talking about faithfulness and commitment and fidelity and some of those sorts of qualities.” Two hours later, Capill was still high up in the headlines. “A provocative art exhibition called ‘Group Sex' is to be closely scrutinised by the Christian Heritage Party,” reported the 8am bulletin. Capill said he thought there must be other items more worthy of exhibition, but wanted to check it out for himself before he decided whether to lobby for an increase in the exhibition's R16 rating. One target of indignation that never escaped Capill's scrutiny was the Hero Parade. In 2001, he was horrified at news that gay and lesbian members of the emergency services were being given permission to march in the parade, uniformed. He said the parade was immoral and the authority of the police and services would be undermined if officers took part in it. Newstalk ZB reported Capill as saying “...even today if some of the nudity was to happen tomorrow outside the parade, these officers would arrest people for behaviour in public that is unbecoming,” and adding that it was important for people to remember that “just over ten years ago, police could still arrest and jail people for homosexual behaviour in their own homes.” Christian newspaper Challenge Weekly made the Hero Parade its front page story in February 2001, with “Sick Society” the screaming headline, but Capill was not to be found quoted in the story. Instead, he was to be found on page 11, supporting ACT deputy leader Muriel Newman's push to have family court proceedings opened up to the public. But Capill only gave qualified support to Newman's Family Court (Openness of Proceedings) Amendment Bill, curiously cautioning that if family courts were to be more open then there would be a risk of “gossiping” and “family life spying,” which he said would need to be controlled by name suppression. Later in the year, he would decry the UN convention on the Rights of the Child as “propaganda.” “Increasing the power of the Office of the Commissioner for Children to become an ombudsman office for complaints from children is ill-advised and will not address the real problem,” he wrote in the Northland Age. “Let us say unequivocally and conclude that the social experiment in allowing all sorts of relationships has failed our children.” A focus on “child rights” would not help address these problems, he concluded. CHILDREN ON HIS MIND Yet “child rights” were preying on Capill's mind as he turned his focus onto prostitution law reform. He spoke out against a pilot programme run in Christchurch by the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective which aimed to provide support for young girls working in the industry. “The Christian Heritage Party believes there is a conflict of interest between the objectives of the legislation to stop sexual abuse of those under 18 years and the message that those engaged in the industry are able to give,” he said. The heart of the matter was "the breakdown of the traditional family unit and values that are consistent with good family life." The focus when dealing with "this evil" should be on preventing child sex abuse in the first place, he added. But prostitution wasn't just a bad influence on kids, according to Capill. Good, upstanding married men would be affected too. “The liberalisation of the law will mean a greater number of men are likely to seek sexual gratification outside the marital home,” he told the NZ Herald. In Challenge Weekly, he said New Zealand “does not need to become another Sodom and Gomorrah” and fretted that the bill would encourage prostitutes to widen their base of operation and turn the streets of New Zealand into brothels. He foresaw women harassing men “who have no interest in their trade,” reported the paper. Despite sticking up for these innocent men who, it must be assumed from Capill's logic, wouldn't be able to resist the advances of these ubiquitous for-hire temptresses, Capill endorsed heavier policing of the industry, for the sake of the children: “The police should target the pimps who are often the masterminds behind the whole sordid ‘industry' and the men who pay for such sexual abuse of under-age girls, and also boys, to a lesser degree,” he wrote in the Christchurch Star. PHONE SEX But the universe has a way of righting itself and correcting imbalances, even if it takes a while to do so. After an extended decade of moralising that gained no traction with Kiwi voters, the wheels finally began to fall off the Capill wagon in 2003 with a sex scandal and leadership spat the Christian Heritage Party never recovered from. Following the 2002 election, a fifth consecutive defeat for CHP, the party's deputy leader Merepeka Raukawa-Tait resigned from the party, and her entire Wairarapa electorate committee bailed along with her. Merepeka (like Elvis and Jesus, reputation made the surname superfluous, although not for the same reasons) said she was concerned about a lack of financial accountability and the “un-Christian tactics of Graham Capill”. In her resignation letter, she and her associates said it was a fact that “the leadership of the Party is no longer conducting itself according to Christian principles of decency and integrity”, and that they had been subject to malicious allegations, intimidation and threats. “It is only Christian principles that have prevented us from taking this matter to the lawful authorities for prosecution,” reads one part of the letter. By April, the New Zealand Herald reported that the party was embroiled in a row over a phone-sex bill. Calls were made to phone-sex lines during the 2002 election campaign, one lasting over an hour. Some of these were charged to Capill's credit card, totalling nearly $1,000. Capill and party president Bob Pierson blamed Merepeka's Australian campaign manager Adam Owens for making the calls. Owens denied it, blaming it on someone else in the party whom he suspected had a vendetta against him. “It's someone I don't particularly like but don't want to hurt,” he said. “It's the work of a devious little man.” TIME TO STEP DOWN Owens penned a report that was a searing indictment of Capill's leadership during the 2002 campaign, which Capill said was written as revenge because Capill confronted him over the phone-sex bills. Capill claimed Owens threatened to “bring him down” if he did not pay the bill. Merepeka was seen by some as immodest, and despite attacking Capill's tactics, came under fire equally for her own. However, she said she despised Capill's anti-gay stance, which she thought was hurting the party. She called for him to step aside as leader. “They need to get with the programme and understand that we have large numbers of people in this country who are homosexuals, who are part of the gay community and are not to be shunned,” she told the Sunday Star-Times. Capill eventually did step aside after thirteen years at the helm, leaving new leader Ewen McQueen in his wake. McQueen didn't take Merepeka's advice, opting instead to alienate the party even further by publicly stating the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Wellington last year had nothing to do with anti-Semitism, and that there was no evidence to show that violence was being incited against minority groups. Capill, meanwhile, moved onto pastures new. He said he didn't think the controversies surrounding Christian Heritage in the latter days of his leadership damaged the party. “They were pretty minor in the scheme of things, and most people supported me. I've taken the party from a few hundred people to what I think is a good position today, and it's time for me to go.” And so, unable to enforce his moral values on a country that had long ago closed its ears, he decided to enforce the law instead as a police prosecutor, working in the very same Christchurch court where he would eventually face charges of sexually molesting an eight-year-old girl. He told the Dominion there was no scope for personal feelings or bias to get in the way of doing his job, as he was bound as a lawyer to adhere to Law Society rules. "The moment I actually showed any bias at all in my comments, that would actually go against me,” he said. A FAMILY, SHATTERED, DISTANCES ITSELF But by this time Capill had already committed the offences he was to be convicted for. It was a member of his own church that turned him in. The head of St John's Baptist church, vicar Wally Behan, told the NZ Herald that he went to police after a parishioner told him of the young girl's allegations. "I never thought it was rubbish. I believed it was true,” he said, displaying a forthrightness often missing when revelations of sexual abuse within churches surfaces. For Capill's family the revelations were shattering. Name suppression protected him for a while, but it wasn't to be long before the cat got out of the bag. During the trial, former boxer Daniel McNally attacked Capill outside the court. News cameras captured McNally flying out of nowhere and hitting Capill square across the jaw, knocking him to the ground. He was prosecuted for the attack, but was unrepentant, saying Capill deserved it. It was an attack that left Capill sobbing loudly in a foetal ball on the ground as his lawyer tackled McNally and yelled at news cameramen to “get the cops.” Capill could be heard bawling audibly in the background, “don't get the cops, don't get the cops.” Capill's lawyer found it difficult to contain McNally, pinning him to the ground as the angry boxer shouted “child molester.” The event was a shocking and uncomfortable piece of television. For those who had been on the receiving end of Capill's relentless moral judgments for the past decade, it must have generated mixed emotions. If anything, it was a moment of startling catharsis. The pathetic sight of the poster boy for so-called moral values abandoning his manhood and going to pieces on the pavement spoke volumes about the personality behind years of public moralising. INSECURITIES AND INADEQUACIES Never had it been clearer than at this moment that Capill had been compensating for his own insecurities, fears, and inadequacies as a human being. His moralising was a enormous shield of protection, as was his reputation. When he lost that, he lost everything, and simply went to pieces. This was the Graham Capill the public never saw during those years of Christian Heritage leadership, yet was screaming inside the whole time, lurking behind every media appearance, letter to the editor and moralistic pronouncement. Security was tighter following the punching incident, with Capill being transported in a police van after his guilty plea. His family had requested he apply to have his name suppression extended, but he declined. They told the media they would stand by him “for now,” but no guarantees were issued for later. No family members had been seen at his court appearances. Capill himself, one of the most voluable public figures of our time, would offer no media comment on this occasion. For once, he was silent. Ironically, the death of Pope John Paul II coincided with the lifting of Capill's name suppression, sparing him from the media scrutiny he might have enjoyed on a slower news week. But everybody still knew. And Christian politics in New Zealand would never quite be the same again. Capill's successor in Christian Heritage leadership, Ewen McQueen, went even further and said Capill had brought reproach on not only his former party, but the wider Christian community. "New Zealanders are entitled to have high expectations of their leaders, especially those who profess the Christian faith,” he said. “In this case those expectations have been terribly betrayed." Some sought to continue Capill's legacy by attempting to deflect attention from his sins, choosing instead to trot out old prejudices linking homosexuality with paedophilia, but this time around it didn't wash. Capill's religious beliefs will no doubt come as some comfort to him at this time, allowing him to convince himself that he has been forgiven by God. But while forgiving is sometimes easy, forgetting is another matter entirely. It's unlikely that the blatant hypocrisy of New Zealand's highest-profile religious moralist and political hopeful will soon be forgotten by anyone, particuarly the glbt community he so frequently denegrated and against whom he tried to generate national contempt and distrust. - 19th April 2005