Chapman Tripp under fire, but should they be?

The Herald reports:

Another top law firm is embroiled in claims of sexual relations between one of its solicitors and a law student.

A woman who attended Auckland University Law Students’ Society annual law camp in 2012 has told the Herald a Chapman Tripp solicitor had sex with a law student at the event.

The incident, which the student said exemplified a “massive power imbalance”, involved a 19-year-old female student.

A spokeswoman for Chapman Tripp said the company was made aware of the allegations last week and investigated “immediately”.

“We have become aware that one of our junior lawyers may have had personal relations with someone on the 2012 law camp,” she said.

I’m not quite sure why this is a news story – a young lawyer and a law student had sex.

Now if the law student herself was alleging that is was inappropriate, there was a power imbalance, she felt coerced etc etc – that is significant and news worthy. This is the case with the Russel McVeagh interns – they were unhappy with what happened and complained. I give a lot of deference to the views of the complainant.

But we know nothing about this case except a junior lawyer and a law student had sex at law camp. We don’t know if the law student was or is unhappy at all about what happened. In fact she may be very unhappy someone has gone to the media with this, bringing it all up.

The fact that some third party thinks what happened was bad, doesn’t mean that it was. I’m in no way saying it wasn’t – just that we simply don’t know.

I think the media have to be careful not to give equal weight to allegations from actual victims, and third party reports where someone else has expressed a view about the appropriateness.