A Givealittle campaign has been launched to help pay former Conservative Party press secretary Rachel MacGregor's legal bills, as she again prepares to face Colin Craig in court.
Ms MacGregor was Mr Craig's press secretary in the lead-up to the 2014 election, but resigned just before polling day and filed a sexual harassment claim against Mr Craig with the Human Rights Commission.
- Colin Craig sues ex-press secretary Rachel MacGregor
- Colin Craig pays six-figure sum for humiliating Rachel MacGregor
- Colin Craig's breaches of Rachel MacGregor confidentiality agreement
The pair settled and signed a confidentiality agreement, but Mr Craig went on to repeatedly break it. Ms MacGregor took a case to the Human Rights Tribunal, which ordered Mr Craig to pay her more than $120,000.
Mr Craig launched the defamation suit against Ms MacGregor in 2017, and she responded with a counter-suit of her own.
She's now told Stuff she's frustrated by the terms of their confidentiality agreement, which Mr Craig has broken repeatedly.
"There's a real asymmetry. People have mainly heard his side of the story and... the little bits of mine that they've heard, I haven't been able to lead the narrative," she said.
"I haven't been able to tell my story on my terms and it's really frustrating."
According to the Givealittle page, an estimate of the cost of a "good legal defence" at the upcoming trial is $300,000.
The page was created by the Rachel MacGregor Trust, made up of journalist Ali Mau, busuinesswoman Nicola Taylor, entrepreneur Melissa Clark-Reynolds and Ms MacGregor's cousin Rosamund Edwards, Stuff reports.
Mau said in a 2017 opinion piece for Newshub she found it unfair Mr Craig was able use his money to continue dragging Ms MacGregor through the court system.
"Rachel has had to testify, over and over and over in each of the defamation cases which have already taken place," she wrote.
"It is time for Colin Craig to step back and leave her alone. He cannot, even with another defamation case, stitch back together the regard of the New Zealand populace."
Newshub.
