It was all lies, some fifth-floor staffers and Labor politicians were quietly telling people when news broke in April 2021 that a 38-year-old man charged with historical child sex offences was Kent Rowe, the party’s long-serving secretary and sacred member of the Labor Red Tribe.

So party members kept quiet and refrained from gossiping, even those in the party who were the best at it.

This was the kind of political discipline – or in Territory Labor’s case perhaps better described as a desperate estrangement from reality – that has served Labor well over the last six tumultuous years in power, where any dissent or effort to tell the truth has been systematically removed or silenced, even if based on cold, hard facts.

The philosophy is that they will get through it all together if they just stay quiet. The facts simply do not matter and rarely do in these sorts of political circumstances, if everyone can believe they’re not real.

Current Labor Minister Paul Kirby and former chief minister Michael Gunner.

Former chief minister Michael Gunner was a confirmed devotee of his predecessor Adam Giles’ political maxim, uttered while leaving office in 2016 in a political bloodbath, that ‘disunity is death in politics’.

It was crucial the Tribe stay united and if that meant refuting facts, then so be it.

But how could this scandal, the disgusting and depraved acts of a child sex predator in the Labor Party’s midst be kept so quiet, even after he was charged with raping a child? How could the social set in Darwin, who love to gossip, not be gossiping?

Even as the charges were laid by police and a trial date set, the party was in denial. It was all some sort of political set-up, some said, instead of accepting the facts of the situation – that their homegrown political powerbroker, the heir apparent of those Labor men who worked to bring the party to power for the first time 20 years ago, was in fact a remorseless paedophile who preyed on a child for years, even after starting work for the party.

Rowe’s wife, Darwin Alderman Rebecca Want de Rowe – whose friends had suffered with her through the humiliations of Labor’s cocaine sex scandal when it broke in early 2021, that involved Rowe sending dick pics to a local sex worker he was having an affair with, painting portraits of dead dogs “to share the love” and carrying out a drug-fueled sex romp on election night – was still telling them the historical rape allegations were all lies, dreamt up by imaginary political enemies.

Rebecca Want de Rowe.

Surprisingly, some believed her and stuck by her even as the sex crimes detectives came to her house and arrested Rowe.

But they were starting to have second thoughts in late August as the jury started to hear the facts of the child rape case, in which it was revealed that Rowe raped a female relative when she was a child multiple times, showed no remorse for the crimes and spent years manipulating the victim to keep her quiet with the precision and calculated words that only the Territory’s best political specimens can execute.

Ms Want de Rowe’s version was more nuanced than the party’s flat rejection of facts. In her story to friends, Rowe was the target of a mentally deranged lunatic who had been ramping up her lies for years to ultimately take down the powerful party figure. This of course was not corroborated at the trial, in fact it was never uttered by anyone on the stand, including Ms Want de Rowe herself, because of its ridiculousness and clear victim-blaming.

“Rebecca still believes he’s innocent and will forever,” the friend said. “It started to dawn on us early into the trial that [what he was accused of] was real and the facts were the facts.

“Then he was convicted.”

It was Territory Labor’s biggest scandal since the dark days of the Bob Collins child sexual assault charges that ended when the former Labor leader took his own life just before trial.

Former NT Labor leader and Federal Senator Bob Collins.

Collins had his party supporters back in 2004 too, and they also claimed his charges were all lies or political payback. But they talked then, and this time, it was quiet.

The ABC, Channel Nine and the NT News never posed any questions to the party or its elected officials, even after the trial finished. Not one question to Mr Gunner, deputy Chief Minister Nicole Manison or Chief Minister Natasha Fyles relating to what they knew about Rowe and his perverted sexual crimes. It was silence. And what happens in silence? Well, as the saying goes, sexual perpetrators thrive.

Michael Gunner, Kent Rowe and Minister Lauren Moss.

And so Rowe did. For years, he ran the party as secretary with a close group of associates and had his fingerprints all over key election victories in 2016 and 2020. He was the man, the Labor Party’s man, photographed with the who’s-who of the party, celebrated at pool parties with Labor’s young high-rollers and drinks at functions with the men and women who made the party what it is today, which is starting to look like the natural ruling party of the NT, but with its traditional Labor values left in tatters.

There were always questions about his behaviour with women, but everyone just let it go, even after a female party member told some in 2016 that he had been “sexually inappropriate” with her.

When he was charged with those horrific crimes against a child five years later, again, nobody said anything. But worse, nobody did anything.

Facts from the trial that have not yet been reported to the public show that people knew. People in the party knew for years – since before Rowe became Territory Labor secretary – as the victim started telling people individually over a period of years, clearly crying out for help that fell on deaf ears.

Chief Minister Natasha Fyles.

Those who knew are extremely close to those same people who formed government in 2016 and thanked Rowe in their maiden speeches for being a great guy and for all his efforts getting them elected as the architect behind their campaigns.

For those elected officials, a scandal like this was best kept quiet and not addressed, it may have cost them their positions after all, so it was more convenient to lie and pretend it wasn’t true. Because the worst thing that could happen for Labor was for this to come out. They knew that. There was no denying that fact.

Some of those who knew about the abuse revealed in court

Rowe’s trial was held over a week in late August into early September, which included a witness list chock full of party people, prominent families and assorted young businesspeople, most of whom had no real involvement outside of knowing him and possibly camping with him on one occasion and had provided stat decs stating as much; but some did have more knowledge.

Former Labor chief minister Paul Henderson.

Just three weeks earlier, Rowe had renewed his marriage vows with his wife Ms Want de Rowe – attended by what was left of their circle of friends and some new ones including a cop who had just beat a rape charge in the Supreme Court thanks to an unreliable witness. It was a sort of farewell party ahead of the trial for Rowe or at least a show of support from his wife, despite being made aware four years earlier of the horrendous crimes he had committed, that she too had kept quiet.

That event had it all, including a Borat impersonator in a mankini that Rowe and his wife thought was so funny they took the opportunity to place their hands on the man’s arse-cheeks for a picture.

Former Labor deputy chief minister Syd Stirling.

Happy times. Like the old times in the backyard pools at different Labor members’ northern suburbs homes over the years, starting when Rowe was in his late teens and got mixed up in the union movement after working at Hungry Jack’s and then quickly given a job as a ministerial assistant sometime around 2002 or 2003, that exposed him to the real power at his fingertips with the Labor Party.

Those parties never stopped over the years. There was the gang, now known in certain circles as “Michael Gunner’s Lost Boys”, but at the time, in their early 20s, those guys were set to inherit the keys to the Territory’s Labor kingdom from the likes of Paul Henderson, Syd Stirling, Alf Leonardi, Dennis Bree and Jamie Gallacher and had taken to calling themselves The Hollowmen, after the satirical ABC show about a group of political advisers always looking to manipulate the masses for the prime minister’s electoral success with their cunning political tricks.

Rowe and Natasha Fyles’s deputy chief of staff Chris Grace.

The whole gang did everything together and everyone was there on those humid nights when the northern suburbs parties would roar on to the early hours. Some of them have managed to find themselves in high positions now.

There was Chris Grace, now Ms Fyles’s deputy chief of staff, he and Rowe were particularly close, honing their political manipulation skills together. Then there was Kieran Phillips, the philosopher of the group who would become a high level adviser for Gunner when he was first elected chief minister, and Gino Luglietti who would run media for Labor in opposition after Gunner took over as leader. There was long-time adviser Matt Ellis, now Darwin Alderman Vim Sharma, and Gunner’s “best mate” Cameron Angus and even Ryan Neve – Mr Gunner’s own brother-in-law and one-day deputy chief of staff and noted campaign flight booker.

The Hollowmen were going to take over the Territory and run it with a sense of rightful inheritance as the leaders of the NT’s real natural ruling party, with these backroom geniuses pulling the strings and calling the shots for the ministers.

Kieran Phillips.

While some of his mates were already at the top, Rowe had finally made it close when he was brought in after the 2020 campaign to act as one of Mr Gunner’s most senior advisers thanks to his efforts, until his first public set of lies caught up with him about the sex worker and the affair.

The memories of those hot nights in the pool and the promise of running the place were no doubt still in his head on the last day of the trial, when Rowe was seen stopping in front of the Supreme Court building on his way in, the palm trees blowing slightly in the breeze and the ocean sparkling in the distance to breathe it all in.

The affair with the prostitute and allegations of drug use he could politically come back from he thought.

But the brutal crimes he had lied about, had buried for years and had manipulated the victim to keep quiet, were all coming out now and they were going to end everything he had worked for all these years, as his new address at Holtze was beginning to dawn on him.

It’s called accountability – a notion Territory Labor is not familiar with – but which was about to be handed down to Rowe by a jury who were beyond any reasonable doubt that he was the same man who had started raping a female relative when she was a child.

Ryan Neve.

The prosecution had one objective and that was to convict a sex offender for his crimes, with little interest in the broader political ramifications, but the facts remain that a lot of questions were left unasked of those who did testify at the trial – people who were very much involved with the party.

Ms Manison’s brother Luke Manison provided evidence to the jury that he was told about Rowe’s sex crimes in 2013 – four months after Nicole was first elected as the Member for Wanguri following Paul Henderson’s retirement.

Mr Manison told the court that the victim had confided in him around June 2013 that Rowe had sexually assaulted her.

“She told me that [Rowe] had made her suck his dick,” he said while under oath at the trial. “She was very short and it was confronting and she was very emotional.”

He added that she said the incident occurred “when she was younger”.

Nobody asked Mr Manison what he did with that information, who he told or whether he understood that he might have had a legal obligation to report that information to police.

Former Labor NT Senator Nova Peris and Gino Luglietti.

Those questions hung in the air in the courtroom, as if being thought by everyone listening, but never verbalised. That was it, his evidence lasted a few minutes and was over. The Deputy Chief Minister’s brother was told by the victim that the abuse occurred … And that was all the prosecution needed from the witness.

He was not asked who he had told or if he might have mentioned it to his sister at some point, given that Rowe had worked so closely with Ms Manison and Mr Manison to get her elected just four months earlier and was then promoted to the position of party secretary.

Asked directly in Parliament last month when she had first learned about Rowe’s crimes, Nicole Manison responded, “when the media reported on it”.

This is most likely untrue as the media could not name Rowe until he was found fit to stand trial, six months after police announced that he was charged in a statement that did not include his name.

Nicole Manison and Kent Rowe at undated Labor event. (Photo: Facebook).

She was also the police minister in April 2021 and insiders say procedure is to prepare a brief for the minister about a politically sensitive matter involving a prominent political figure like Rowe being charged. If she did not receive that brief, then that raises even more questions about why the police wouldn’t inform her.

She refused to answer a series of questions put to her by the NT Independent for this story.

Back at the trial, the jury also heard that on the day Rowe’s daughter was born in 2016, the victim called Kayla Neve-Plunkett, the sister of another Labor Party heavyweight, Rowe’s friend and Mr Gunner’s brother-in-law, Ryan Neve.

Ms Neve-Plunkett’s evidence to the jury used curious and vague words about the offending.

“I recall her telling me that when she was younger … Kent had interfered with her,” Ms Neve-Plunkett said in court, adding that “we had about an hour phone call about that”, but that she could not recall any details, just that Rowe had “interfered” with her.

Even in the “numerous” calls about it in the years that followed, Ms Neve-Plunkett reiterated that she had never been provided any details about the sexual abuse.

It was a curious choice of words for the offences he was convicted of that included anally raping the child on multiple occasions, forcing his fingers into her vagina when she was a bit older and on another occasion molesting her while she slept. But for Ms Neve-Plunkett the catchall word was “interfered”.

Cameron Angus.

And that was it for her. No questions about what she did with that information or who she told, including if she had told her brother Mr Neve, who was working arm-in-arm with Rowe at the time running the Labor Party’s 2016 election campaign. Or if she had reported it to police in line with possible obligations under mandatory reporting laws.

For reasons unknown, Mr Neve was removed from the witness list just before the trial started although he had told friends that was because he was out of town and couldn’t attend.

Ryan Neve was always close with Mr Gunner and it would be hard to imagine having dirt on the party secretary wouldn’t have been in someone’s political interest.

Also removed from the witness list at the last minute was Mr Gunner’s electorate officer Hannah MacLeod. Which means the court never heard what two people who worked closely with Mr Gunner knew about Rowe’s sex crimes, who they had heard it from and more importantly, who they told.

Vin Sharma.

According to reporting obligations under Section 26 of the Care and Protection of Children Act 2007, a person must report to police or Territory Families if they believe or have knowledge of circumstances in which a child was harmed or exploited.

The penalty for failing to report does not carry a prison sentence but rather a fine of up to $31,400 for failing to report, under the current law, but which may not apply to people who find out about the crimes after the child has become an adult.

Still, some knew and it appears it was not reported and kept quiet, even as the victim told more people as the years went by.

The political manipulation of the victim

The trial heard that Rowe had been practicing his political damage-control skills on the victim after she first confronted him about the abuse in 2014, manipulating her and lying to cover up his crimes.

He had pledged to seek sex counselling and made other promises and apologies over the years, but it was all done to keep her quiet and the scandal at bay.

At one point, Rowe told the victim that the incidents of sexual assault were something they “shared”, a little secret between them.

That was later found to be “a calculated attempt to make the victim feel complicit in [his] conduct in order to discourage her from making any disclosure of the matter” the judge later said.

The jury heard how Rowe had lied repeatedly and inflicted shame on the victim to prevent her from disclosing it.

Former NT News reporter Ashley Manicaros and Alf Leonardi.

Even when he took the stand and was obliterated by prosecutor Tamara Grealy who used his own words against him – in which he claimed to the victim in the recorded call by police that he had done “abhorrent” things to her, but on the stand under oath and in front of the jury, still contended that he was just curious about her sex organs and was “inspecting” them – Rowe could not find the courage to own up to his crimes.

He did what he had been taught during his Territory Labor politics training: Accept no responsibility for what you’ve done or the impact your actions have had on others.

The jury found Rowe guilty of six counts of sexual intercourse without consent. He was immediately taken to the paedophile wing at Holtze prison.

Rowe was a ‘political genius’ in his own eyes, while everyone humoured him; female party members raise sexual harassment

Two months after he was convicted, Rowe appeared in the Supreme Court dock for sentencing on November 9, wearing a slightly wrinkled white shirt and pale blue tie that his wife Rebecca had brought to the courthouse on a hanger from home. Despite the gravity of the situation, his life in the hands of a judge who knew the gruesome details of his offending and his lying and was about to send him to jail, his eyes were shining and he spent the first few seconds winking at his wife and mother, giving them different salutes with his hands and smiling, to let them know he was in complete control and things were going to be fine.

He was the political spinmaster, after all. In control of all things. The last nearly two months in jail hadn’t dampened his spirit. And he still had some senior party figures’ support.

He had lost 30kg since quitting drinking after he was forced to resign from his high-paying job as one of Mr Gunner’s most senior advisers following the cocaine sex scandal, but the weight had all come back ahead of the trial.

Ms Want de Rowe, herself a long-time member of Labor, said in her character reference letter to the Chief Justice ahead of sentencing that Rowe had also resigned his membership with the party at the time of the cocaine sex scandal because of its “toxic environment and people” and that he had enjoyed a “happier and healthier” life after distancing himself from the old party boys.

‘The Hollow Men’ seen here at a 2014 pool party.

That was remarkable. The paedophile was standing in the corner of the party room watching everyone else and thought to himself, ‘these people are too sick for me’, and left the party in disgust.

But this is Darwin and it was almost believable given the allegations coming out of the fifth floor over the years during Mr Gunner’s reign, of a dysfunctional and toxic work environment punctuated by cocaine use and the failure to address critical problems as they arose.

The ongoing issues in ministerial offices were so out of control three years into his government, Mr Gunner felt obligated to hire a toxic workplace specialist to investigate those ministerial offices, who also happened to be an old Labor friend, after allegations of illicit drug use amongst staffers was making the rounds before the cocaine sex scandal came out.

Mr Gunner was forced to admit in February 2021 that he was aware of allegations of illegal drug use on the fifth floor while chief minister, but again, as is Labor’s way, he didn’t bother to look into it further and nobody knew what the findings of his mate were, but he claimed that he was never provided “any information” to substantiate the claims.

Gunner just hoped it would all go away the way these complex matters often did for him and defended the party and his government’s integrity and values at the time and again earlier this year, when the party’s youth wing president appeared in a Snapchat video from 2020 snorting a white substance.

Again, the party took no action and Mr Gunner told Parliament the alleged illegal actions had taken place so long ago it wasn’t worth pursuing.

“I don’t condone illegal behaviour of any kind, but let’s be clear, I understand this happened 18 months ago at an 18th birthday party and by someone who is not employed by the Territory government in any respect,” he offered in Parliament to explain his lack of action.

In retrospect that comment sums up his and the party’s approach to serious problems: he was willing to look the other way on potential illegal conduct because it had occurred in the past.

That elicited a response from Opposition Leader Lia Finocchiaro who said that Territorians deserved a leader “who won’t turn a blind eye or cover-up behaviour that fundamentally breaches community standards – and condemns [illegal conduct], in the strongest terms”.

But that has never been Territory Labor’s approach under Mr Gunner and now Ms Fyles. They still have a difficult time discussing Rowe and his actions and have most recently resorted to hiding behind the victim as the reason they will not comment, which Ms Fyles claimed on radio this week was an effort to “support” the victim.

The Labor Party executive has also avoided any public comment on Rowe, even after his wife claimed Labor was too toxic for a paedophile.

Current party secretary Karlee Dalton, whose husband Robert Dalton appeared at the trial to say he only heard of Rowe’s crimes after he was charged, has also refused to respond to questions.

But some senior party stalwarts weren’t going to let Rowe go down without backing their boy. He was still a valued and sacred member of the Tribe, even after being convicted on six counts of raping a child. In an extraordinarily risky move, long-time backroom party man and Mr Henderson’s former media director and deputy chief of staff Jamie Gallacher said in his character reference to the courts ahead of sentencing, “if electoral success is to be regarded as a measure, then he (Rowe) did well overall”.

Mr Gallacher’s wife is Supreme Court Justice Jenny Blokland. Mr Gallacher did not respond to questions, including if his wife was aware he was writing a letter of support for a child rapist or what influence he thought that might have.

Jamie Gallacher.

Former Labor deputy chief minister and party stalwart Mr Stirling was also a supporter of Rowe, or at least his wife Jenny Djerrkura was enough of a supporter to write a letter to the judge where she was sure to mention that her husband who the judge knew, and herself, were friends of Rebecca and Kent’s and that Rowe “deserves a second chance” because of his “commitment … to the party”.

Ms Djerrkura was Ms Manison’s long-serving electorate officer until this past July when she retired, but was brought back to work for Ms Manison on a part-time basis.

By the 2020 campaign, Rowe, Mr Gallacher’s heir apparent was coming into his own after more than 17 years connected to the party, at the height of his political powers, having run NT campaigns, helping out on interstate elections and having a hand in federal campaigns as well.

At one point he was a director of Harold Nelson Holdings, Labor’s “associated entity” for fundraising endeavours. He knew how the party operated.

Female party member came forward with claims of sexual harassment five years before Rowe charged for rape

People who know Rowe well say he has always been obsessed with sexual inuendo jokes, bragging to women in the party about the size of his penis and doing the old ‘what’s that on your shirt’ routine by positioning his index finger on top of a woman’s breast and when she looked down, flipping her in the face with his chubby finger and laughing because it was all so funny.

That was Kent. More like a man-child than a man, but in his mind that was all part of the show, the entertainment value that he provided to everyone as part of the great political genius routine.

“It was sexual innuendo jokes all the time with him,” said one female party member. “He wasn’t funny and basically sexually harassed all of us, but we put up with it.

“He used to hit the bottom of the table with his hand and say, ‘hear that? Oh, that’s just my dick’ and would laugh. And yes, he would make anal sex jokes.”

Chief Justice Michael Grant.

Chief Justice Michael Grant made note of Rowe’s “unhealthy preoccupation with penile anal sexual intercourse” while also referencing another woman who had contacted the victim in 2016 to accuse Rowe of “inappropriate sexual behaviour”.

The NT Independent understands that woman is connected to the Labor Party but it is unclear whether she reported the incident or incidents to anyone in the party.

Chief Justice Grant suggested that “behaviour” fell short of criminal conduct, but the specific details were not disclosed.

It was no coincidence that the victim of Rowe’s sexual assaults called Ms Neve-Plunkett on the same night his daughter was born to tell her about the sexual abuse she had suffered at his hands as a child.

Chief Justice Grant suggested in his sentencing remarks that Rowe had not committed any similar crimes in the years since his last offending around 2004, based on the fact no other victims had come forward.

For the multiple years of sexually abusing the victim, he was sentenced to five years, suspended after two-and-a-half years.

Despite the outcry from the public, reports that the prosecutor was unhappy with the sentence and other legal figures suggesting it was “manifestly inadequate”, the Director of Public Prosecutions has chosen not to file an appeal and refused to comment.

Everyone stayed together and did not talk. It was better for the party this way. Disunity is death in politics.

Note: The victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, chose not to participate in this story after her lawyers were approached for comment.

Christopher Walsh is the editor of the NT Independent and formerly held roles as senior political reporter at the NT News and investigations producer at ABC Darwin. He is also co-author of Crocs in the Cabinet: An Instruction Manual on How Not to Run a Government.