Paul Thistoll writes to Chief Coroner
From his one-man faux-NGO
In yet another cynical display of opportunism and manufactured moral panic, Paul Thistoll, self-declared head of the paper-thin, self-inflated outfit Rights Aotearoa, has submitted a letter to Chief Coroner Judge Anna Tutton. It is dripping with hypocrisy, misinformation, and calculated misgendering of a deceased young woman, Vanessa.
Yes, Vanessa. Not “V.” Not “Alex.” Not a “transgender man,” as Thistoll insists repeatedly throughout his increasingly ludicrous complaint. Vanessa was a young woman. The fact that Thistoll, in his grandstanding letter to the Chief Coroner, stubbornly refuses to acknowledge her real identity is not only disrespectful. It is a cruel erasure of her humanity - we can use words like ‘erasure’ too, Paul.
He opens the letter with,
"I write to you in my capacity as head of Rights Aotearoa to respectfully bring to your attention our organisation's concerns regarding what we believe may constitute an attempt to improperly influence a coronial process currently before your jurisdiction."
The problem is, there is no our in Rights Aotearoa. It’s not an organisation - it’s just Paul Thistoll, playing dress-up (excuse the pun) as a CEO of yet another one-man vanity project. Just like his last stunt, Countering Hate Speech Aotearoa, this is yet another fake outfit designed to sound official while giving him a platform to push personal vendettas under the guise of advocacy.
This letter is not about justice for Vanessa. It is not even about ensuring the integrity of the coronial process. This is about controlling the narrative and preserving a dogma that sees any challenge to gender ideology as a personal threat. Thistoll’s entire letter reads like one long tantrum about the Radio New Zealand article. An article that told the tragic, uncomfortable truth. A teenage girl starved to death in emergency housing. Instead of asking how this was allowed to happen, Thistoll is more concerned that RNZ referred to Vanessa using the correct pronouns.
I still find it fucking disgusting that every government agency involved was named in the article and had their say, but not a single rainbow organisation was mentioned - even though they were right in the middle of it too.
Thistoll paints himself as a protector of judicial independence while simultaneously demanding censorship of media coverage. He suggests the Chief Coroner should pressure RNZ to delete its article. This is a breathtaking overreach and one that reveals the real aim here. To shut down dissent. To silence stories that do not prop up his ideology.
He even has the nerve to cry “media manipulation” while accusing Fern Hickson and Resist Gender Education of orchestrating a “strategic media campaign.” Everything Thistoll accuses others of doing, he is doing himself. He is the one inserting himself into a judicial process. He is the one lobbying the media watchdogs. He is the one weaponising a tragic death for ideological gain.
The irony would be laughable if it were not so appalling.
Just when you think it cannot get more ghoulish, he throws in a casual note that up to 6000 messages from Vanessa, dead and unable to speak for herself, have apparently surfaced overnight. He intends to pass these on to the court. Who has them? Who collected them? Who vetted them? These questions go unanswered. But Thistoll is eager to push the claim that they contradict the public narrative. Again, not because he cares about truth. But because he needs a tool to discredit those speaking up for Vanessa as she really was.
It makes me genuinely fucking sick, knowing that Paul Thistoll may have access to 6000 private messages from a teenage girl who died in tragic circumstances. A grown man, the self-appointed head of some faux-human rights group, somehow could have access to thousands of deeply personal messages from a vulnerable young woman.
This is invasive, disturbing, and grotesque. It raises serious ethical questions. What kind of person rummages through the intimate digital life of a deceased teenager and then uses it to push an ideological agenda in a letter to the Chief Coroner?
Thistoll has no connection to Vanessa. He is not family. He is not a friend. He is not a representative of her voice or her truth. Yet here he is, posturing as if he has the moral authority to reinterpret her story using private material that was never his to begin with.
Let us not lose sight of the fact that Vanessa was failed by the very system meant to protect her. She died alone, hungry, and neglected while housed in state-funded accommodation. That is the tragedy. That is the injustice.
Instead of focusing on that, Thistoll and his faux-NGO, an outfit with no known public accountability, governance structure, or transparent funding, have decided their, or I should really say his, priority is to sanitise language and sanitise legacy.
And worst of all, they do it by misgendering a dead young woman in a letter to the Chief Coroner. How ironic!
Paul Thistoll should be ashamed. Rights Aotearoa is literally just Paul Thistoll. Vanessa deserves better than to be used as a political football by a man more interested in transexuals than defending the dignity of the dead.
A reliable source has alleged that Paul Thistoll is currently in a relationship with a man who identifies as transgender, but at the end of the day, he’s still just a man. Because no matter how much spin you put on it, men can’t become women and women can’t become men. Maybe Paul’s obsession with this topic comes from his own fear of being honest about his own sexuality?
Let the coroner do her job. Let the truth speak for itself. Let Vanessa finally rest in peace - without being reduced to a political prop by a man who never knew her, except through 6000 stolen private messages he had no right to view
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Since publishing my original piece, I’ve had a few interesting tips come through regarding one of yesterday’s guest contributors to The Spinoff - Julia de Bres, who co-wrote the article titled “Stop conflating being transgender with being sick.”