Barbara Moses: A wife's story

For feisty Barbara Moses life on the outside, without her beloved Roger, was no picnic.

Fortunately, a wide circle of family and friends rallied round and stood by the couple.

Those friends included retired members of the judiciary who Mrs Moses said not only expressed their support for her husband but also questioned why he had been sent to jail.

“We had some high-powered support from some pretty amazing people, people who continued to stand by us, who came to visit Roger. They included several retired judges.”

“I would wake up frequently in the middle of the night for the eight and a half months Roger was in prison.

“I could not believe that my good Roger Moses has been sent to prison for something that, yes, with hindsight one might do differently but it wasn’t dishonest.

“I mean, he was remorseful for what happened but I think he paid way too high a price.

“He has done a lot of good in his life and I just don’t think that was taken remotely into account.”

During his short stint at Mt Eden, Mrs Moses visited her husband as often as she could.

“The staff there were fantastic. They obviously realised that this wasn’t something I was especially used to and helped me as much as they could.

“Roger also had kindness from the other inmates there who realised that he wasn’t a regular and they were remarkably kind and good to him on many occasions.

“We tried to do things for them too. I looked up things on the internet for them and tried to order books for them and so forth, so there was a bit of a quid pro quo.

“We took in toys and children’s clothes for their families and I will never again think that people who are in prison are entirely bad.”

But Mrs Moses says delays by prison authorities in providing her husband with essential medication could have had fatal consequences.

“He was without his medication for 36 hours and they’re lucky he didn’t have an asthma attack or a stroke from the blood pressure going up.

“They’re lucky they didn’t have that on their hands and he’s lucky and I’m lucky. It was a terrible experience.”

For her part Barbara drove to Rangipo once a fortnight to see him as well as talking to him on the phone three times a day.

To keep the calling costs down they set up an 0800 number for him to ring her on.

And during this time she, too, had plenty of well wishers.

“In fact the most enormous circle of people, our close friends, our family, friends of our children, old colleagues of Roger just flocked around to support me and say how wrong they thought it was that someone like Roger had been sent to prison.

“They say that Remuera matrons are a bunch of bitches; well I have got to say I’ve found absolutely the opposite.

“They’ve come around with food and with pot plants. We have not been remotely ostracised.”