Indeed, the flak that Dale Lewis copped for what we ultimately found out to be telling the truth was quite simply a case of people trying to bury the issue in the sand.
TV, newspaper and radio reports here in the west have acknowledged that in 2000 Ken Judge identified a number of players who were involved with people with anti-social habits and was worried about the issue.
It "appears" that the advice wasn't followed up to the extent necessary. You could blame just the one person here but another issue is how many people knew about what was going on and how many people tried to stop events spiralling down the track that they have.