Richard Worth

Wellington, June 9 NZPA - The woman accusing National MP Richard Worth of sending her offensive texts is reportedly trying to retrieve some of them from Vodafone.

Dr Worth resigned as a minister last week after it emerged he was under police investigation over allegations of a sexual nature involving a business woman.

She has alleged that between November and February, Dr Worth sent dozens of text messages, some sexually explicit, and called her numerous times.

Opposition leader Phil Goff has been trying to arrange a meeting between the woman and Prime Minister John Key, but Mr Key says he will only do so if she presents the offending texts to his chief of staff.

The New Zealand Herald reported Mr Goff as saying last night that the woman had requested some of the texts from Vodafone .

However, Vodafone spokesman Paul Brislen today told NZPA retrieving deleted texts was difficult.

He said Vodafone would not retrieve deleted texts on request, but could attempt to only when there were legal requirements from the likes of police.

Even then, the company's system was not set up to make such a request simple.

"We may have them going back a couple of days, but that's probably about it."

Mr Brislen said some modern handsets could retain deleted texts on folders within the unit, but in general "once you've deleted them, they've gone".

Mr Goff last week tabled a statement in Parliament saying the woman received about 100 texts and phone calls from Dr Worth.

Dr Worth has denied to Mr Key the woman's version of events and threatened to sue Mr Goff if the information became public.