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Frank Haden described my late
father, the Christchurch High Court trial judge as "rancorous",
"old" and "religiously prejudiced". Rancorous? I have never met a
kinder, more loving man than my father nor a man
less likely to bear ill-will against another person. Old? My father was 57
when he died in 1996. Religiously prejudiced? My father
was a practising Catholic. I have been a lawyer in Haden never knew my father. His
description is absurd. But the most disturbing aspect of his column was his
claim my father "admitted to his intimates shortly before he died that
he was troubled by second thoughts about the wisdom of the way he conducted
himself". That is untrue. My father was not
obsessed with the Ellis trial as Haden appears to be. He did not talk about
it shortly before his unexpected death. On the occasions he spoke about the
Ellis trial to me, he most certainly did not question his own conduct. Haden's turgid prose is fiction
dressed up as an opinion. My father's conduct of the trial has stood up to
intense scrutiny on appeal not once, but twice. Rancorous? Old? Religiously
prejudiced? Perhaps Haden should be asked whether he was in front of a mirror
when he composed his column. |
