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The Listener
October 4-10 2003
(published
September 27, 2003)
Child abuse and the experts
Letter to
the Editor
by John Anderson, Barrister (Parnell, Auckland)
Professor Corballis ("Memory & the
law", September 13) asserts that "the interpretation of
psychological symptoms as evidence of abuse is now thoroughly
discredited". I wish that it was. As I write, part of the law of New Zealand
is section 23G of the Evidence Act 1908.
Section 23G(2)(c) of the act allows an "expert", ie, a registered
psychologist or psychiatrist "with experience in the professional
treatment of sexually abused children", to comment on evidence given by
any person as to whether the child's behaviour is consistent or inconsistent
with the behaviour of sexually abused children, This type of evidence is
purely the opinion of the witness. This section is still used regularly by
the Crown in child-sex-abuse cases, and every judge in the land is required
to admit evidence brought in by virtue of that section.
The ongoing disquiet over the Peter Ellis affair is not just about whether a
miscarriage of justice has occurred in this one case, but as to whether the
law as it stands is capable of providing justice.
The minister would do well to institute an inquiry into just what opinion
evidence should be permitted in child-sex-abuse cases. His assumption that
the Ellis conviction is correct seems predicated on the belief that the Court
of Appeal cannot get it wrong, and ignores the likelihood that the evidence
the court relied on was, itself, unreliable.
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