|
NZ Listener
October 4 2003
(published
September 27, 2003)
Child abuse and the experts
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.
|
