“THE DOMINION”
Wellington, New Zealand.
Wednesday, December 5, 2001.

OPINION
Open courts breed justice

Seldom has the case for doing justice in public been more convincingly illustrated than with the father wrongly accused of sexually abusing his children, deprived of all contact with them, and continually frustrated in his efforts to redress a monstrous wrong, The Dominion writes in an editorial.

It also encapsulates an injustice which is likely to be continually repeated as a result of the statutory secrecy of the Family Court.

The man, whose story featured in The Dominion yesterday, became the victim of his former wife's accusations and the flawed "professional" services of psychologist Prue Vincent.

Two weeks ago she admitted departures from accepted procedures so gross that a psychology lecturer branded them "eye-poppingly bad practice", and was censured and fined $5000 by the Psychologists Board.

Astoundingly, it did not impose a heavier penalty or remove her from the register.

With the Family Court veiled in silence and the Psychologists Board buried deep in its own bunker, officialdom might have smugly calculated that that would lay to rest for ever this embarrassing saga.

That was to reckon without the determination, nous and energy of the father.

He had not only spent $82,000 trying to get the right of access to his children over the years, but was incensed that his complaint to the psychologists' disciplinary body had resulted in such a mild rebuke for Ms Vincent.

So he told The Dominion.

Even then the efforts to cover up this travesty of justice continued.

Ms Vincent asked the High Court to forbid publication. Mr Justice Ellis ruled against her.

The Dominion never had any intention of publishing anything that would identify the children concerned, since it is fundamental that the welfare of the child must be paramount.

But when shonky work by a psychologist is kept under wraps year after year because the Family Court is protected from public scrutiny, and when the Psychologists Board does not even name those who come before it charged with professional misconduct, it is an indictment of a closed-shop justice system.

We are left with poorly performing practitioners free to carry on for years with nobody aware of their shortcomings – not judges, not Family Court lawyers, not agencies such as Child Youth and Family, not the families involved.

This wall of silence does nothing to make the child's welfare paramount. It protects a psychologist who was not up to scratch. That is scandalous.

Family law expert and dean of law at Otago University Mark Heneghan says this case is a prime example of why the Family Court should be opened to public and media scrutiny.

That is exactly what ACT NZ MP Muriel Newman has been trying to achieve in Parliament – to change the law and let the light in, so that the public can see how the court operates and make its own assessment of psychologists' competence, judges' decisions and the part legal aid plays in keeping disputes alive.

The Government and Greens, who voted down her bill, must now face up to the harm that can be done because this court is closed, and legislate to bring it into the 21st century.