OPINION
A formal complaint has been laid with the New Zealand Law Society following revelations in this week’s landmark Abuse in Care report that the president of the legal organisation advised a religious group it could destroy the records of all the children it cared for.
According to the Royal Commission of Inquiry abuse in care final report, records were destroyed because a senior staff member at Presbyterian Support Otago (PSO) decided they were “too much of a risk”.
Between 2017 and 2018, the former chief executive of PSO, Gillian Bremner, instructed a staff member to destroy all records belonging to children and young people who had stayed in its residential homes.
The exact date of the destruction is unknown, but the group’s current CEO, Jo O’Neill, told the Herald it was between September 2017 and July 2018.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in care was established on February 1, 2018.
The commission’s final report, made public on Wednesday, found 200,000 people were abused in state and faith-based care. It detailed depraved sexual and physical assaults on children and labelled what happened a “national disgrace”.
[...] Around the time the decision was made, the church was dealing with a request from a survivor for copies of their records.
The report reveals the former CEO sought advice from lawyer Frazer Barton, who was a PSO board member at the time, about the wholesale destruction of all records.
According to the commission’s report, Barton, who is now the president of the New Zealand Law Society, told Bremner she was legally obliged to provide the documents requested by the survivor, but that all other documents could be destroyed.
Barton told the Herald the advice he gave Bremner was “informal advice”.
“I said Presbyterian Support Otago had to provide a survivor’s records to their legal representative and that the documents could only be destroyed later ‘at an appropriate milestone or anniversary’.”
The Herald can reveal Sam Benton, a partner at Cooper Legal, made a complaint with the law society Thursday morning.
[...] Benton, who’s helped multiple abuse survivors of the Presbyterian church, believed the documents were deliberately destroyed to protect the group’s reputation.
[...] A spokesperson for the law society said they could not comment on complaints.
[...] Massey University historian and religious expert, Professor Peter Lineham, said he was “profoundly shocked and disturbed” by the decision to destroy critically important information.
“This could have only come from a culture of deliberate determination to prevent the survivors’ claims. This to my mind is a profound injustice to the victims at Presbyterian Support Otago and calls for prosecutions.”
Would Barton had advised Bremner that she could later destroy the records if Barton had not been a PSO member at the time? If no, then it’s not a good look. In fact it suggests a major cover up. As far as I know records of the kind mentioned have to be kept for a minimum number of years. If so, did Barton advise Bremner that the records had to be kept for those number of years? If not, why not?
To me the whole thing stinks of cover ups and corruption.
The question is how far do the cover-ups go. My guess would be: a lot further than anyone thinks.
One thing is for sure. Heads need to roll. Even if one of those heads happens to be the current President of the New Zealand Law Society.
