Letters, Documents & Court Submissions about our
sons Elijah, Saul & Joshua and our daughter Hannah
1) Elijah’s
Eulogy
2) Hannah & the Departments
of Social Welfare & Health – 13/12/1990
3) Schedule
of Attachments For Reports About Hannah
*************************************************
1)
Elijah’s Eulogy
Elijah
- Born
8th September 1980
- Died
by his own hand 6th November 2008
Written by his grieving father Michael Israel in
I felt moved by the SPIRIT to write something
simple about the extraordinary life of my magnificent and immensely talented
son Elijah (once known as Michael Nunn), so dearly loved and so sorely missed.
I do this to celebrate his life and his determination, courage and fighting
spirit, to help those who knew him and loved him by giving them an explanation
as to why he would do such a thing to himself when he had such promise
and such hope for the future and finally, to provide a framework within which
to properly mourn his loss and appreciate GOD’s purpose in what on the surface
for many of us mere mortals at first seemed to be such a tragic and pointless
waste and loss.
Elijah was born at home in the rain forest
As GOD leads, several weeks after Elijah’s birth,
we began travelling south in faith (Matthew 10) on a journey as Christian
disciples that changed all our lives forever - this was a natural extension of
the time of simplification that we had begun a year before in
Our primary focus was always on Elijah’s needs
and well-being first, we spent 24 hours a day together as a family for the
entire first year of his life outside the womb and he thrived like no other
child that I have ever seen, heard of or read about. At 12 months he was very
aware, developed and mature well beyond his years and he never got sick. In a
number of songs on his recently released CD “Journey of Love & Pain”,
especially “Just a Child”, Elijah describes graphically how idyllic and happy
this time of his life was. Travelling also was (and is) a very healthy, active,
varied, stimulating, learning and challenging lifestyle that clearly agreed
with Elijah (and later with his brothers Saul & Joshua and his sister
Hannah).
We were given an in depth, firsthand insight into
and experience of all sections of the Australian culture, society and family
life, from the wealthy, famous and powerful to the poor, homeless and
disaffected, about the reality of all denominations of the
"Christian" church and about the actual standard of parenting and
competence, awareness and dedication of the average parents in this country. By
being with Elijah continuously for this time we also learned a great deal about
caring for babies and young children - this was confirmed and extended later
with Saul, Joshua and Hannah, all of which is detailed in the documents “Pregnancy, Birth &
Babycare”
and “Health
& Healing” on my web site:
www.geocities.com/michael_the_one
Needless
to say, the absolute truths that we learned about the real needs and
development of babies and children were very different to the fundamentally
flawed, conventional “wisdom” (stupidity!) accepted so readily and so foolishly
by parents, grandparents and health amateurs all over the world today. Most of
the material written on this subject by academics and other self-styled
"experts" today is theoretical nonsense, misleading, damaging and
most often highly dangerous.
Due to the truth that we were living and
beginning to speak about genuine Christianity all over
On the advice of an equally corrupt Legal “Aid”
lawyer, in our naiveté we pleaded guilty and were given the horrendous sentence
of 6 weeks in Brisbane Jail (the infamous “
Elijah’s, Mary’s and my own separate experiences
in custody have been comprehensively and exhaustively detailed in numerous
reports written by us to all relevant authorities in Queensland, in Canberra
and elsewhere in the world. Suffice it to say that Elijah nearly died as a
result of the brutal abuse and neglect that he suffered at the hands of
sadistic, violent, ignorant prison staff and the doctors and nurses at the
Mater Children’s hospital in
In her grief at the time Mary lost a third of her
body weight and was transferred at our own request to the awful Wolston Park
Psychiatric Hospital which beforehand had been misrepresented to us by the then
Queensland State Psychiatrist Nicholas Lis as an “easier and more peaceful
environment” for her. I was also put briefly in the Security Patient’s
Hospital, the facility for the most violent and disturbed patients in the
entire state! Two people totally dedicated to non-violence!
We were miraculously released after the 6 weeks
having been given an excellent insight into the appalling reality of the
Corrective, Psychiatric and Children's Services, re-united as a family and we
soon after left
By this time we began to write comprehensive
documents about our personal insights into, experiences and observations of and
our discussions with other people also violated by these blatantly obvious
corrupt and brutal government instrumentalities - these included the entire
Queensland Prisons & Police Force (a national joke!), Magistracy &
Judiciary, Department of Children’s Services, Forensic Mental Health and state
child fostering system. And so we became very well known (but not well liked)
by people in senior positions of state and federal power all over the country,
up to and including a number of Premiers, Prime Ministers, Ministers,
Departmental Heads etc..
So the persecution continued, we were
systematically harassed by corrupt police and our family repeatedly violated by
Children’s Services staff, most of whom were arrogant young girls straight out
of university who had learned everything that they knew about children out of
books or guilty older women who did not care for nor spend any time with their
own children and grandchildren. These contemptible individuals were all either
jealous of or clearly threatened by the extraordinary level of care that Mary
& I devoted to Elijah (and to one another) which made them appear to be
ignorant and incompetent amateurs, both privately and professionally.
When we were in custody, Elijah was taken from us
and put into temporary foster “care” where he was assaulted, deprived and
neglected taking us weeks each time to heal and settle him again. Naturally we
were furious with and highly critical of the Department of Children’s Services
but they would not even discuss our criticisms of and concerns about them nor
deal with the truth about the exceptional quality of care we gave Elijah.
Eventually they refused to give Elijah back using the transparently deceitful
excuse that we were being repeatedly arrested - finally we had to flee the
state for our own safety leaving Elijah in the first of a series of appalling
foster placements. The reasons for taking Elijah were later changed several
times and finally the justification given for not giving him back was that he
had been away from us so long! Their decision!
We travelled to Canberra to petition Australian
Parliament and over the next 18 months we approached all available appellate
agencies (e.g. State & Federal Ombudsman’s offices, Human Rights
Commission, State & Federal Parliament, United Nations etc), spoke and
wrote to thousands of people in positions of power and influence all over the
world and received some limited coverage from the media on television and radio
and in the newspapers and magazines. Everyone agreed with our assessment of the
situation in
In the absence of any help from anyone, I vowed
to rescue Elijah and openly informed everyone involved directly or indirectly
of my intentions. In 1983 after Saul was born and when Elijah was 3, risking
our lives we achieved this without violence and escaped to
In April 1984 we settled on a lovely farm at Mt
Irvine in the Blue Mountains west of
We decided to return to
After creating an enormous furore and an
international incident (Mary is a British subject) in that country and
especially in the capital
I claimed then in 1984 that the population of
overfed but under-nourished babies would become grossly obese adults in 25
years or so, that is in 2009. And so it is today!!
Mary, Saul & Joshua were driven down to the
Mary came up to visit me at the jail. As she was
waiting at reception, the then Premier Johannes Bjelke-Petersen's "hit
squad" (Special Branch Police) arrived, arrested her, took her to one
hospital where a "compliant" psychiatrist injected her with a major
tranquilliser after which Mary was taken to another psychiatric facility, the
Winston Noble at Prince Charles Hospital, where the staff had not seen her
un-medicated. Here she was illegally kept for 6 weeks until miraculously
escaping and fleeing to NSW where a local psychiatrist said that there was
nothing wrong with her except for the debilitating effects of the drugs
dangerously imposed upon her!
At this time Elijah’s half brother Paul at 17
offered to join the fight for justice to avoid Mary & I having to go back
into
Mary had 6 miscarriages, one at over 3 months, as
a result of the drugs that she had been illegally given in Queensland but
finally conceived Hannah naturally at age 46 in 1989. Paul generously gave us
several thousand dollars owed to him as Benefit arrears from his time in mental
health custody and we flew to
Our horrendous experiences with Hannah in
During this whole time from when he was taken, we
had been allowed no contact whatsoever with Elijah and in 15 years received
only 2 short notes from him, one an obvious forgery written by his foster
mother.
Elijah endured a number of abusive foster
placements, had his name changed to Mick Nunn and left his latest foster home
when he was 14 because they whipped him with electric jug cords – in his journals
he describes this violence as “excessive” with his customary forgiving nature.
The last foster family all looked like fat pigs and in his journals Elijah also
vividly describes masturbating with his foster sisters!
Homeless on the streets, Elijah understandably
turned to drugs and alcohol and became addicted to both. This was in no way a
genetic incurable disease, the convenient fallacy promoted by AA & NA, but
an act of desperate, escapist denial to avoid facing the insecurity and
inadequacy caused by intense, denied feelings of fury, anguish, terror and
guilt, an inevitable consequence of childhood deprivation, neglect, abuse and
invalidation. Elijah also turned to crime and spent several periods in prison
for drug & car offenses, stealing and property destruction, a typical and
predictable product of the average
After trying for 8 years to fight for justice
from a safe distance (see correspondence below to
Mary arrived at this facility incredible fit from
her mission for Hannah in New Zealand where she for 3 years had walked and
hitched thousands of kilometers, spoken to many, many people in positions of
power up to and including 3 Prime Ministers and had been arrested over a hundred
times for her directness, diligence and courage! Mary was slim and had an
exceptional resting pulse of 40. In 4 months through the imposed medication,
dreadful diet and lack of exercise, they destroyed Mary's health and she gained
30 kilos in weight, some of which she is still battling to lose 7 years later!
I was in turn charged with stalking the Minister
(for speaking to her twice in 3 months) and only secured my release after 4
months on remand by writing to and warning the Chief Justice, Paul De Jersey
from prison. When I later appeared self-represented before him as Chief Judge
of the Court of Appeal, the only person to have ever done so in these
circumstances, I was granted bail!
I then represented Mary at the Mental Health
Tribunal and was able to have her transferred to a less draconian facility at
the
During this period, Elijah had a brief
relationship with a young aboriginal woman called Simone who subsequently
became pregnant, claiming the child (Jordan) to be Elijah’s. Considering the
“dynamic” nature of the group Elijah mixed in and the casual approach to sex,
it is reasonable to need some confirmation of
When cleaning out my late mother’s home in
Greenwich, I discovered in her effects documents giving Saul, Joshua &
Hannah's foster names and I determined where they lived (Toowoomba) from
electoral rolls. Mary immediately went up to visit them, went straight to the
house and spoke to them all for an hour or so before the police arrived and
forced her to leave. I arrived the following day and was arrested on the
footpath outside the home before even entering the property. The authorities
were clearly desperate to prevent us having any open contact with our children
in case they both saw and heard the truth of what had been done to them and to
us and why. With reluctance they released us because of the publicity that the
case was attracting.
After some providentially directed detective
work, Mary & I on 11th September 2001 travelled up to Rockhampton and were
able with no help from the Department of Families to find out Elijah's foster
name, some details of his childhood and his time at the
I arrived the next day and managed to get Elijah
out of custody as he had been arrested in the meantime. I spent several days
with him unsuccessfully trying to keep him off drugs and organized bus tickets
to get us both out of
We always tried to validate what an
extraordinary, talented, special and unique person he was, tried to contrast
this with how he had been conditioned to behave and offered him unrestricted
help to change. However each time we met, the fear, pain, outrage and
pseudo-guilt that came up for Elijah by being confronted by what we, his
natural parents, were really like, how we truly loved him and learning details
of what had been done to us all were too much for him. So he would do something
destructive and inappropriate and we would again have to go on our separate
ways. Then after a few months or even a year, Elijah would contact us and we
would spend some more time together. Each episode was hugely painful for us
all.
Because none of our children except Paul were
willing or able to have regular, on-going contact with us despite our best
efforts to reunite the family, Mary & I increasingly spent time overseas in
Elijah had a wide diversity of interests and
everything he put his hand to, he did well. He obtained Aged Care
qualifications and worked at a number of facilities where he impressed with his
sensitivity and compassion towards old people. He wrote a song about a male
patient who died and later spontaneously entertained residents with his music.
In the last 2 years of his life, Elijah played football and basketball for a
Salvation Army team (he was the best & fairest player in his first season),
did a Lomi Lomi massage course, was very involved with several free expression
dance groups and body workshops and was intensively exploring his spirituality
with several Christian and other religious groups/beliefs.
Most importantly in 2008 he spent over 6 months
recording his music, the deeply personal, extraordinarily painful and childlike
CD “Journey of Love & Pain” which was released not long before he died – in
a sense his “swansong”.
*****************************************
To really honour his memory and give some meaning
and purpose to Elijah’s very difficult and painful life requires me to write
down the truth and give an accurate explanation as to why he would do
such a thing to himself. And make no mistake, if you live and speak the truth
anywhere in this world, you will be persecuted - conversely if you are not
persecuted, you most certainly are not living and speaking the truth.
In October 2007 Elijah was given access to most
of his Department of Children's Services file through a Freedom of Information
request, 1,600+ pages detailing the most controversial case in the history of
Our Faith and experience over nearly 30 years,
however, leaves us in no doubt that they have received and are still receiving
a full measure of reward from the GOD WHOM Mary & I serve so faithfully
(see “Terrorism” on the web site)!
For more historical background and details about
our daughter Hannah Shelley's Custody/Access Court Case, see the documents in
the next section below, especially the second entitled: “To the Presiding
Magistrate - Brisbane Children’s Court”.
Although Elijah managed by himself with great
courage and forbearance to get out a great deal of pain and anger and confront
a lot of his fear over the past 7 years or so, he remained in a sense “stuck”
as a child because the worst, seemingly life-threatening terror and other
feelings relating to his ordeal as a baby and young child, could not (and
cannot) be faced and expressed constructively without the help of GOD from
within through CHRIST. I do not say this out of any religious bias or
intolerance but because it is the truth and even adult men and women cannot
confront or feel the terror from childhood by themselves, through their own
efforts or determination.
Because Elijah had no example, encouragement or
support to embark upon this vital aspect of his growth, surrounded as he was by
people who were themselves running away from the same issues and feelings, the
fury at the pain caused him, denied and turned inwards rapidly began to
compromise and slowly destroy his wonderful spirit. Elijah had his first
serious bouts of depression, was hospitalised and given medication which by his
own description made him (understandably) feel dreadful and his denied emotions
stored in bodily tissue even manifested themselves as physical pain. Tragically
the two people who understood what he was going through and what he needed to
do about this, Mary & myself, he could not or would not trust to help him
until it was too late.
Elijah’s circle of friends and acquaintances were
a group of unusual and very different people including musicians, dancers and
other performers, staff of aged care facilities, disabled housing and
rehabilitation centres, various other social service agencies, the homeless,
members of various churches and temples, doctors, psychiarists, therapists,
counsellors and nurses, several sporting teams, masseurs/masseuses, “recovered”
alcoholics and drug addicts, police, lawyers, magistrates, other court
personnel, fellow inmates in prison, prison officers, childrens’ services staff
etc etc. All these people without exception had themselves suffered exactly the
same kind of upbringing as had Elijah in foster neglect (though not necessarily
with the same brutality and unspeakable violence), they are all living in
desperate denial and delusional rationalisation about this and as a consequence
have the same, largely unresolved childhood issues and feelings. The major
difference is that although most have not experienced the same intensity and
depth of privation and abuse, they have not ever been properly cared for by
their parents and consequently do not have the same emotional openness,
spontaneity, clarity and integrity and as did Elijah or accuracy of
perspective.
These ‘lost’ souls have tried and are still
trying many different contrived and artificial ways of escaping from and
continuing to repress their deepest and most terrifying feelings whether
through competitive sport, total abstinence from alcohol (and drugs), an
obsession with music, the pursuit of academic ‘achievement’, fame, power, money
or the accumulation of possessions, various medical/nursing treatments and/or
‘alternative’ healing methods, self-awareness exercises and the exploration of
spiritual beliefs. Whilst gentle, careful physical exercise, massage and body
work is very beneficial as part of fitness and healing, competitive sport is
not (see “Terrorism” on the web site) and nor are drugs of any kind in the long
term. Counselling or self-awareness programs are only useful if the counsellors
themselves have genuine personal understanding of and empathy with the issues
and feelings that arise within clients through having looked within and worked
on themselves.
Likewise most of the esoteric, eastern spiritual
theories (such as the fantasy of reincarnation and fantasies about “the other
side”) and techniques that Elijah explored and exposed himself to (like
meditation which conditions people to further dissociate and shut-off from
their feelings) were highly dangerous, made light of suicide and almost gave
Elijah permission to take his own life without fully appreciating the enormous
consequences of this for himself and those he left behind. Although I have some
understanding of the overwhelming despair and mind-set that drives otherwise
fit and healthy people to suicide and do sympathise with their anguish, in
essence suicide is a very selfish act due to the disastrous effects on those
who love them.
So many of Elijah's friends and acquaintances
endlessly talk, talk, talk about GOD, about love, about forgiveness, about
justice, about spiritual matters and about life yet the tragic truth is that
none of them knew or know what real love is. Consequently they, like
him, go around in circles, never coming to terms with what was done to them and
not done for them as children, never acknowledging and getting out the feelings
from the past and so never growing into adults.
See “To Men or Women Everywhere” on the internet web
site:
www.geocities.com/michael_the_one
for a better insight into and understanding of
feelings, behaviour, attitudes, beliefs, needs and relationships.
People living in denial or pretence also never
really forgive because true forgiveness is not some intellectual process but
comes from the heart - it can only be really experienced once the backlog of
feelings are all expressed and discharged. And the worst negativity are
pretence and the absence of truth as this is incredibly harmful, cowardly and
eventually destroys peoples’ lives.
Elijah consequently received little or no real
love from any of his friends and personal and professional acquaintances and no
hope because none showed the true pathway to growth and development. Like them,
Elijah was hemmed in with nowhere to go, looking for an easy way out, an easier
and more convenient explanation and relief of his emotional turmoil, but
finding none. In a sense he mirrored back to them what they were doing that
they should not have been doing and what they were not doing that they should
have been doing! For example, Narcotics Anonymous & Alcoholics Anonymous
groups are helpful only when those involved accept that abstinence is just the first
step to true recovery. Alcoholism and drug addiction are not “incurable
diseases”, just particular and understandable responses to the conditioning from
the usual (but certainly not normal) infant feeding and parental example. There
is nothing basically wrong with those who experience these problems and they
are often sensitive, creative and imaginative people who have reacted in this
way to no love or care and a lot of abuse in their childhoods. They just don't
know what to do with how they feel!
It is of course far easier to masochistically
accept the lie that there is something wrong with themselves so they don’t have
to grow up, face the truth about their parents and feel the full intensity of
their rage, pain and terror repressed for so long. So at Elijah’s funeral
service, like some kind of 'bikie' gang or group of mafia figures, the NA/AA
groups sat on the right in the front row of the church, many clearly in
enormous pain (like the man with the grey pony tail) but exuding bad vibes and
angry petulance yet totally unaware of how they really felt. Most acknowledge
and express none of their true feelings and just become shut-off and hard.
Typically their de facto “leader” Cameron, a really small, spirited,
unimportant little man, gave a dreadful speech that was more a self-indulgent,
attention-seeking performance than any demonstration of love or concern for
Elijah. In fact Cameron was jealous of and competed with Elijah. Larger
spirited members of AA/NA like Dean Scholl are completely bluffed by and even
scared of males like Cameron because they have not faced the pain and anger of
their relationships with their own fathers who must be very like him.
Elijah sadly had real problems and issues with
women, like his father (myself) and his grandfather before him, again based on
the huge amount of rage and pain that he had repressed about a series of
horrendous case workers and foster females. Although he did feel genuine
affection for women, he used, indulged and manipulated them shamefully, tried
to hide within and behind them, set them up as mothers and/or equals, failed to
give them needed support, guidance and direction and set them no limits. Because
he was so handsome and had such a lovely spirit, in this he was very
“successful” and by his own embarrassed admission acknowledged sexual relations
with over 200 women. It is fair and balanced to say that Elijah never, ever
really loved any of his girl friends or casual
encounters and most of these women maintain total delusions about their
relationships with him.
The worst aspect of all this for Elijah was that
he was not caring for himself properly (see the state of his room in the flat
in Elsternwick), was losing his strength of spirit as a man and was not making
the essential emotional and spiritual weaning move from mother to father,
especially from the world to GOD our FATHER. However underneath he did have a
simple but deep personal relationship with and child-like trust in GOD at the
same time as indulging his friends' matriarchal spiritual fantasies involving
eastern “goddesses” just like the Catholic Church with Mary, for example. Mary
and I engaged in speculation about whether Elijah was indeed already baptized
at the same time as Mary had been 4 days before he was born. In any event he
certainly served GOD well and his death was according to GOD's will and purpose
no matter how distressing and painful we have all found it to be, no matter how
big an adjustment we have had to make in our lives at his passing. I freely
acknowledge that Mary and I have significant differences in perspective about
Elijah's passing as his mother and as his father but we without doubt both
believe that he was/is the Elijah mentioned in Malachi 4:5,6, the last book of
the Old Testament, and that he has fulfilled what is written there
magnificently.
Elijah's contact with the mental
health/psychiatric system was predictably less than helpful and my diagnosis of
the state of the ward at the
Elijah's experience in his final admission to the
psychiatric ward at the
In what actually constituted deplorable criminal
negligence giving him a wonderful opportunity to take his own life, she
actually allowed Elijah unescorted day leave to go home from the hospital on
the day of his death despite the fact that he had made a genuine attempt on his
life immediately prior to admission, he had slashed his wrists a few days after
admission and clearly was slipping further into despair. His friend David Perry
who helped with his admission told hospital staff to contact him should they
allow Elijah to leave for any reason and confirmed this in writing on his
hospital file. The hospital did not contact David at all, even when Elijah
failed to return, and the police took nearly 3 hours to respond and ring David
after they were finally called by “concerned” hospital staff. David drove
around to Elijah's flat straight away but found him already dead.
Michael Israel †
Suicide
Although the self-styled “experts” on suicide
maintain such comforting delusions and mutter such emotionally expedient
platitudes as:
1.
It is impossible to identify underlying, causal factors of
depression and “mental illness” in young people or why they try to take their
own lives (they just don't want to know.
2.
Even properly cared for children from loving homes can become
suicidal and/or “mentally ill” .
3.
Depression (like alcohol or drug abuse), is an incurable or genetic
disease caused by genetic make-up or disruptive changes in brain chemicals and
is not related to the quality of upbringing.
4.
The truth is clearly otherwise and it is a lie, a complete fantasy
and an example of deceitful and sinister propaganda to maintain that no matter
how much love parents give their sons and daughters, they may still become
depressed and take their own lives. Rather it is that these “experts” (and most
other parents and grandparents all over the world) have not faced and dealt
with the truth about their own parents, other relations, teachers, early health
professionals and childhoods, they live in rigid emotional denial themselves
and maintain very convenient, self-serving delusions about what constitutes
real love and child care.
Depression is simply repressed anger and pain
turned back inwards by sufferers, against themselves, in what is a form of
conditioned emotional masochism, a reasonable, understandable and fully
predictable response to their childhoods and parental example. Certainly those
who suffer this condition are often highly sensitive people who intensively
feel their own and other peoples’ pain. This soon becomes intolerable unless
these feelings are constantly expressed and discharged openly and directly.
There is no place for depression in a truly loving family where the same gender
parent especially is honest, direct and spontaneous with all their feelings.
Young men are far more likely to take their own
lives because they, with their larger spirits, feel the pain particularly of
what they don’t get from their fathers and the outrage they feel at being used,
mistreated and intruded upon by their mothers and other females in their early
lives.
Notes on Suicide
- One young person under 30 in
- Children as young as 12 do not want to live
because there is no-one to love them, no-one to trust, no-one to talk to,
no-one to listen, no-one to understand and no-one who really cares. They are
desperate, have no hope, cannot cope with life and so jump in front of trains,
off bridges & cliffs, take drug overdoses, hang themselves etc
- there are always clear and obvious
warning signs of impending suicide for anyone who has learned anything about
human behaviour
-
Drugs are freely available (and the list is
endless - “grass”, hash, heroin, speed, ice, prescription medication legally
and illegally obtained, petrol, glue and paint sniffing) - but the problem is
not supply but demand. As long as the demand is there, there will always be a
supply available.
- young people often end up homeless on the
streets (30,000 in Australia, a national disgrace), commit crime to survive, go
to jail, meet a new circle of “friends” in the criminal justice system (police,
lawyers, magistrates & judges, court personnel, prison officers, probation
& parole etc) who are mostly hard, cruel, corrupt, unjust hypocritical
frauds full of personal and professional guilt and un-faced feelings and issues
of their own. There is no justice, no compassion, they aggravate rather than
solve what is an incredible easy problem to fix, a tragic loss of lives,
joy, potential, contribution, fulfilment, enormous cost in distress, cost in
$$$ an obscenity.
- Families in this country are in a shocking
state, parents and grandparents are lazy, violent, fat, selfish, irresponsible,
childish, greedy, avaricious, hard, cruel, unaffectionate, emotionally crippled
and retarded (from World War 11 & the Vietnam War gluttons and escapists.
They refuse to face any of their own unresolved issues and denied feelings from
their own childhoods, live in desperate emotional denial and so simply impose a
worse version of their own upbringings upon their unfortunate children. They
are ignorant of babies and young children's simple needs for gentleness,
quietness, peace, active devotion, for holding and carrying in arms which
builds trust (not in strollers, prams, pouches, backpacks like luggage), they
have appalling standards of self-care, hygiene, simple cleanliness and order,
are addicted to tobacco and alcohol, are obsessed with stupid ball sports,
other infantile hobbies (like cars) and money (how to make it, spend it, save
it, invest it). They live in filthy, dirty, untidy, cluttered houses with no
love or care and dress, talk, eat & drink, behave and live like wealthy
savages. Parents are 2 gender identical, a-sexual eunuchs and mortgage
servicing drones with zero tolerance for the truth, craven cowards who quickly
resort to threats and violence especially towards their children when
confronted with reality. Their lives are a lie, a sham, a pretence, an outward
show, artificial, contrived, unreal and they have no real faith, just vain
man's religion and traditions.
- The next generation is a faithful reflection,
legacy and consequence of the behaviour and lifestyle of the previous one.
- There is little or no validation for children
of what they are like, just rewarded for what they do, conditioned to perform,
to “achieve” and run the academic obstacle course within the unhealthy,
artificial situation of school and crazy competitive urgency at sport. There is
no reality in childhoods or schooling today, just ridiculous, idiotic
expectations of what constitutes “success”, unbridled ambition, consumerism and
accumulation of possessions, a cruel disinterest in other people's suffering
and need, lives narrow and boring beyond belief, rewarding themselves with
excesses of food and drink and possessions that they don't need, overseas
holidays that they don't deserve, an excuse to do even less than they normally
do.
- What
has happened to happiness, joy, fulfillment, adventure, variety, challenge,
health, unselfishness, kindness?? Life is supposed to be enjoyed, not endured.
If parents and grandparents
listen to and give children what they really need, they will be blessed with
peace, joy, happiness and health. If they don't, their children and
grandchildren will give them heaps – and they thoroughly deserve it!
Parents who really love, care for and listen to
their children and grandchildren will always be slim, healthy, active,
won't sit very much, never smoke, never drink socially, only a glass or two
with meals, live in clean, tidy, small, simply but beautifully furnished homes
around natural beauty.
In all terms except money,
climate and the natural environment,
2) Re: Hannah & the Depts of Social
Welfare & Health
13th December 1990
To:
Jennifer Shipley - Minister for
Social Welfare (DSW)
Simon Upton - Minister for Health.
Paul East - Attorney-General
Douglas Graham - Justice Minister
John Banks - Minister for Police
cc
Margaret Mulgan - Human Rights
Commission
Richard Deyell - Assistant
Director-General – Department of Social Welfare
Richard Fisher - Ombudsman's Office
Christopher Laidlaw - Race Relations
Conciliator
Paul Norris - TVNZ News &
Current Affairs Director
John McLeod - Chief Medical Officer
-
Robert Laurie - Australian High
Commissioner
Gary Taylor - Chairman -
David Moss - British High
Commissioner 13th
December 1990
I am writing this in
response to the offensive, insulting, inaccurate, imbalanced, unfair, biased
and deliberately misleading report to Peter Topzand, Social Worker DSW Auckland
from Raewyn Gavin, Paediatric Registrar,
By way of background,
my name is Michael Shelley and I am Australian aged 44 years. I have a
Bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering, a Masters in Business Administration
(both from the University of NSW) and have completed 18 months of formal course
work and over ten (10) years of my own research towards a Doctorate in Human
Behaviour. My work experience includes several years with a large
multi-national company in marketing, owning and operating a number of my own
incorporated businesses, extensive small business consultancy, lecturing in
Business Management, Business Statistics and Organisational Theory in the
Bachelor of Business Program at the University of Technology in Sydney and
extensive personal experience in research, teaching and writing about Human
Behaviour (Psychiatry, Psychology, Sociology and Theology).
As a dedicated and completely committed
CHRISTIAN and Minister (by choice and chosen) I do not display the usual
academic false pride and arrogance about my unusual, even exceptional and
unique blend of qualifications, experience and understanding but acknowledge
that these are all a blessing from above, a gift of GOD.
Ten years ago my wife
Mary and I decided to carefully and responsibly make a number of sensible
changes to our lives in accordance with our developing CHRISTIAN faith and
belief. Part of this involved considerably simplifying our possessions,
reducing the importance of money in our lives and seeking quality rather than
quantity, especially in our relationships with one another and with our
children. Mary was at the time pregnant with our first son Elijah and it was
obvious to us both that a large city like
Although we
subsequently travelled extensively throughout Australia, we did so slowly and
carefully and ensured that Elijah (and later, our next two sons, Saul and
Joshua) received the highest standard of real love and care, especially in
regard to their single most important need - a solid foundation on and security
in an excellent, settled and growing relationship between their father and
mother. In addition I spent more time with Elijah and was more involved in his
needs from his conception up until he was 20 months old than any other father I
have met or heard of and learned a great deal of practical knowledge about
children in the process. Elijah proved to be an exceptional child and thrived
remarkably in every real regard being alert, responsive, happy, energetic,
strong, amazingly mature for his age and gaining weight at a sensible and
healthy rate for him except when the Queensland Police, Prison Service and
Department of Children’s Services intruded into our lives with their customary,
dangerous, illegal, ignorant and callous ineptitude.
Although the external
aspects of our life changed significantly over the next three or four years, we
showed the same devotion to Saul and Joshua and they also thrived, reflecting
and validating our high standards of child care. We were repeatedly
complimented by many people over five states of
What we learned
terrified, appalled, disgusted and outraged us because the true situation was
(and is) very different from the carefully affected public image. This
contrasted starkly with the fantasised delusions and platitudinous
self-justifications so conveniently peddled by those in power, aided and
abetted by all sections of the media. As a consequence I began to both speak
and write openly about the situation, the responsibility and obligation of any
truly concerned man, husband, father and CHRISTIAN, especially in Queensland -
this elicited a response from the established churches, the police, the courts,
the public service and the politicians which was consistent in every way with
the findings of the Fitzgerald Inquiry some years later. All involved in our
case showed clearly that they had a great deal to hide themselves, saw my work
as a threat to their entrenched corruption and self-interest and demonstrated
that there was nothing they would not be prepared to do to silence the truth I
both spoke and later wrote about them. Mary and I were jailed repeatedly on
fabricated charges, Queensland authorities effectively abducted Elijah from us
at 20months of age and later Saul and Joshua were also stolen with the
complicit connivance of Department of Social Welfare here after Mary came to
New Zealand for help over 5 years ago.
Whilst in our care,
all our children have clearly shown how palpably false and absurd are the
fabricated justifications for their enforced fostering and Queensland
authorities have gone to great lengths to lie about, misrepresent and falsely
document our sons' actual health and development as a consequence (See
Attachment "C"). In particular there is no real evidence that Elijah,
Saul or Joshua have ever been deprived in any way and Queensland public
servants and Government medical officers who allude to this are intentionally
lying - their reports cannot be relied upon without a fair and rigorous
examination of the facts. As with the medical position here in
Elijah was not taken
from us because of any "failure to thrive", he was peremptorily
removed from Mary following a dispute with prison staff and the NOFTT diagnosis
only retrospectively emerged years later to justify their improprieties after
they had changed their reasons several times in the meantime. With Saul and
Joshua they acted with indecent and callous haste (just as they are trying to
do with Hannah right now) to falsify a diagnosis, distort the true situation
and perpetrate an enormous injustice without a full and open discussion of the
true facts. This effective persecution was predictably never done openly or
honestly because these contemptible criminals completely lack any courage, decency
or integrity and have so much to lose. They never hesitate to misuse their
entrusted power and collude with one another to intimidate, terrorise and
discredit anyone who dares to expose them and their nefarious activities.
I enclose with this an
appropriate and relevant sample of one of the reports I have written about the
situation in
We decided earlier
this year to come to
In truth, any child
unfortunate enough to fall into her corrupt and incompetent clutches should be
considered a "baby at risk" and she is herself in desperate need of
very "careful supervision". "We" did not leave the motel
after Wattie's visit, Mary checked out with Hannah to visit me on my birthday
at
The
Despite Raewyn Gavin's
inaccurate statement which is full of unexplained discrepancies and
irresponsible omissions, I was actually in Mt Eden Prison on the18th May (my
44th birthday!) held briefly on remand without bail on three charges of
"obtaining credit by fraud" (See Attachment "I"). The judge
(Alan Lawson) had refused bail because he had been (typically) lied to by
prosecuting police and deliberately provided with false information through
Interpol by corrupt Australian police. All these matters are of course
"sub judice" and it was highly improper, unnecessary and in contempt
of court for Gavin to include them in her report. However, as she has discussed
these questions and unfairly misrepresented the facts, it is only fair that I
address the issues raised. Incidentally she refers to these events occurring on
the 28th May when the date was the 23rd, not the least of her many mistakes and
an indication of her scant regard for accuracy and truth. Mary did not
"run" to the British High Commission but left the court slowly and
carefully and went (after the lunch break) to the only supposedly neutral and
impartial authority that she knew of in Auckland for assistance - Mary is a
British subject and holds a British passport. She was very concerned at the
time about the hysterical behaviour of the court nurse, Kathy White and about
the erratic and even sinister actions of the police and a forensic psychiatric
nurse, Wendy McEnteggart. We had both reasonably concluded that they were
together with DSW already conspiring to take Hannah. In fact they used the
excuse that Mary had locked the toilet door while she used the toilet, washed
herself and changed her sanitary napkin (something every woman would do!) as
somehow justifying removing a five week old breastfeeding infant from her
mother and father!
We know that if Mary
had not left the court as she did, I would have been refused bail using some
flimsy excuse and Hannah would have been taken from Mary soon after anyway. I
was not, as Gavin claims "remanded in custody" but I was held briefly
in the holding cells, given a short psychiatric assessment which was
satisfactory and granted bail - I was however improperly held by the police for
hours as part of their scheme until being released just after 5pm. The court
orders for Hannah were taken out one floor above my head without me as Hannah's
father being brought up to appear on my daughter's behalf - both judges, (Bill
Mitchell and Dale Green), the police, DSW (Peter Topzand) and even my own legal
aid solicitor (David McNaughton) all knew full well where I was and conspiracy
is not too strong a word to use to describe all their conduct.
The provisions of the
CYPTF Act were not even remotely complied with and this was not an oversight
but a deliberate act of dishonesty richly deserving imprisonment. Hannah was
remanded into the custody of DSW' for no valid reason whatsoever despite the
court being informed at one stage that Mary was waiting at the British High
Commission for Hannah to be brought to her there. DSW made no efforts
whatsoever to contact us that afternoon or evening despite knowing where we
were staying (both the British and Australian High Commissions left us
messages) and all my efforts to contact someone from DSW after hours of vainly
trying or to find Hannah at the hospital were fruitless.
Anyone who believes
DSW's account of their actions or accepts that they were only negligent is
either a fool, a coward or a crook. We subsequently left Hannah with DSW and
went to Wellington to seek help only when it became patently obvious a few days
later that DSW (notably Douglas Jordan, Paula Wallis and Shona Flood) were
fully colluding with Queensland and had no intention of returning Hannah to our
care. At one stage Topzand told our son Paul by phone in
Whilst in foster
neglect Hannah obviously went through absolute hell, all of which is primarily
the responsibility of a group of literal child abusers and deviates posing as
social workers and administrators in DSW and a number of hopelessly incompetent
and useless foster females. When after a separation of about eight weeks we
were begrudgingly allowed disgracefully limited access to Hannah (1 hour, 2-3
times a week), we were appalled at her physically and emotionally debilitated
state. She was obviously distressed and terrified from no care whatsoever, from
rough handling, no holding, improper feeding, unsafe bathing, grossly excessive
clothing, insufficient undisturbed sleep, an unhealthy environment, constant
intrusions and completely ignorant and selfish foster parenting. A typical Kiwi
upbringing!!! Hannah was white, puffy, congested, full of fluid, had little
energy and response, hated being handled even gently, threw up continually,
slept fitfully, woke in a distressed state and generally showed all the clear
signs of abuse and neglect. Infuriatingly but predictably, Topzand of DSW
refused to even consider our complaints nor to take any responsibility for
Hannah's state and simply off-handedly ignored our verbal and written
expressions of concern.
I finally wrote a
letter to the foster female deploring her maltreatment of our daughter and hid
this in Hannah's carry basket at the end of a visit but this was never
mentioned nor were the specific issues raised dealt with in any way. A Plunkett
nurse, Meryl Zohrab involved with Hannah filed a report at this time
complimenting the standard of foster care, using as a justification for her worthless
opinion that Hannah was "surrounded by bright toys" as though this
somehow compensated for everything else Hannah had to endure. Zohrab is a
frantic, intrusive, noisy, rough and grossly overweight individual and any
comment she may have about the care of babies or children should be discounted
completely until she has learnt the first basic lesson of being an adult -
caring for her own body and spirit.
I am outraged and
insulted that the opinions of such obvious hypocrites as these are given more
credence and weight than our own despite the hypocrisy and double standards
which characterises their lives and ‘work’ (but which are not a feature of
ours) and the way in which the specific and verifiable contra-indications that
we detail to disprove their fanciful and self-serving claims are so
systematically ignored. At a Family Court hearing in front of Frank Bremmer
no-one but ourselves showed any real concern for Hannah, everyone else being
obsessed with legal trivialities and technicalities. Admittedly Mary, Paul (our
22 year old son) and I have very high standards of child care but we always
behave reasonably and make concessions for other peoples' diminished
expectations, rigid denial, extensive self-delusions and reduced awareness.
A report by Hannah's
local GP, Sheelagh James was superficial, vague and self-justifying - she
obviously has a lot to hide herself, a considerable vested interest in not
finding any fault and a predisposition to accept the ‘usual’, not ‘normal’,
standard of child care as satisfactory. Certainly her conclusions were
inadequate, generalised and inaccurate and neither James's nor Zohrab's
opinions are even consistent with the notes in Hannah's baby book at the time -
there are numerous unexplained discrepancies between how Hannah really was and
the ‘cheery’ platitudes contained in this book. The foster female clearly lied
repeatedly about Hannah's general well being, about her sleeping habits and
about her feeding and her comments were made to make it look as though she and
DSW were competent and involved rather than reflect the truth of the situation.
Following her return to our care when we were bailed on the 3rd August, Hannah
required hours and hours of healing in order to trust again, to be peaceful and
settled, to be happy without being frantic, to feed slowly and gently, to be
clothed without distress, to be bathed without screaming, to sleep through the
night and to play on her own without getting terrified. This was a “thriving”
child by their insane standards!
In her report Gavin
has even lied about Hannah gaining weight satisfactorily in foster
"care", an issue obviously crucial to the considerations of Hannah's
placement right now. For example, when first stolen from us at 6 weeks,
Hannah's weight was right on statistical mean or average (the 50th percentile).
However during the 10 weeks in foster placement, her weight steadily fell
against the population distribution down to the 10th percentile by 13 weeks of
age. This was followed by one highly suspect sudden jump in weight immediately
prior to her being returned to us.
The truth is that the
general trend of Hannah's weight gain has continued fairly steadily at
approximately the same gradient for her whole life yet no-one at any stage has
questioned the first foster female's standard of care nor attempted to
ascertain whether this rate of growth is healthy or idiosyncratic for Hannah!
The most serious
legacy of DSW's reprehensible abuse of Hannah and the obvious foster neglect
was Hannah's vomiting which to any knowledgeable observer was an emotional
reaction to the sadistic disruption of her breast feeding and her subsequent
force feeding on excessive fluid using a bottle. Although not acknowledging
this openly, DSW and the foster female obviously got desperate when Hannah
failed to gain weight according to their ‘precious’ statistical charts and
savagely over-reacted early in July, feeding Hannah well over a litre of SMA
formula per day - a kilogram of fluid was forced into a five kilogram baby just
to try and prove their stupid theories! When we later discussed this with
the hospital dietician Rhonda Akroyd, she was clearly horrified by such
irresponsibility.
We patiently and
painstakingly worked on this problem, discussing this openly with DSW and all
monitoring nurses and doctors involved. We were scrupulously careful with
Hannah's diet and completely open and honest about how and what we fed her on,
trying suggestions by the so-called "professionals" even when these
did not seem right or appropriate. All this is fully documented in Hannah's
baby book which with us then became a true reflection of Hannah's progress and
not a foster fantasy. Incredibly DSW made no attempt to mention, discuss or
deal with any of the issues covered in my reports on “Hospitals, Doctors and
Nurses” or “Pregnancy, Birth & the Care of Babies” (see www.geocities.com/michael_the_one) despite having copies of these on their files since
early June. The implications and opinions expressed in these show our position
and approach without equivocation and we know that their attitude was not an
appalling oversight or dereliction of responsibility but rather a deliberate
part of their insidious scheme and settled plan of action.
We believe with
considerable justification that DSW only returned Hannah to us immediately we
were released on bail to make it look as though they were anxious to comply
with provisions of the CYPTF Act and to make it appear as though they had not
behaved hastily or illegally on the 23rd May. Also they wanted to load us with
the responsibility of healing Hannah and undoing the results of their neglect
and hoped that they would later be able to put the blame on us for this. More
sinisterly we realise that they had already planned to take her back at six
months using weight as a sufficient justification for this action, no matter
how well and thriving Hannah was in every other respect. John Newman is
completely complicit in this criminal conspiracy and his diagnosis (thinly
disguised over Gavin's signature) had been settled back in July after I had
written to Nigel Stewart (a colleague of his and a fellow paediatrician)
deploring the state of Stewart's pregnant wife, his other two children and his
house. Newman's arrogant, rude, hostile and unprofessional attitude towards us
has left us in no doubt as to his real underlying motives, a biased
pre-disposition which should have excused him from any involvement in our case.
DSW in the past four
months has on the surface done everything to pretend to be fair and supportive
and Peter Topzand is well suited for this purpose with his prior experience in
probation and parole and contact with police. Despite being lied to repeatedly
and continuously deceived by Topzand, whose own wife and child get nowhere near
the support, love and real care given to Hannah by us, we have behaved with
admirable forbearance and restraint, not permitting his and DSW's despicable
dishonesty to interfere with our devotion to Hannah's needs. Considering what
has happened to Hannah in her short life so far and considering the disgraceful
legacy of neglect we were landed with, Hannah has thrived remarkably in all
respects for the whole of the last three months in our care.
The OT assessment done
by Janet Milne (Occupational Therapist) at the
Up until Hannah's
admission into hospital, she lived in a beach front house overlooking
Any suggestions as to
our psychiatric unfitness are also scurrilous and demonstrably untrue as
evidenced by reports following rigorous and extensive evaluations by
psychologist Gayle Ratcliffe and psychiatrist Jed Felgate, copies of which are
on DSW files (See Attachments "K" and "L"). I have myself
never required admission to hospital for psychiatric reasons nor have I ever
suffered nor been treated for any form of psychiatric illness or disorder
despite the best efforts of those certifiable psychopaths in Queensland
Forensic Mental Health to discredit me in this way. I take great exception to
Gavin's spurious speculations in this regard. My voluntary admission to the
psychiatric ward at Prince Henry Hospital 12 years ago where I first met Mary
was by choice, against my doctor's advice because I was concerned and
determined to do something about my drinking. That this indication of mature
and sensible responsibility should so disgracefully be totally misrepresented
by Gavin is one further indication of her own dishonesty, desperation and
"personality disorder and behavioural problems". Incidentally I have
not smoked, drunk alcohol or taken drugs of any kind for over ten years and do
not focus my unresolved emotional agenda against babies and small children,
real violence done every single day by all those sadists who have interfered so
disgustingly in our lives.
When Hannah was
returned to our care, Mary heroically and painfully attempted straight away to
re-introduce her to the breast in order to make up for some of the deprivation
callously imposed upon her by DSW's inexcusable actions and subsequent
irresponsibility. When this was unsuccessful, it precipitated for Mary an
"adjustment disorder with depressed and anxious mood" as a result of
the intense feelings which arose for her from experiences in her own early
childhood. This had not occurred previously for Mary following the births of
Amberwryn (her oldest daughter now 25), Elijah, Saul or Joshua but she had had
a similar experience after Paul's birth, 22 years ago. The severity and
duration of the anxiety took us all by surprise and although Mary is presently
not taking any medication nor undergoing any formal therapy, she is still
coping with a difficult amount of anxiety at times. Can you blame her in view
of what has been done to her?! We have of course been open about this, sought
and listened to appropriate professional advice and assistance and several
courses of medication were tried with no success. What Mary has needed has been
patient and gentle care and understanding, something almost completely absent
in the health system today. Providentially, Paul and I have both been able to
devote ourselves full time to Mary's and Hannah's care, real work in the true
sense of the word – all those who have intruded so inexcusably into our lives
could not cope with one hour of real work!.
Mary's so-called
"psychiatric" history (See Attachment "L") is characterised
by clumsy and incompetent medical mismanagement which years ago created an
enormously distressing, expensive, chronic, long term problem out of what could
have been a simple, easily managed short term acute crisis.
As happens so often in
our lives we have to clean up the mess, confusion and damage caused by
so-called experts who pompously intervene without any of the necessary
self-awareness and real understanding required. Mary has actually been able to
type this whole report and her growing need to re-establish a proper
mother-daughter relationship with Hannah should be encouraged, not obstructed
by all those concerned. As it then became evident that Mary would not be able
to give Hannah her usual level of extraordinary commitment, we mutually agreed
that Paul and I would take on the full responsibility ourselves so that Mary,
without guilt could have the space to get better at her own pace. Paul did most
of the washing and was very involved in bathing, changing, clothing and playing
with Hannah with my own full support and considerable input and advice. With
Hannah's feeding we daily shared the responsibility and discussed in great
detail what she needed, how she enjoyed what we gave her, how her diet agreed
with her and how she digested each of the different foods introduced. In
particular we noted absolutely no indications of any insufficiency whatsoever -
in contrast Hannah showed clearly she was getting more than enough of every
dietary requirement.
Paul discharged his
responsibilities towards Hannah with admirable unselfishness, remarkable
maturity and patient devotion, especially for someone of his age. Certainly the
care he gave Hannah puts to shame the general level of care that we observed in
our neighbourhood community, in the Princess Mary Hospital and in what Hannah
has to endure from the present nightmarish foster female - we have detailed the
disgraceful conditions she is subject to right now later in this report. Hannah
responded extremely well to Paul's love and their relationship, along with my
own and Mary's are vital aspects of Hannah's trust and security. Gavin's
suggestion that Paul is/was somehow violent is both irresponsible and
defamatory and serves only to disguise the real violence and abuse Gavin
herself is directly and indirectly responsible for under her supervision in the
P. M. Hospital, where tiny, vulnerable babies are inhumanely treated for no
good reason whatsoever. People who believe that you have to be "cruel to
be kind" know nothing about health or healing yet this is the common
approach taken with tiny babies today. Paul is and always has been gentle and
quiet around Hannah, is careful of her space, never wakes or disturbs her and
in particular causes her no distress or unease when changing her nappies or
washing around her private parts. What a contrast to many of the nurses and to
the present foster female!
Like a real man, Paul
expresses his anger only ever verbally or in writing, even under the incredible
provocation of having his sister taken, seeing her neglected and abused and
having to watch inefficient and incompetent amateurs destroying our care of
Hannah to suit their own twisted and deviate emotional agendas. Paul's
so-called “violence" conviction arose from an incident in Sydney involving
his ‘natural’ father, a brutal and sadistic catholic individual who repeatedly
assaulted and terrorised Paul, his sister Amberwryn and Mary whilst they lived
together. Lionel Long has of course never been charged himself but had his own
son charged through ‘mates’ in the police force following a minor scuffle in
the street entirely provoked by Lionel himself. Paul has also been given the
most comprehensive and rigorous assessment by the mental health system in
Despite Paul's primary
involvement with Hannah, I at no stage relinquished principal and over-riding
responsibility for Hannah's care and it is not an exaggeration to say that I
have been more involved with my daughter, Hannah (as with Elijah, Saul and
Joshua) than any other father I have met or heard of, certainly more than
Newman with any of his own unfortunate children. It is doubtful whether Newman
and Gavin spent more than a total of one half an hour each with Hannah during
her entire five weeks in hospital and neither would have made any real
contribution to her care. This distant and removed approach so common today
disguises the real lack of involvement, emotional detachment and abdication of
responsibility which these "robotic" individuals choose to impose on
their patients. Whilst with us Elijah, Saul and Joshua's care could not
legitimately be faulted especially as those who have criticised and tried to
discredit us in Queensland have nowhere near the same commitment to parenting
nor awareness of their children’s needs.
As with Hannah, all
our sons in our care have always been completely free from sickness and even
minor ailments, all had excellent births without medical intrusion, all were
breast fed, all had lots of holding, all had the best possible home
environments, all were generously fed more than they needed or wanted on afresh
and varied diet, all were exceptionally mature and developed for their age, all
were alert, happy, strong and responsive and all thrived according to all
sensible, accurate and proper criteria. It is an outrage that following the
findings of the Fitzgerald Inquiry and the widespread discrediting of those in
Government and public bureaucracy that the opinions and statements made about
us and our children by those in Queensland are still accepted without question
as fact whilst our own fully documented and provable assertions are discounted
or ignored. Everything I have claimed for the past eight years about the police
and public service in Queensland has been vindicated and the government
ministers responsible for Health and Children’s Services have recently been
jailed yet their corrupt subordinates are still irrationally and unreasonably
believed only because their counterparts here in New Zealand are no better.
When stolen from us
under some fabricated pretext (the reasons for which have been repeatedly
changed), our children always got sick, regressed rapidly in growth and
maturity, deteriorated significantly emotionally and failed to thrive, just as
Hannah did in hospital and is doing in foster neglect and abuse today. On one
such occasion, Elijah nearly died as a direct result of his criminal mistreatment
first by prison staff and then by doctors and nurses in the awful Mater
Children's Hospital in Brisbane, the source of the majority of critical medical
misinformation written about our child care. The Department of Children’s
Services predictably did nothing about this and behaved as though it was
somehow "unavoidable" and the history of our case abounds with these
double standards in the very different evaluative expectations put on us when
compared to themselves. This approach more generally is symptomatic of many
public servants whose main motivation in their employment is to off-load guilt
onto the very people they are paid to serve, completely misusing their
positions of authority and power to find fault with and interfere in the lives
of people whose parenting, obedience of the law, honesty and integrity far
exceeds their own.
A careful examination
of those involved in our case shows that they are behaving for precisely these
morally and legally improper reasons. In contrast to the monotonous, tasteless
or unpleasant, overcooked, textureless, blended and nutritionally deficient
rubbish fed to babies in the PM Hospital (and to Hannah right now), we show
real concern for all our children’s diet and Rhonda Akroyd, the hospital
dietician complimented us on what we were feeding Hannah. We have never tried
to constrain our children to largely irrelevant statistical population graphs
but rather have spent a great deal of time with them, listening and responding
to all their real needs without any foolish or rigid pre-dispositions or
expectations. Reasonable questions to ask about the charted statistical
population of babies are "Who are they?", "What are their
names?", "Where do they live?", "What relevance have they
to Hannah?", "How many now are alcoholics, drug addicts, mental
patients, cigarette smokers, convicted criminals?", "How many are
overweight, underweight, the right weight?" and "How many have died
from cot death, suffer from asthma, diabetes, behavioural problems, epilepsy
(all preventable given proper care)?". Unless attention is given to these
questions, individualising and relating to Hannah these conveniently amorphous
statistical generalities, no informed and competent conclusion can possibly be
reached about Hannah as regards weight, especially in the total absence of any
other adverse contra-indications as to her health and well being. Because of
our approach, we know what our children should weigh at any given age whereas
these incompetent fools in charge of Hannah (most especially Wallace, Flood,
Topzand, Newman and Gavin) have no idea whatsoever except a ‘guesstimated’
range, say "somewhere between 6.20 - 10.00kgs", a percentage
variation of 60%!
As an example of how
stupid and dangerous these people can be, one Chinese baby fostered by Wendy
Claxton, Hannah's present foster female had her feeding arbitrarily doubled by
that imposter Newman in order to force her weight up to the97th percentile just
because she was tall for her age. Claxton (a Karitane nurse) readily admitted
to us that she completely disagreed with Newman over this(and other aspects of
baby care), describing him as "automated" and lacking in any feeling.
It is just this very sort of medical madness, internal disagreement and
disputation and complete misunderstanding about statistics that my report on
"Pregnancy, Birth & Babycare" exposes and debunks (see www.geocities.com/michael_the_one).
In truth both John
Newman and Raewyn Gavin show a "rigidity of thought",
"particularly in relationship to feeding which we find very disturbing and
indicative of a (very) poor prognosis for Hannah were she to" remain under
their supervision. This conclusion of ours was certainly confirmed by the real
deterioration in Hannah's state following five weeks in hospital and two weeks
in an appallingly bad foster situation. Of course typical of the amorality
which is such a feature of the so-called professionals involved in our case,
they have conspired to remove a small baby girl in the prime of health from her
family rather than openly discuss and critically evaluate the implications of
my writings and question their own actions and assumptions. Remarkably but not
surprisingly, Elijah, Saul and Joshua and Hannah have all shown very similar
growth rates in weight gain (and height and head circumference), a steady,
consistent and sensible pattern. This promotes the development of strong muscle
tone, healthy and adequate fat reserves, a properly proportioned growth shape
and more than adequate fluid retention. In contrast much of the ‘normal’
(usual) population’ puts on weight far too rapidly for reasons clearly outlined
in my report and this produces major metabolic imbalances and the retention of
excess fluid and unhealthy cellulose-type tissue deposits (especially around
the thighs and buttocks) which is so difficult to get rid of later in life.
Many of the nurses and
the present foster female are excellent examples of the horrendous problems and
real distress caused later by the sort of improper infant feeding which our
daughter is being inexcusably subject to today. In addition it also creates
catastrophic long term behavioural problems of the kind so common today as well
as the plethora of respiratory and congestion difficulties that the medical
profession accepts as normal. All our children, if and when allowed to remain
in our care, would (and have) re-enter the ‘normal’ statistical growth limits
anyway between two and a half and three years of age. The evidence to support his
assertion has of course been deliberately withheld by the Department of Family
Services and Aboriginal and Islander Affairs in Queensland, DSW and the
hospital here as has a great deal of other vital information favourable to and
supportive of our position.
The reasons for the
idiosyncratic growth rates of our children are once again fully outlined in my
report and this also has been deliberately not dealt with or even mentioned by
Gavin in her highly selective and unbalanced attempt at disinformation. A
conscientious and careful examination of their position easily shows it to be
fundamentally flawed and intentionally distorted whilst our claims and beliefs
are readily proven and substantiated by any one interested in the truth. There
is no evidence whatsoever that any of our children and most especially Hannah
have ever been nutritionally or emotionally deprived in any way and all those
who allude to this possibility are deliberately lying or distorting reality to
suit themselves.
All the reports from
Worst of all is their deplorable
lack of professional detachment and scientific objectivity that they have
really flaunted with Hannah. First there are the uncalled for and completely
spurious references to "marasmus" which epitomises the usual
irresponsible and irrelevant diversions perfected by such a master of this
‘art’, Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. They full well know that none of our children
has ever been in any danger of this in contrast to the real nutritional
deprivation encountered by many children in their responsibility. It is a sure
sign that people have a great deal to hide and are lying when they resort to
such "gutter" tactics. That such people are paid to be in charge of
large numbers of children already in crisis is an indication of just how far
the Auckland Area ethical and qualitative standards of child healthcare have
deteriorated.
Even a cursory
examination of the authoritative articles on Non-Organic Failure To Thrive
(NOFTT) shows unreservedly that Hannah (and all our sons) shows/showed none of
the indications of this "condition", quite the reverse. It must
however be noted that Hannah did start to exhibit some of the NOFTT
characteristics after several weeks in hospital and now in foster neglect. All
Hannah's hospital tests proved what we already knew - that she was very healthy
and thriving and that her rate of weight gain is normal for Hannah. Gavin's
report is of course notable for what it doesn't say about the results of
Hannah's tests, yet another deliberate deception on her part. We would
vigorously deny Gavin's assertion that Hannah was "poorly covered"
with fat, a complete about-face in her opinion. Hannah was a perfectly
proportioned baby girl for her age and height and only a sadistic ignoramus who
enjoyed seeing fat babies in distress could conclude otherwise. These dangerous
and destructive desperados have been quite prepared (even eager) to recklessly
disrupt Hannah's total existence, label her into one of their superficial and
contrived categories, place her in foster neglect where she gets less than 1%
of the love and care she received from us and most absurdly of all, now intend
to transfer her with indecent haste into the clutches of a group of child
abusing deviates and thieves in Queensland!
We have absolutely no
doubts whatsoever that the allegations made in the recent Holmes program about
the staff in the Princess Mary Hospital are true in every detail and the
Ombudsman's report can only be properly treated with deserved contempt, an
inadequate, inaccurate, wasteful and disgraceful collusive
"white-wash". It is no wonder that the public institutions in this
country are in such a mess and so self-serving and corrupt if this is the
degraded standard of appellate support.
Gavin and Newman could
not even keep Hannah's feeding schedule and diet the same as that already
approved by their own dietician - this would at least have proved something
about her response to being looked after by people other than her father,
mother and brother. Instead in deceitful desperation they doubled her fluid
intake overnight quite arbitrarily even though no professional had objected or
expressed any reservations about her fluid intake previously. It should be
noted that this did not however make any significant change to her vitamin,
mineral and protein intake - it could be argued with some justification that
they actually reduced Hannah's nourishment because the hospital solid meals
were awful and so nutritionally inferior and smaller than what we fed Hannah
on. In hospital Hannah got progressively weaker, more distressed, over-tired,
unsettled, unwell, picked up an ear infection, ran a high temperature, at one
stage lost weight, was puffy, white and overweight (on fluid alone) as well as
becoming jerky, frantic and understandably angry. She even started to hit herself
which is one clear indication of abuse.
All they have so
"marvellously" proved with these major dietary changes (in direct
contravention of their own Health Department publications and guidelines) is
that if you force-feed a small baby with debilitating amounts of fluid every
four hours (20% of her total body weight every day -equivalent to over 15
litres a day for an average adult!), sadistically wake her up twice every night
to shove a bottle in her mouth (when she has been sleeping through the night
for months), totally disrupt her settled existence and routine, surround her
with a lot of complete strangers, terrify her with constant intrusions and
disturbance, deny Hannah her usual healthy exercise, fresh air and sunshine and
deliberately separate her from those she loves and trusts that she will retain
fluid and put on weight! Anyone would put on weight rapidly in these
circumstances but does this mean that the entire population are failing to
thrive! For this we spend millions of dollars sending emotionally handicapped
and retarded aged infants to medical school so they can parasitically torture,
torment and experiment on children and intrude upon and express opinions about
things they are totally ill-equipped and untrained to understand or deal with?!
Despite being
horrified and appalled by what we saw in the first few days of Hannah's
admission, we made every effort to be friendly and cooperative with hospital
staff and only ever mildly objected when they really hurt or distressed Hannah.
Notwithstanding this they became very jealous and threatened by the
extraordinarily high standard of our care for Hannah and we knew they would
soon invent an excuse to disrupt this. Paul wrote a fully justified complaint
to the General Manager of the Hospital and instead of this being responded to
in accordance with his paid responsibilities, Paul was summarily asked to leave
- a copy of Paul's revised complaint is atttached, marked Attachment
"N". Paul had openly taken careful notes of the staff's own
inconsistent and reprehensible behaviour and they do not like being monitored
or supervised. In fact they believe they have the right to do anything to
patients without discussion or negotiation and their presumptive arrogance is
really disgusting, especially when it involves someone’s own child. The staff
were repeatedly rude and provocative hoping to create an excuse to exclude us
from the ward or at least greatly reduce our contact with Hannah. As to Gavin's
entirely superfluous reproduction of comments from the Queensland Police about
us, I would say the following: First her unquestioned association with these
criminals gives us all an excellent insight into her (and Newman's) ulterior
motives and true natures. Next, although we have travelled extensively in the past
ten years, much of this has been motivated by our reasonable need to escape the
illegal persecution by corrupt police and to air our justifiable grievances. In
any event, an itinerant, travelling lifestyle is a healthy, rich, varied,
stimulating, exciting and learning experience anyway, shared together as a
family and undertaken by us responsibly, slowly and carefully.
What a contrast to the
boring, monotonous, rigid, artificial, uninteresting and deprived environment
and lifestyle endured by the average, "normal" suburban child whose
parents only try to compensate for their inadequacy by buying them off with
expensive but unnecessary toys, artificial distractions and foolish fantasies.
Only selfish, uninvolved and cowardly parents who are fundamentally unsettled
within themselves and whose marriage has no real substance, depth or intrinsic
meaning could ever criticise or demean travelling with children and I resent
and refute the implications made by this naive, inexperienced and impertinent
student of paediatrics.
An accurate
description of corrupt police, both in Queensland and here in New Zealand is
that they are parasites and bludgers who accept their money under false
pretences, who make no real contribution to the world, who actually commit,
provoke and cause a great deal of crime, who behave as though they are above
the law and who effectively exist on the charity and goodwill of taxpayers,
people like us and our children. It would be difficult to devise a more
accurate description of the doctors, nurses and social workers who have behaved
so improperly in our case. Certainly to put them in charge of children is
"very disturbing" indeed and while Hannah is left under their
supervision and control, her health will once again deteriorate and her life will
most certainly be "in danger". In order to prove their baseless
theories and untenable opinions they have caused a literal regression in
Hannah's development not to mention the distress and disruption to us all. Even
the authoritative articles they purport to believe in recommend a compassionate
and consultative approach to every NOFTT situation, something completely
lacking here.
It is not unreasonable
to ascribe the most sinister and illegal motives underlying the report by
Gavin. First it has deceitfully been made to look as though it originated from
a female paediatrician incompliance with our requests when this is simply not
true. Gavin is not a fully qualified paediatrician and the report clearly
reflects Newman's unacknowledged input that he hasn’t
the decency, the courage or the integrity to be open and honest about.
Next it should be
noted how deceitfully is the placement of the comments about the Occupational
Therapist's assessment (See Attachment "M"), made to make it appear
as though this was done after Hannah had been in hospital some time rather than
the day after admission. This was a deliberate attempt to mislead the reader
into seeing this as a validation of their hospital ‘care’ whilst not
acknowledging that it confirmed our level of care and success with Hannah.
Consistent with this improper approach Gavin repeatedly misquotes and misuses
excerpts from my written reports out of context and fails to mention ordeal
with aspects vital to the case. Her approach is scandalously unprofessional and
totally irresponsible and she is in my opinion admirably suited to a career in
paediatrics following the unprincipled example of her ‘mentor’, Newman. It
should be noted that this young female has never been in a long term
relationship, probably never been pregnant, never given birth, never breast fed
and never weaned a baby yet she presumes to sit in judgement and criticise
people who know more about these aspects of life than she knows or ever will
know.
To give the true
situation and an accurate diagnosis, we know Hannah was thriving and had a
generously sufficient diet for the following reasons. Her hair, teeth and nails
all grew vigorously attesting to sufficient digested calcium in her diet. Her
eyes were clear, her skin had an excellent tone and she was generally very
strong, energetic, happy, alert and responsive. Hannah predictably slept
through the night from 5 months as soon as we had undone the damage by DSW and
foster neglect and she woke peaceful, relaxed and smiling. Hannah showed a good
appetite and also showed clearly when she had had enough and she wet a large
number of nappies and passed at least one good size digested motion every
single day. Hannah never showed any fontanel depression. Any competent,
informed analysis of her diet would show that Hannah was being fed more than
sufficient of every single dietary requirement and this was confirmed by all
her hospital tests. We have never refused to both discuss and try any
suggestions by any of the so-called experts involved in our case and if we had
been instructed to feed Hannah according to the hospital regime, we would have
at least been prepared to discuss the implications of this and try it.
In fact Topzand told
me with obvious relish in the week prior to the report being submitted that
Newman would be submitting an unfavourable report. He also said that I should
try to convince Newman about our side of the case and not him because he was
"obliged to accept the ‘experts’ opinions" - Topzand is a duplicitous
expert himself in avoiding taking any responsibility for his actions and for
putting the blame onto someone else. Consequently whilst visiting Hannah at the
hospital we left Newman with a number of messages with both the nursing staff
and with his secretary that we would be happy to sit down and talk to him at a
mutually convenient time - Newman did not even have the decency to reply.
Despite this, when Topzand received the hospital report early in November, he
did not even talk to us about Hannah's future except to say that she would not
be given back to us. He said they would immediately apply to the court for full
custody of Hannah and ask for an order to transfer her to
Finally it is
important to describe Hannah's current foster placement as this gives anyone
interested in the truth of the situation yet another insight into the real
irrationality, unfairness, injustice, double-standards and rampant incompetence
shown by these people. After five weeks in hospital Hannah was dumped with a 30
year old female called Wendy Claxton in New Lynn - two other foster females
were asked first and Claxton was the third choice. You would think that in view
of our careful scrutiny and care with detail that they would have been
scrupulous in their choice of foster placement. Such is not the case and,
indicative of their extraordinary arrogance and corruption, Hannah's current
situation is no less than horrendous, a deliberate act of provocation by DSW to
try to force us into either taking Hannah (as we so reasonably did with Elijah)
or agreeing to have her sent to Australia without a court case. See
Attachment “G” Dealings
with Foster Female (Wendy Claxton) December 1990 to April 1991.
The house is small,
cramped, completely cluttered with things, not clean, always noisy and untidy
and the overall impression is chaos and unbridled confusion. Claxton is grossly
overweight herself and her entire approach to child ‘care’ has faithfully
reflected this gluttony - she openly blames her mother for her weight problems
yet has done exactly the same thing to her own children and no doubt to all 173
babies and children who have been unfortunate enough to be fostered by her.
What incredible damage she has done, all publicly funded! Typically she takes
no responsibility herself for being overweight and doesn't want to do anything
about it, spending most of her time sitting and talking and doing nothing
active. Typically she regularly puts her own reasonable guilt onto the
children, calling them "little pigs", "grubs",
"fat" or "lazy" or saying they need to do more exercise -
she certainly does!
Claxton has two
children of her own living with her, the eldest called Timothy (6) and the
younger, Andrew (3). Timothy was 8 weeks premature and four and a half pounds
at birth and although not needing to be hospitalised, he was only 17lbs at 12
months, well below the 3rd percentile and certainly less than Hannah would have
been if left with us. Timothy was tall for his age and had a head circumference
around the 50th percentile, a combination that is indicative of an NOFTT
diagnosis!!! Andrew in contrast was four weeks premature, seven and a half
pounds at birth and 28lbs at 12 months, well above the 97th percentile -
pictures of Andrew show that he was revoltingly and criminally overweight as a
baby and he still has weight problems. Timothy in contrast is quite well
proportioned for his age and doing much better than his brother in all regards
except ‘intellectually’. Incidentally Wendy described Hannah as "very
advanced for her age" when we first met her but said that Hannah was
"nervous" when she arrived from the hospital and used to "grab
food whenever she saw it" -what does this say about the staff at the
Princess Mary Hospital, hardly a validation of their approach to feeding and
caring for Hannah!
Living in the same
house is Tracey Reid, an Aboriginal/Maori woman of about the same age who is
also very overweight. Tracey has one child living with her sister in Darwin,
another with her separated husband in Whangarei and a third, her daughter
Maryanne (3) who lives with her. Maryanne is tragically deprived, clearly
undernourished, completely uncared for and constantly picked on and her eczema
and epilepsy are so obviously a direct legacy of neglect and the attendant
repressed rage she feels, a preventable response to her awful home environment
- not surprisingly she is one of John Newmman's patients! Maryanne just shakes
all the time from the debilitating effects of the medication that this sadistic
ghoul has prescribed rather than simply and inexpensively improve her care by
being a man and standing up to the two females responsible. Claxton has
fostered Maryanne for much of her life and Tracey is only allowed joint
guardianship of her lovely daughter - Claxton says how lucky Maryanne has been
to have two ‘mothers’ - the truth is that she has had none! In fact Maryanne
displays all the insecure craving for affection and inappropriate
‘friendliness’ which indicates emotional deprivation, another NOFTT symptom.
Despite Tracey not being allowed to look after her own daughter on her own, she
substantially cares for Hannah's basic needs and clearly does most of the real
work around the house – this is an almost surreal scenario. The whole situation
is indicative of instability and confusion and neither female is capable of
looking after any children unsupported and unsupervised - together they are an
absolute disaster!
There are also two
other small children living there, Joshua and Vincent who have been fostered
through Methodist Family Services in New Lynn as well as a recent ‘informal’
arrangement to look after a very young baby. This makes 5 small children and 2
babies in all! Claxton is a glutton in all respects and simply wants more and
more children to use, to focus her own unresolved feelings against, to fill her
empty life with, to distract her from how she really feels inside and out of
whom to make money. She actually gets paid $109 per week for Hannah alone when
we as Hannah's parents were in contrast paid about $13 per week! Even if she
gave Hannah a reasonable standard of care (which she so clearly does not), the
house itself is completely unsuitable for more than two children anyway. Wendy
is also a diabetic (a legacy of excessive infantile feeding!), has had a number
of miscarriages, one of her sons died of cot death (we are not surprised) and
her marriage to her husband Peter broke down irreconcilably in September this
year - was DSW informed of this or do they care? The whole place clearly
reflects the complete absence of any involved, caring man and it is the
children who are suffering, as usual. I could not have asked for a better
example to prove what I have been saying for years about the waste and
incompetence of DSW, the ‘legalised’ child neglect and abuse under their
control and the horrible consequences of leaving females unsupported and unsupervised
with children. It should be noted that Wendy and Tracey no doubt have been
putting on their best behaviour for us and we can only guess how violent and
lazy they are when no-one is watching! Peter Topzand is to be held fully
accountable for this situation!
Both these females
treat all the children like army recruits ordering them around, criticising and
belittling them constantly and giving them no peace or proper encouragement.
They are both completely unaware of space, very intrusive, very rough and hit
the children in contravention of DSW's guidelines and policy, holding the
children responsible and punishing them for their own laziness, greed,
selfishness and ignorance. Wendy, like so many fat people is really just very
scared and angry under a thin veneer of fake friendliness and she expresses
this indirectly by being very rough, competitive, attention-seeking, immodest,
frantic, controlling and obstructive. She gives out a lot of confusing and
contradictory double-messages and no sensible person can believe anything that
she says, especially about the children and she plays awful divisive games with
Tim and Andrew, with Tracey and Maryanne and now with Hannah and ourselves. She
deliberately calls Hannah, "Harna"- what enormous and infuriating presumption
- encourages her to call her "Mum&quoot; and regularly does things like not
giving Hannah a pillow until we brought her own lavender pillow at which time
she then covered this with an enormous and completely unnecessary pillow of her
own. They have a huge dog which recently without warning or provocation savaged
their kitten and who is obviously a danger around children. The kitten and
other cat are allowed unrestricted access to the house and the whole house and
garden are fundamentally unclean and unhygienic - while we were there the
kitten fouled with diarrhoea one corner of the living room where Hannah plays.
There is no space whatsoever inside the house for Hannah to play safely and she
has been simply put down on a blanket on the floor in the tiny amount of space
not filled with furniture in the living room. This is a main thoroughfare and
children and adults are constantly coming and going close to Hannah, posing her
a real danger, especially because the other children are so angry, careless and
frantic. Lately Wendy has taken to putting Hannah in a playpen in the kitchen
which is even less healthy, less appropriate and less safe.
Wendy Claxton's
approach to child development is consistent with her being a nurse and she just
fills Hannah's space with large numbers of filthy, broken toys which are
supposed to somehow keep her distracted instead of spending time with her and
responding to her needs. Hannah has not "remained well and happy" but
continues bravely because she has such a fine spirit and because of the
excellent care and sound basis we have given her in order to endure her present
abuse. Hannah is of course grossly overweight and her stomach is always
distended - she has a double chin and her legs and arms are about twice their
healthy size. As Paul said, "When are they going to stop?" She
continues to vomit frequently although Wendy denies this - on a visit on the
11th December, Hannah threw up large amounts of formula three times in the
space of 10 minutes and continues to express so succinctly how she feels about
how and what they are feeding her on, just as she did before. Typical of these
stupid sadists, they not only did not listen or respond to what Hannah was
trying to tell them before but they have done exactly the same thing again, even
worse this time. Hannah is angry, frantic, unsettled, won't lie still for even
a few seconds without screaming, always looks tired and worn out and never
sleeps soundly - she has taken to waking up at 3am to play because they have so
disoriented her. She is constantly disturbed, she wakes crying, she no longer
enjoys standing up supported, she has nappy rash and is not even washed
properly after soiling a nappy which only happens because they will not even
try to listen and respond to her toilet needs. Hannah continuously urinates and
is almost never dry and of course is blamed for this when she has no choice as
to what she is forced to eat and drink. Her habits have been so brutally
disturbed that she now passes motions at any time of the day and night and
these are far from pleasant - whilst with us she happily and fairly predictably
passed a motion when held safely over a pot and had done for months - she
showed us clearly when she needed to go but they never listen.
Hannah's hair is often
not washed, she has had dirt behind her ears, her ears are full of wax (a
common response by children to attempt to block out the noise of females
screeching around her), her finger nails would not be trimmed if we had not
done them ourselves and she now has frequent panting attacks, a bizarre (even
‘possessed’) reaction to her abuse - this is an obvious precursor of asthma and
New Zealand has the worst global incidence of this affliction and indication of
child abuse. In general Wendy is trying to make Hannah just like herself and
impose a worse version of her own revolting childhood on our daughter - the
only people who refuse to see this are parasites like Topzand and Newman, real
users of women and children who simply won't face the truth about their own
mothers and awful childhoods. Until they grow up and do this, their opinions
are absolutely valueless. If anyone is in any doubt about Topzand I suggest
they take a drive with him because he drives like a homicidal maniac,
especially when he has fostered babies in the car. Whenever he brought Hannah
to see us on access visits, he handled Hannah's carry basket like a piece of
luggage and he is rough and dangerous and totally unfit to be in charge of
children, especially his own. Topzand of course has refused to allow us to even
take Hannah for a walk to the local park to get away from the awful
surroundings at the Claxton's place, not because of any real concerns of his
but because Wallace, Flood and Topzand are such game players and so
un-trustable themselves.
This week the main
drain to the sewer from the house blocked and although the plumber effected
temporary repairs, they can't use the toilet, bath, shower and sink normally.
Tracey told us that they cannot wash any nappies and only flush the toilet when
absolutely necessary and that it won't be fixed for 10 days. What would it take
to get DSW to admit they have made a tragic and inexcusable mistake in
approving this person and this place for fostering - an outbreak of dysentery,
cholera and hepatitis?!
Wendy quite openly
said she completely disagreed with the diet prescribed for Hannah by hospital
dietician Rhonda Akroyd (See Attachment "O"). She told us on a number
of occasions in the first fortnight that Hannah now only took a 200mls bottle
in the morning and at night and about half this in the middle of the day, half
the amount prescribed by the hospital that she is supposedly obliged to feed
her on. She also said that she had changed to "Karitane" formula
instead of "Nurture" and used only 2 scoops instead of the usual 4 as
Hannah had been overweight when she arrived. This formula is absolutely
revolting anyway and it was totally unnecessary and really nasty to have
changed Hannah from the Silver Top Cows Milk with a little added sugar or honey
that we fed her on which was both fresh and tasty. It would be really just to
sentence all those responsible for Hannah's mistreatment to a month of being
force-fed on formula out of bottles and the other ‘solid’ rubbish fed to her.
We had the misfortune to taste some of Hannah's solid meals as well and without
exception they were bland or sour (instead of sweet like breast milk),
texture-less and absolutely repulsive. Because Claxton, like most nurses today,
has no idea about what babies need or enjoy, she mixes a whole number of
unrelated ingredients together and then blends it all into anamorphous mess.
Hannah only eats this because she has no choice but in truth her feeding
development and weaning has been forcibly regressed by at least three months.
In the third week
Wendy had clearly been told by DSW to keep to the diet prescribed and Hannah
immediately got heavier and deteriorated. They obviously wanted to make sure
that Hannah would continue to put on weight artificially to prove their point
about the NOFTT diagnosis. As an indication of just how negligent and hopeless
they all really are, after having Hannah for two weeks Wendy still believed
that she had been 6. 3kgs (or 14lbs) on her release from hospital - Hannah was
actually 15lbs 8oz. She was absolutely delighted that when Hannah was weighed
at 32 weeks, she was 7. 9kgs and had apparently gained 1.5kgs or 23% in these 2
weeks. It seems that the maximum increase in weight is the sole aim and perhaps
we should be feeding babies on steroids so they can become Olympic weight
lifters at 2 years of age?! The reference to steroids is not all that facetious
as it can be seen how dangerous overfeeding is from looking at how angry and
rough overfed children like Wendy's son Andrew become. Wendy was dismayed when
I told her that Hannah was at least 7. 3kgs when given to her and that she had
only gained about 500gms since. They make such a fuss about things that are
largely irrelevant and certainly unimportant to disguise their true ineptitude,
ignorance and lack of involvement with the things that really matter.
Up to the first week
of foster neglect Topzand had still pretended to give us support while actually
coming around to gloat and to try to learn about the evidence we would be
putting before the court against him. I was completely honest and open about
our position and told him more than enough for any real professional to realise
that the situation fully warranted much more detailed analysis, discussion and
negotiation. Topzand however had no intention of ever honouring his paid
responsibilities to Hannah or to us and used the transparent excuse that he had
"no choice" but to accept Newman's opinion even given all the well
founded information I provided to the contrary. Topzand is a nasty
conscienceless little criminal about his ‘masters’’ business, very loose with
the information he gives out yet who stupidly believes that he has deceived us
as to his true nature and motives. The insight he gained into our lives and the
time we spent giving to him over the past 4 months leaves him with no excuse or
complaint about his eventual destiny and what is no doubt so deservedly in
store for him at the hands of his MAKER. We are pleased that we will not need
to have anything further to do with him, whatever the outcome of the forthcoming
case, no longer having to endure such a contemptible liar in our lives and
home. Wendy further commented that she disliked using Princess Mary formula
(PMF) - what Hannah had been fed on for 5 weeks in hospital - because it varied
considerably and this erratic diet upset all the babies fed on it. Apparently
the whey ingredients are donated and frequently change in composition.
She also agreed with
our criticism of the low standard of care at the
Considering the
abundant evidence of adult alcohol and drug abuse, smoking and obesity and
diseases related to excessive eating and drinking and insufficient exercise,
all of which can be related to improper infant feeding habits, no rational or
sensible person could accept blindly that the feeding patterns and resultant
weight distribution for babies twenty years ago on which the current
statistical population graphs are based are acceptable, healthy, responsible or
appropriate. This however is the weight distribution to which my daughter
Hannah is being obliged to conform in the absence of any adverse
contra-indications about her health. Under these circumstances to keep a
perfectly healthy baby girl in a hospital for five weeks and then transfer her
to a negligent foster environment is incomprehensible and indicative of the
lengths to which these child abusing deviates and corrupt sadists will go to
avoid exposure and discreditation and to not refuse to collude with corrupt
police who in our case are always lurking insidiously not too far in the
background. Hannah's weight gain is being simplistically analysed anyway and the
first foster female's performance in this regard cannot realistically be seen
as acceptable by their own criteria. Also when Hannah was returned to us early
in August she was predictably very overweight on fluid alone and had very poor
muscle tone. This fluid imbalance we soon rectified by putting her on an
appropriate diet and her muscle tone and fat tissue became healthy and firm.
It can be properly
argued that Hannah in our care lost about half a kilogram of unnecessary and
unhealthy fluid which was replaced by healthy muscle and fat tissue but this
had no net effect on her overall weight. Hannah therefore in real terms put on
at least half a kilogram of proper weight with us, something not shown on the
charts and so conveniently being ignored by those arrayed against us. The
methods of weighing Hannah were also changed several times during our
experience from a spring balance to digital scales, back to a spring balance,
to Baby Health Centre scales and the whole situation became absurd because of this
rigid and obsessional preoccupation with quantitative criteria whilst ignoring
all the favourable qualitative evidence confirming Hannah’s excellent health.
With incompetents like
Newman and Gavin posing as children’s health experts in New Zealand, it is
little wonder that this country has such a high incidence of cot deaths,
asthma, injuries to children and other clear indications of parental and
paediatric ignorance, neglect and irresponsibility. These major problems within
families today demand well planned, properly executed and closely monitored
intervention programs and not the closed, dogmatic, defensive and
self-justifying absurdities and rigid attitude of the
"Every day
enormously overweight, undernourished and nutritionally deprived, generally
uncared for and neglected children are brought in to be examined and attended
to in this institution of degradation. These unfortunate children’s' illnesses
are solely the result of parental neglect and their ‘accidents’ are always due
to them being left alone with no proper supervision or control, often being
intentionally allowed and encouraged to play in dangerous situations. Parents
and especially mothers lie about these circumstances or blame the children
themselves rather than take responsibility for their own criminal negligence.
Doctors do and say nothing about this except pretend, mutter platitudes and
attempt ineffectually to patch up the horrifying physical (and emotional)
damage without looking at the real underlying causes. As a consequence they
become accessories to this literal child abuse and neglect and to pay them one
cent in salary is a wasteful indulgence. They simply ignore, twist or lie about
facts which are inconsistent with their stubborn ignorance and their
theoretical qualifications are not worth the paper they are written on.
The only way to learn
anything real about babies or children is to spend long continuous periods of
time with the same child, personally looking after them and caring for all
their needs.
At best doctors today
are abdicated cowards who allow all that goes on around them without effective
comment or intervention and at worst they are callous and sadistic deviates who
voyeuristically derive actual pleasure out of their obvious suffering. Babies
today commonly are white from no sun or fresh air, have runny noses and
congested lungs from far too much retained fluid and they jerk, twitch, scream
frantically and hysterically or alternatively lie comatose beneath layers of
damaging and unhealthy milk or formula fat, sucking endlessly and continuously
on dummies and bottles of fluid. These unfortunate infants are never really
peaceful within and only ever pretend to be ‘happy’ hysterically. They are
guaranteed to grow into emotionally stunted adults worse than their parents who
have no idea of their own real essence as men and women, no idea of how to keep
clean, to live in simple, tidy surroundings, no idea of how to dress
appropriately with care and wear their hair, no idea of how or what to eat and
drink consistent with their physiological needs, no idea of how to express
their feelings openly and honestly, no idea of how to order their lives
actively in conformance with their real needs and who most certainly will
become addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, other drugs (medical or otherwise) or
to the worst ‘drugs’ today, the accumulation of money and material possessions,
fame, power and the approval of others. They will have no idea of how to really
value life itself nor how to develop a real spiritual awareness and
relationship with their MAKER - GOD is love and when there is no love in your
childhood, you are going to angrily reject the idea of GOD or form some
fantasised unreal concept of HIM like most of those who belong to the
established churches today.
Finally they will
never show real concern for waste, pollution and environmental destruction,
they will respect competitive and unhealthy social ‘norms’ and will endure a
life with no real quality and freedom from disease. These are the
‘statistically healthy’, ‘acceptable weight’ babies all the so-called experts
today are so stupidly proud of and to say they are thriving in any real sense
of the word whatsoever is a lie, a gross and intentional distortion of reality
and a dangerous delusion.”
Conclusions
1) The entire tone of
Gavin's report is hostile, offensive and adversarial, full of unexplained
discrepancies and irresponsible omissions and with no attempt at balance or
compromise. There has been none of the negotiation or discussion so essential
in a case involving the custody and care of a small baby and they have chosen
to cause this to degenerate into a competitive, vindictive and self-serving
justification of their own untenable and absurdly over-reactive, medical
position without any proper focus on Hannah's welfare.
2) A great deal of
irrelevant, prejudicial and unsubstantiated comment has been reproduced (and
relied upon) from highly suspect sources in Queensland without proper
verification and a great deal of time, effort and money has been spent in
fabricating a report unfavourable to ourselves with no effort to listen to our
side of the case.
3) The background of
this case and the manner in which Hannah was first taken from us, given back,
examined in hospital and then put in foster neglect once again can only lead an
unbiased observer to conclude that there are sinister and corrupt forces at
work here who thoroughly deserve imprisonment. In the words of our own
solicitor, it was a "set-up" – for whose benefit, one might
reasonably ask?
4) Hannah has never
been poorly covered with fat and, by all sane, sensible and authoritative
definitions of health, Hannah was thriving and doing exceptionally well when
with us until her hospital admission. By the same criteria Hannah is physically
and emotionally in danger now and she is being subject to a great deal of
criminal abuse and neglect. Just because this has been and is being done by
nurses, doctors and ‘approved’ foster females is no ‘a priori’ justification
for accepting that Hannah is fine or that their opinions can be relied upon
without question in this case. If they are right and have nothing to hide, why
are they not behaving consistent with this position?
5) Hannah was not
"admitted to hospital on the 24th October for her failure to
thrive" but for tests, for a paediatric examination to confirm that she
was doing as well as all other criteria of her health suggested and to discuss
some minor short term "problems" with her weight gain. Hannah is now
very overweight today at 7. 9kgs but would have been about 6. 6kgs and
immeasurably healthier if left with us, a little above the 3rd percentile.
6) The NOFTT diagnosis
is not even consistent with their own authoritative references and the feeding
trial which has been used to prove their diagnosis was a total failure, neither
scientifically objective nor even fair. They have proved nothing except that
they will go to any lengths to get Hannah to
7) A careful and
impartial evaluation of the competence, understanding and commitment of the
doctors, nurses and social workers involved leaves no doubt that they are disgracefully
negligent and culpable themselves and have an extraordinary gall to criticise
anyone about anything before "putting their own houses into order".
8) It is an outrage
that we should have been subject to such an enormous emotional load without any
support and then required to prepare this report in order to get any semblance
of justice whatsoever. One reasonably wonders what hope there is for any
inarticulate, even illiterate person placed in this jurisdiction who was
subject to the machinations of these malicious Machiavellians - as one lawyer
expressed it to me recently, "There is no justice for the common man in
the
We are certainly not
the first people unfortunate enough to be so mistreated by the ‘system’ here -
we just see the worst aspects and report it so that those responsible can be
given an opportunity to do something about it.
Because of the
seriousness and implications of our allegations and the fact that they indicate
corruption at very senior levels in the Police, Justice, Health and Social
Welfare bureaucracies, I need this whole shabby affair investigated as a matter
of urgency by someone senior and completely independent. It can be seen today
as a legacy of the previous government but any failure to act immediately will
soon implicate those now in power. It is a disgrace that this matter should
have been referred to the High Court for resolution as it appears certain to do
because there is no guarantee of judicial impartiality and fairness in our case
(as in Queensland) - the medical position may be just accepted as fact without
question or proper scrutiny just as it was in Queensland. The response to the
spoken or written truth always shows which side you are on and we confidently
anticipate either platitudinous self-justifications in reply, no reaction at
all or some brutal over-reaction directed against ourselves using the usual
sources of illegal intimidation, the police or the mental health system.
Faithfully,
Michael Shelley †
c/-
P. S. On the 20th
December Mary Kennedy, a local solicitor contacted Peter Topzand of DSW. and
asked on our behalf for us to be given interim custody pending the High Court
action which could not now reasonably be expected to take place before February
next year. Topzand refused this request saying that Hannah "always lost
weight" when with us, a complete lie but another indication of his
looseness with words. In truth they have only taken Hannah to strengthen their
position in court and this gives an excellent insight into the lengths they are
prepared to go.
3) Schedule of Attachments For Reports About Hannah
“A” Pregnancy,
Birth and Babycare” & “Hospitals, Doctors and Nurses” on the internet web
site www.geocities.com/michael_the_one/healthandhealing
"C" Notes
on
"D" Hannah's Birth
Notice
“G” Dealings with Foster Female (Wendy Claxton) December 1990 to April 1991
"H" Letter to N.Z.
Government Ministers and Officialdom dated 1st February 1991
“I” History of Events in New Zealand 1990-91
"J" Actual Events of the 23rd May 1990.
"N" Letters and
Complaints about the Princess Margaret Children’s Hospital
"O" Diet prescribed by
the hospital dietician for Hannah upon her discharge.
"P" Published articles
on Non Organic Failure To Thrive
"Q" Letter to first
Foster Female dated 5th July 1990.
"R" Notes on Affidavits
supporting DSW application in N.Z. Family Court.
“S” Hannah’s Warning
“T” Letter to Clare Ward, Medical
Practitioner, Princess Mary Children’s Hospital
“U” To the Presiding
Magistrate, Toowoomba Children’s Court, about Hannah
“V” To
the Presiding Magistrate - Brisbane Children’s Court
“W” Letters to
“X” Letters
to Anna Bligh & Other
“Y” Affidavit to Brisbane Children’s Court – July
1991
“Z” Relevant Extracts from My Submission
to the Fitzgerald Inquiry into Corruption 1988
***********************************************************
“C” - Notes on
It is completely untrue that Elijah, Saul & Joshua were removed from our
care for any "failure to thrive" and this conveniently simplistic
assertion denies the reality of the complex history of our case. Elijah's
removal from our care, for example had nothing whatsoever to do with this and
the subsequent reasons justifying their actions were changed a number of times
as we in turn refuted each one. In fact the real reason for stealing Elijah
from us was an unprincipled attempt to somehow justify their own improprieties,
to discredit our criticisms of their incompetence and corruption and to
disguise their true ignorance and fraudulent misrepresentation as being experts
on baby and child care. In truth all our sons and our daughter, Hannah when
with us were alert, responsive, strong, energetic, happy and remarkably mature
and developed and were extremely open and friendly without displaying any of
the inappropriate insecure craving for affection which is an indication of
emotional deprivation.
All
the reports written in
They show the usual obsessional and rigid preoccupation with weight and other
physical statistical parameters, deliberately ignore any evidence favourable to
ourselves or any contra-indications about their own position and opinions, fail
to deal with any of the issues raised by ourselves which demand open discussion
and diligent consideration and finally provide imbalanced and intentionally
distorted overall conclusions which so predictably justify their own criminal
actions. That they have got away with what is effectively legalised abduction
and child abuse for so long is an indication of how irredeemable and
self-serving the whole system is, how much influence is covertly exerted by
corrupt police (and by the established church) and how little effective redress
is actually available through the equally corrupt courts.
The occupational therapy assessments done in
It was noted that Saul had a different vocabulary from most children of his age
and this was the truth - due to our exceptional care and the way we treated
Saul as a person he had an amazing vocabulary for someone of his age. Instead
of this being deservedly complimented Cooper did her best to detract from it
because it threatened her own limited perceptions and did not support her
completely unfounded conclusions and biased predispositions. It is typical of
these amateurs, posing as authorities on child development that they deprive
children of real individual support and encouragement, treat them as amorphous
groups with no individuality, force them all to develop at the same rate (far
too soon in some respects, subsequently causing very damaging and destructive
resentment), obstruct and stunt their growth in other ways and finally behave
so stupidly as though learning is a completely contrived process where
so-called adults teach children, rather than the reverse.
Although Saul had done a lot of walking with a great deal of encouragement from
his father, he rarely ran or showed much inclination to do so - our peaceful
and unhurried, sensible existence does not involve running and children are
only encouraged and expected to do this to work off their very reasonable anger
indirectly. Cooper notes that Saul did not try to climb up stairs when the
truth is that Saul happily climbed stairs when he knew that someone trustable
was supervising him - Cooper by no stretch of the imagination can be seen as
trustable around or with children. Her stupid expectation that Saul stand on
one foot is typical of these infantile females who expect children to perform
like circus animals and this criterion of balance is really foolish.
Cooper
simply accepted the foster females' own reports about Saul and Joshua when our
own experience shows that females in these positions have a great deal to hide
and frequently and regularly lie and exaggerate. Saul was said to make no
effort to dress himself when we always did this for him, knowing that he would
naturally take this responsibility over for himself when he was ready. In
contrast, typical mothers today force their children to become
"independent" because they are so lazy and selfish and get no real
help from their useless and uninvolved husbands.
Cooper
judged Saul to be not toilet trained, another intentional lie. Saul had been
using a pot from the exceptionally early age of 6 months but he rarely had to
ask or tell us when he needed to go because we regularly took him to the toilet
and tried to be aware of his needs in this respect. Selfish and unaware parents
obstruct their children in so-called toilet training, putting onto their
children the responsibility they are themselves supposed to carry.
Also none of our sons have been given nor ever needed the usual expensive and
totally unnecessary plastic rubbish and toys which lazy and irresponsible
parents dump on their children in order to keep them distracted while they
continue uninterrupted with their own self-absorbed lives. In contrast we spend
lots of quality time with our children every day, filling their lives with
reality and not fantasy and showing them a whole range of stimulating and
learning aspects of the real world and our natural environment, most of it away
from cities.
Because
we share our children's care every day and are both involved in their
upbringing, we do not foster competition, the usual legacy of parental
inadequacy and neglect and paternal absence. As a consequence our sons whilst
in our care would have looked at the testing and trial procedures with both
amusement and disbelief, finding it difficult to understand why so-called
adults should need such absurd and contrived assessment methods instead of a
real involvement in, and appreciation of their lives.
Joshua's
tests showed much the same dishonesty and distortion. Joshua was standing
strongly by himself hanging on at six months (similar to Hannah) and would do
so for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Either they are lying yet again or
they have regressed his growth considerably through their usual inept and incompetent
interventions in the six weeks between when taken from us and when tested on
the 13th December 1985, most probably by force feeding and making
him fat and angry to satisfy their own deviate emotional agendas. We have
clearly seen this happen again with Hannah when she was standing much more
strongly at six months (with us) than she is now at nine months following three
months of deprivation, neglect and abuse in hospital and foster neglect. One
good question to ask is why the Revised Gesell Development Schedules were used
to test Joshua, a 12 months old child when these are usually not used until 18
months, the
Only
children with well developed feelings of impotence, insecurity and inadequacy
are interested in being anything but themselves and the degree to which
competition bizarrely dominates so much of society today, is an indication of
how emotionally retarded and undeveloped people of all ages generally are. In
contrast we encourage and validate our children as people, for what they are
(and not what they do) and do not force them to live out our own expectations
or un-realised ambitions. We most certainly do not constrain them to social
"norms" which clearly have no absolute relevance to sensible and healthy
living. If left with us, their lawful parents, all our children could be
confidently expected to thrive and develop remarkably, showing exceptional
language skills (in articulation, reading and writing) like their father and
mother, an unparalleled general knowledge, a real appreciation of history, the
environment and geography, proper expertise with arithmetical skills, the
ability to play at least one musical instrument and the capability to farm,
look after animals, build houses (carpentry, brick and stone laying etc),
repair and service cars and work in metals, leather and wood.
In other words, a real and valuable education!
Essentially
the reports from
unfounded theories and foolish aberrant opinions of a group of people who know
nothing about themselves and certainly nothing about children. They can't even
agree amongst themselves and the opinions expressed notably by Quinn and Wood
are contradictory in parts - remarkably, both are wrong! It is not that our
children are or ever have been deprived or developmentally delayed in any
respect whatsoever whilst in our care but that they were exceptionally well
cared for and remarkably developed and this so clearly showed the so-called
expert’s involved in our case in their true light - bumbling, incompetent,
ignorant, arrogant, emotionally infantile and retarded frauds guilty of a great
deal of un-rebuked child abuse and deprivation. They take no responsibility
whatsoever for the effect of their own brutal and inexcusable actions and
interferences into our lives and intrude upon the sanctity of our family and
terrorise our children, separating them from their lawful guardians, their
parents. They have for years forced us to flee their illegal persecutions and
then expected our children to be unaffected by this, applying standards and
evaluative criteria to us which they and their children would undoubtedly fail
miserably. In all senses of the word they are contemptible individuals fully
deserving of jail.
"D"
- Hannah's Birth Notice
Hannah
Shelley - Born 18th April 1990
GOD has blessed us with a beautiful and healthy daughter, Hannah born at 5am on
the 18th April 1990 at the Acacia Park Motel,
important respect, our unit was a much more suitable, cleaner, more private,
more peaceful and healthier a place than the best private room in the best
hospital in the entire country. We were less than two kms from the Wanganui
hospital in any case in the event of any difficulties.
Hannah was brought into the world by her parents alone following a brief but
intense two hour labour predictably free from all complications and problems.
We were able to do this unassisted yet again due to our thorough and
responsible preparation, the faith and wisdom we have been blessed with from
above, our real practical experience and the love, trust and understanding that
we share.
Hannah was slowly, carefully and gently delivered with Mary in a squatting
position over clean towels on the spacious bathroom floor. Without the usual
indecent and unnecessary medical haste, the umbilical cord was tied and cut and
Hannah was allowed to adjust to these unfamiliar surroundings before being
bathed and breast fed and then falling asleep in Mary's arms. Mary delivered
the substantial and well developed placenta complete under the shower about
three quarters of an hour after Hannah's actual birth which was examined,
broken into small parts and flushed carefully down the toilet. We were even
able to have breakfast and then check out of the motel carefully and slowly in
the middle of the morning leaving the unit with absolutely no sign of what had
happened. We then drove slowly to
What a contrast to the artificial and
contrived performance, the expense and intrusion, the noise and inept incompetence,
the inefficiency and ignorance, the danger and callous brutality of most
hospital births!
Mary at 47 is healthier now than for the birth of her first daughter 25 years
ago, a legacy of the commitment, devotion and real proper care by her husband
and the total absence of any medical interference. Yet again our simple,
sensible, inexpensive, practical and sane approach to health care has been
validated! It was for both of us a privilege and a great joy to have been a
part of this extraordinary and growing event.
“H” Letter to
To: Simon Upton Minister of
Health
Douglas Graham Minister of Justice
Paul East Attorney
General
John Banks Minister
of Police
Jennifer Shipley Minister of Social
Welfare
Thomas Eichelbaum Chief Justice - High
Court
Sylvia Cartright Chief Justice -
Family Court
Catherine Tizard Governor-General
Richard Deyell Assistant
Director-General – Dept. of Social Welfare)
David Oughton Secretary of
Justice
Christopher Laidlaw Race Relations
Conciliator
Richard Fisher Ombudsman’s
Office
Margaret Mulgan Human Rights
Commission
David Moss/Ian Soutar British High Commission
Robert Laurie Australian
High Commission)
Paul Norris News
& Current Affairs - TVNZ
Keith Slater Executive
Producer - TV3
Phillip Wallington Executive Producer
- TVNZ
1st
February 1991
I
need to write to you all in the course of my life and work following the
appalling injustice involving my wife Mary, our baby daughter Hannah and myself
since we arrived in this country in April last year. I do this to offset the
lies, half-truths, deliberate distortions, malicious misrepresentations,
fatuous fantasies, false fabrications, untrue insinuations, outrageous
omissions and innuendos, spurious speculations, inexcusable exaggerations,
unfounded allegations, obscure irrelevancies, imbalanced and unreasonable bias,
vicious, spiteful and idle gossip, scurrilous scheming and the almost complete
absence of any fact spoken and written about us and our situation. There has
been no balance and anything favourable or supportive of our position has been
and still is deliberately omitted. For those of you remotely interested in
truth or in justice, full details of all that has happened to us are contained
in "History of Events", "Police Malpractices", "Family
Court Dealings" and "Events of 23rd May 1990", copies of which
are enclosed.
In
fact we have been libelled, abused, assaulted, obstructed of justice,
unassisted by those paid and obliged to do so, deprived of entitled resources,
played games with and treated with callous sadism by a group of scheming,
cowardly, manipulative, lying, dangerous, inept, violent, spiteful, vindictive,
conscienceless aged delinquents fraudulently posing as police, prison officers,
judges, court officials, lawyers, social workers, psychiatrists, doctors and
nurses, miscellaneous bureaucrats and other so-called public servants, not to
mention various so-called Christian ministers. Our case is both extraordinary
and unique because we so clearly are more adult and mature, better qualified
and experienced and demonstrably more competent than any and all of the
imposters who have had the enormous insolence, impertinence and presumptive
arrogance to interfere in our lives and intrude upon my family without any just
reason or legal cause.
As
in
Our
case certainly serves to bring to the surface issues of responsibility and
justice, aspects of life that the legal system and public bureaucracy are
determined to ignore and avoid dealing with under the usual legalistic clichés.
Everyone involved in this shabby affair including both our Legal Aid solicitors
(David McNaughton and Carl Edwards), all dozen or so of the District Court and
Family Court judges, all the DSW personnel (Peter Topzand, David Wood, Ruth
Hartley, Shona Flood, Paula Wallace, Douglas Jordon, Barry Russell, Richard
Deyell and John Grant), all those in Mental Health Services (McEnteggart,
White, Chaplow and McGeorge), all the Police (up to and including Davies and Jamieson)
and many of the court officials are criminals in the full literal sense of the
word and are guilty of fraud, misappropriation, false pretences, perjury,
contempt of court, obstructing and perverting the course of justice, child abduction
and child abuse. They have really flaunted their misuse of power and contempt
for the law and clearly have no fear of exposure whatsoever - they even are
foolish and proud enough to believe that no-one in Heaven or on earth can see
what they are really like and what they are doing. In accurate and truthful
terms they are the scum of the earth and this country would be better off
without them.
The
Federal and State Governments in Australia are entirely responsible for the
difficulties we faced up to the 23rd May 1990 having consistently refused for
years to honour their obligations towards seven (7) of their citizens, allowing
and supporting our illegal persecution by totally corrupt, child abusing
deviates in Queensland, most of whom are senior members of the public
bureaucracy. Our governments are all an embarrassment to any law abiding
Australian and the whole country has thoroughly deserved all the 'natural'
disasters and other extraordinary afflictions it has endured since my prophecy
to the media in December 1988 as a direct consequence of their reprehensible
conduct. This situation can confidently be expected to get worse until those
responsible come to their senses and return all our children to us with
appropriate compensation, a full public apology and the dismissal and
prosecution of all those involved in this horrendous abuse of human rights.
The
New Zealand Government in turn is entirely responsible for the events on and
after the 23rd May 1991 and this includes the payment of my outstanding motel
accounts - they caused the problem in the first place, placing us in an
intolerable position under enormous duress where we had no real choice but to
take the steps we took. As a consequence it would be intolerable to give people
who are already grossly overindulged yet another opportunity to air their
groundless grievances and foolish fantasies about us nor to waste our time and
energy listening to their performances of fake indignation and self-righteous
outrage. It is enormous arrogance and indecent hypocrisy anyway to expect my
family and I to appear in a court of law in front of a group of criminal imposters
whose only real investment is to try to load us with their own
irresponsibility, outright fraud, abdication of paid duty and parasitism and so
use us as a focus for all the unresolved personal feelings they lack the
courage, decency and integrity to deal with in their own lives.
None
of these people has the slightest intention of being fair and just, of obeying
the law, of discharging their paid responsibilities under law, of admitting
they have made a mistake or of quitting their connived conspiracy and any
proceedings will be so predictably just a carefully orchestrated charade. They
and all who agree directly or by default with their sinister activities are
worse than my previous descriptions of those in Queensland and I could do no
better than to quote from a letter of mine to the NSW Government written in
February 1985:-
"To
give you an incentive to change, watch carefully how GOD deals with Johannes
Bjelke-Petersen, a man who pretends to be a Christian and yet whose activities
bring enormous disrepute to CHRIST. I have given him a warning earlier this
year which he has chosen to ignore in his pride, presumption and avarice. What
is in store for each and every one of you is foreshadowed in his public
disgrace and eventual demise. This will occur, as with your own fates, without
human intervention or involvement and is clearly a question of your own
personal choice."
"I
am also certainly not going to put my family or myself through the pain and
distress of yet another court room ordeal where the outcome has been shadily
and illegally determined beforehand. I have only taken matters into my own
hands in the absence of any support or assistance from those well able and paid
to do so. If the system here (and elsewhere in
Your
court system here in New Zealand is a complete sham and a laughable disgrace
with small-spirited, relatively insignificant and unimportant, pompous and
emotionally infantile males and females, appointed for all the wrong reasons,
passing judgement about matters they are completely unfit and ill-equipped to
deal with. All those we had the misfortune to have contact with were so clearly
way beyond their level of innate ability, strength of spirit, competence,
understanding and real experience. They presume to sit in judgement of others
when they have not gained the mastery of their own bodies and spirits and
knowingly collaborate with improper influences without any qualms. The police
and DSW would not be so blatantly smug, cocky and confident that their illegalities
and self-justifications would be accepted without reservation in court unless
they knew that the presiding judge was improperly subject to police influence.
No doubt everyone involved in our case has spent the last 6 months creating a
conspiracy of collaborated lies in a desperate cover up attempt. We have the
most profound contempt for them all! I quote from your own Judge Harvey -
"There must be faith in the court system. The community which relies upon
the court to resolve its disputes must have confidence that those within the
system operate it with the highest integrity. If there is no faith, anarchy
must follow." And it undoubtedly will!
Certainly
not one of you comes anywhere near being the man, husband, father and Christian
that I am, through the Grace of GOD and none of you could have endured one day
of what my son Paul and I have gone through in the past nine months. If I had
any reasonable expectation of obtaining justice, I would most certainly have
had no hesitation whatsoever in appearing in court as required. However, until
the police and judiciary here in
I
know WHOM I serve just as I know whom all of you serve and I would not like to
be you when GOD finally loses HIS patience - make no mistake, there is nowhere
to hide and none of your friends in "high" places will protect you
from the wrath to come! You could not do better than to read Proverbs 29:1,
Psalms 37 and Ecclesiastes 8:11 for you are all assuredly choosing to align
yourselves with evil and continue to harden the little that is left of your
consciences. Unless you do something about this shameful affair immediately,
you will understand only too clearly what it means to fall into the hands of
the living GOD - disease and sickness, 'natural' disasters, 'accidents' and
violence, crippling financial losses, breakdown in personal relationships, loss
of life and terror and confusion within. Whether we manage to leave this
country unharmed or not, whether we are arrested or not, whatever is GOD's will
for us, you will all be suitably 'rewarded' justly for your disobedience,
craven cowardice and repulsive level of deceit. For what you have caused Hannah
and Mary alone you all should be imprisoned for many, many years and you are
dangerously deluded if you believe that you will get away with any of it.
Faithfully,
Michael
Shelley †
“I” History of Events in New Zealand 1990-91
I have written this history about our time in
myself, my wife, our son Paul and our baby daughter, Hannah. I do this to
offset the lies, half-truths,
deliberate distortions, malicious misrepresentations, idle innuendos and
insinuations, fatuous fabrications, unfounded allegations and spiteful
speculations made about all of us and our situation. We have been
libeled, abused, assaulted, lied to, manipulated, violated, falsely accused and
arrested, wrongfully charged, improperly imprisoned, deliberately denied justice,
not assisted by those paid to do so, deprived of entitled resources, defrauded
of proper compensation, mistreated with callous sadism and generally played
games with by a group of scheming scoundrels posing as judges, lawyers, police
officers, court officials, social workers, doctors, nurses, prison officers and
other miscellaneous senior public servants. All of these criminals are
dangerous and vindictive aged delinquents who break the law without conscience
every single day and every cent of their salaries is a waste of public money
and a thinly disguised exercise in fraud. Our case exposed them so
clearly for what they really are and has also served to show how essentially
and totally corrupt and self-interested the entire system is here in New Zealand
and how everyone illegally colludes with one
another to prevent their own activities from being exposed and to discredit
anyone who has the courage and integrity to tell the truth about what is really
going on.
Our
case is both extraordinary and unique because we are so obviously very well
qualified and highly
credible and articulate witnesses of the situation, better educated and more
competent as experts on
justice, law enforcement, prison administration, bureaucratic reform, health
and healing, parenting
and Christian living than any of those who have had the enormous effrontery,
insolence, impertinence and presumptive arrogance to interfere in our lives for
no legal or just cause with such unprincipled violence.
As
in
improprieties and illegalities perpetrated intentionally against us are
commonly encountered every single day by all those without money, power,
position, awareness or the ability to articulate and
defend themselves and there is no effective redress or source of appeal.
Our case certainly dispels one convenient and widespread delusion in this
country - that the
We
came here this time early in April 1990 because Mary was pregnant again and we
reasonably had grave concerns about another of our children being born in
Our move to this country was made carefully and responsibly with sufficient
resources to meet our
simple needs and to establish ourselves securely in any reasonable
society. What we encountered was such disgusting avariciousness,
unwillingness to be fair or share and a real hatred of giving that made the
disgraceful situation in
We
are ourselves exemplary and responsible tenants who look after the facilities
we use and we even prefer to service our own accommodation each day. Despite
this, we have never been treated fairly nor spontaneously offered any
reasonable concession for this cost-saving care and responsibility by our
numerous ungrateful, greedy and lazy hosts, irrespective of the length of our
stay. The only times we negotiated the tariff down from its usually
unreasonable level were on single overnight stays and only where we took the
initiative ourselves. We gave the owners of motels where we stayed
several nights or longer ample opportunity to be fair and take the initiative
themselves according to their responsibility, to no avail.
We
had enormous problems with the transfer of money from
In
each case when we urgently required simple assistance, we asked one of the main
so-called
Christian organisations charged with this responsibility and were either
refused or given something inappropriate, insufficient and/or unnecessary just
to make us go away. Disgracefully there is no family shelter in Auckland
- we would certainly never have contemplatted the rigour and depravity of the
usual refuge or shelter environments anyway as these are set up deliberately as
such to satisfy the sadistic voyeurism (or self-indulgent masochism) of those
who get really twisted pleasure out of seeing "captive" men, women
and children in hardship. We needed somewhere clean, tidy, simple,
private, peaceful and inexpensive - the actual cost of this abundantly
available (and widely unused and empty) accommodation would be no more than $40
per week! When those paid to respond to our needs failed to do so, I had
no choice but to organise short term accommodation on three separate occasions
on credit at motels owned by people well able to afford to provide it, making
in every case some appropriate non-financial contribution so obviously needed
in return.
Finally
when we were unable to secure a resumption of our benefit from
The
night before our scheduled flight back to
I
was charged with three counts of "procuring credit by fraud" and was
refused bail even though I offered to surrender my passport if granted
watch-house bail. The police in typical cowardly fashion returned to the
motel late that evening and harassed Mary, trying illegally to steal my
passport without lawful authority and disturbing her for no legitimate
reason. I spent the usual night in police custody subject to the sort of
filth, degradation and abuse which police all over the world see as their right
to subject charged but un-convicted prisoners to. I was denied a
mattress, blankets and toilet paper and not even allowed a shower in the
morning. These childish amateurs conspire in this way to actively ensure
that anyone in custody is brought before the courts looking as dishevelled, as
uncared for, as exhausted, as intimidated and as guilty as possible and what
they commonly do every single day is a crime, far worse than most of the
charges brought against all those in their custody.
In
court the police predictably opposed bail and the full international conspiracy
unfolded with the
usual obstruction and perversion of the course of justice. The police openly
lied about the history of
our case in
I
spent five full days at Mt. Eden prison on remand and upon reception I
requested to be put somewhere in a cell on my own, peaceful if possible and
away from the main prison. This request surprised the staff because they
had already conspired to insinuate that I was somehow psychiatrically disturbed
(they certainly are) and I was put in the Special Care section, satisfying both
positions. I spent the time including my 44th birthday doing what any
real Christian does and it would be hard to imagine anyone behaving with more
maturity, restraint, friendliness, openness and unselfishness under these
difficult circumstances. I met and materially helped every one of the
other inmates, most of whom were in a dreadful state - this was in direct
contrast to the staff who did nothing except make fun of, put down, patronise,
distress and debilitate further prisoners already in crisis, most of whom were
medicated and most of whom were Maori, Samoan, Tongan or Suvan. Although the staff had obviously been
forewarned about my work in prisons in Australia and consequently tried to put
on a show of their best behaviour, I could see clearly just how lazy, nasty,
sadistic, brutal and unhelpful they really were, all this directed against
prisoners most needing and deserving of compassion, understanding and care -
yet again what I have extensively written about the staff in all institutions
was validated.
Notwithstanding
this I was direct, friendly and helpful to the staff as well and even taught
one prison officer the rudiments of playing guitar. Despite my exemplary
conduct and admirable restraint, Robert Wilson (charge nurse) whom I never met
or spoke to, is supposed to have submitted a report indicating
"concerns" about my mental health especially as I was responsible for
a young baby. This entirely fabricated
and outrageous diagnosis was yet another indication of what was really going on
covertly behind the scenes - they were scheming to take Hannah, building a case
to justify the unjustifiable. They desperately wanted to believe the lies
that the
As
with Elijah, Saul and Joshua, our three sons in institutional deprivation and
neglect in
The
best that Welfare here had offered was to put Mary and Hannah in a refuge over
the previous weekend, a move designed to place them under as much stress as
possible and to give them an opportunity to scrutinise Mary and misuse and
exaggerate any information so gained. Typically they use the reasonable
response by people to their own game playing as sufficient evidence to justify
their actions in further harassing people and they were looking for any excuse
to steal Hannah, especially in my absence. Mary reasonably refused their
"help" and cut through their games by leaving
The
following morning another friend of Webber's, a local wrecker came out and
after looking at the car, assured Mary that it was un-driveable and offered her
$200! Mary was both concerned and distressed about her whole situation
and so tried to speak to me in
On
Monday 21st May I requested through my Legal Aid solicitor (David McNaughton)
that Judge Alan Lawson step down and this was sufficient to call his
bluff. I was allowed bail until Wednesday 23rd, hopefully sufficient time
to organise the necessary funds to settle the motel accounts, despite
McEnteggart again trying to submit an even more outrageously falsified report
about me with even less basis in fact. This demented congenital liar is
an absolute danger in the court system and is in a very strange emotional and
guilt-ridden space, obviously requiring psychiatric treatment herself! She claimed amongst other things that I had
been in six psychiatric institutions in
On
Wednesday 23rd May Mary, Hannah and I appeared in court as per my bail
undertaking only to ask for a little more time to arrange funds from
In
great distress and desperation we left
We
drove to Wellington and sought help (unsuccessfully) through an old friend with
the "Frontline" program at TVNZ following which I wrote to
everyone that I felt was able (and required under law) to help including
Ministers of the Crown, senior judges, senior public servants, High
Commissioners and the press. Mary and I then returned to the Auckland
area to collect some money sent by our 22 year son Paul and to await his
arrival from Australia - he was appalled (but not surprised) at what had happened.
We were arrested following defamatory front page articles in
In
court we successfully requested that we be sent for an exhaustive psychiatric
assessment at
The
events of the next four and a half months are fully detailed in my previous
letter dated 13th December 1990 (See (2) above), copies of which
have been sent to most recipients of this letter. No reply has been
received from the three main people responsible (Jennifer Shipley, John Banks
and Simon Upton) as of this date, six months later and Paul East and Douglas
Graham sent the most platitudinous replies, effectively choosing to not get involved
despite the obvious importance of this matter.
Subsequent
to this, all charges were dropped against Mary but only after prosecution
evidence had been published in the papers. They had their "pound of
flesh" as Mary had been in custody for 6 weeks, had her own daughter
stolen from her yet again and we had been deliberately defamed in the press
both here and in
In
truth, however, it is an absolute outrage what has happened which has cost the
unsuspecting New Zealand tax payer tens of thousands of dollars in benefits,
legal fees, salaries, fostering payments, imprisonment and hospitalisation
costs and miscellaneous other avoidable and totally unnecessary expenses.
The court hearing even failed to resolve the situation regarding all the motel
accounts and considerably less than half the accounts are subject to court
order. This means that the only people that have profited from this
catastrophe have been the numerous corrupt public servants involved who are
supposedly paid to resolve it yet who have merely aggravated and protracted it
to suit their own highly illegal financial and emotional agendas.
Faithfully,
Michael Shelley †
“J” Events in
the
10.30am - Michael, Mary and Hannah arrive at the court at the time
previously arranged with their solicitor, David McNaughton and go briefly into
the court room.
10.45am - Michael, Mary and Hannah leave the court, go to the mothers and
babies room, make several phone calls including a call to Qantas and speak
briefly to McNaughton when he arrives at the court about 10.50am.
11.05am - Michael, Mary and Hannah go back into the court room and sit behind
McNaughton. After a very brief hearing, lasting only a few minutes, at which we
requested another week to organise the funds from Australia to settle the three
outstanding motel accounts, bail was extended to the 31st May and the bailiff
hands Michael a bail slip. The police had no objections but Wendy McEnteggart,
forensic psychiatric nurse yet again intervened at the very conclusion and the
judge, William Mitchell then adjourned the case b to consider her statement. We
returned to the mothers and babies room, Hannah was breast fed, taken to the
toilet and washed and we spoke briefly to Major Gordon Brinsdon of the
Salvation Army.
11.30am - Michael was called by McNaughton back into the court room alone as
Mary is still busy with Hannah. The police suddenly become very hostile and
insist that Michael enter dock, no longer being allowed to stand behind his
solicitor. Following an altercation between Michael and the police, Mitchell
consents to Michael standing behind his solicitor. The polices' attitude had
completely changed within the space of half an hour and they foreshadow
objections to bail based on "information just to hand" from
12.15pm – - Mary, after going to the toilet, washing and changing her sanitary
napkin comes out of the toilet after being in there no longer than ten minutes.
She is confronted by White who is hysterical and behaving in a very disturbed
manner, screeching at her "Michael has been taken into custody - what are
you going to do with your baby?!" Mary is most concerned about the whole
situation particularly in view of the police's very sinister and irrational
behaviour and White's alarming demeanour. Mary decides to seek some hopefully
independent support at the British Consul (she is British) and walks slowly and
deliberately to the escalators, out the building and down
12.30pm - Back at the court room Michael was held in the cells until about
12.30 at which time the court was re-convened and the police put their
objections. Michael started to deny and refute their unfounded and largely
fabricated fantasies when Mitchell interrupted and ordered a psychiatric
assessment that afternoon - Michael requested that M’Naghten be present for
this. Michael was again held in custody and a little later was told by
McNaughton that Mary had left the building and gone to the British Consul.
McNaughton told Michael that DSW was going to "do something about Hannah"
but refused to act for us because he was "busy in the High Court on other
matters". Michael was held in cells until after lunch, given a brief and
deplorably inadequate assessment by Elizabeth Annestaad, psychiatrist from
2.30pm
- McNaughton tells Michael that Hannah hass been taken into care but says he can
do nothing. Michael again brought back into court and granted bail without any
police objection. Michael held in police cells for over two hours before being
bailed just after 5pm.
5.15pm
- Michael returned to the Abbey Hotel wherre they had all spent the previous
night (well known by all concerned) and where their luggage was left. There
were two messages for him, one from the British Consul and one from the
Australian Consul. The Australian Consul was closed and had no after-hours
number but Michael was able to speak to Carol Priestly who told him the area in
the city where Mary had told her she was staying. Michael went straight down to
the only hostel in that part of town and found Mary with no difficulty
whatsoever. Michael and Mary returned to the Abbey Hotel, booked in for the
night and Michael rang DSW to find out where Hannah was. He was told by the
social worker on duty that he had no idea and no message had been left about Hannah's
whereabouts nor had any contact number or person been logged. Michael rang
Priestly fl back and told her he had found Mary but Priestly could give no
information about Hannah's whereabouts.
Michael
phoned the
24th
May - Michael rang Paula Wallis of DSW to arrange to have Hannah returned and
to find out how she was. Wallis was hard, patronising, closed and defensive and
generally behaved consistent with considerable guilt and entirely
inappropriately for anyone who was genuinely concerned about Hannah or our
position. She clearly was fully involved with the conspiracy and had no
intention whatsoever of returning Hannah to us. It was clearly a waste of time
speaking to them further as what had been done to us was pre-planned and
deliberate. Our son, Paul phoned DSW a number of times over the next few days
from
THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS REQUIRE
SATISFACTORY ANSWERS:
- Why was a psychiatric assessment requestted in the first place as I do not
have any history of mental illness nor has my demeanour or any of my behaviour
in or out of the court indicated any sign of emotional imbalance despite being
under sufficient stress to derange any of those who have chosen to persecute
me?
-
Why was a psychiatric assessment needed and bail objected to by the police when
Judge Alan Lawson two days previously had indicated that the best resolution of
the situation was to have the motel accounts settled, return my passport and
have us all return to Australia immediately?
-
If ‘a psychiatric assessment was deemed to be necessary, why was this not
simply made a condition of bail in the first place?
-
Why did the police lie about the information they had "just" received
from
-
As I left Hannah with David McNaughton with clear instructions for him to give
her to Mary, why did he not do so when he knew where Mary was, saving everyone
and most especially Hannah a great deal of distress? Why was McNaughton not charged
with abandoning a child?
-
Why did Wendy McEnteggart, court forensic psychiatric nurse file a report to
the court on the 21st May which was intentionally untrue, defamatory and
offensive, containing information which could have been easily and quickly
discredited?
-
Why did the police not object to bail originally, object vehemently three
quarters of an hour later and then drop all objections an hour later still?
-
Why did Kathy White, Forensic Psychiatric nurse deliberately lie in all her
subsequent statements about the events of this day, providing information which
is easily disproved by our own solicitor at the time, David McNaughton, by the
Judge, William Mitchell, by the police prosecutor and by her own crooked
colleague, Wendy McEnteggart?
-
Why did David Chaplow, McEnteggart's and White's superior in Forensic Mental
Health Services not only not respond to my reasonable complaints about his
subordinates' reprehensible behaviour (made the day before) but he vindictively
compounded the conspiracy by making claims himself about my behaviour which
were even less based on fact?
-
Why did Peter Topzand of DSW subsequently write a statement for file which
accepted White's claims without question, which contained statements easily
refuted and which conveniently omitted specific and detailed information about
important facts and events?
-
Why did DSW proceed with an application for the issue of a Place of Safety
Warrant at 2.30pm when they were fully aware of Mary's whereabouts at that
time?
-
Why was I not brought up one flight of stairs from the cells below to appear in
the DSW action about Hannah when everyone knew where I was?
-
Why did no-one from DSW inform me of what was going on above my head in the
court action nor even have the decency to tell me afterwards what had been
decided?
-
Why did David McNaughton, our own legal "aid" solicitor lie to me
about being unable to represent us in any action about Hannah and then spend
the afternoon in the District Court building?
-
Why have the police proceeded with the "abandoning a child" charge
when, even if their account of the situation was correct, it is clearly an
oppressive, unfair, unjust and unnecessary action especially in view of the
distress we have all been subject to already?
-
Why have DSW supported this police action despite Peter Topzand's own
description of the situation as "uncharacteristic",
"unfortunate" and "unnecessary", as close to the truth as
this depraved individual will get?
-
Why did Peter Topzand lamely try to explain the extraordinary actions of DSW on
that day by saying to us later that "We expected you to come and get
Hannah when you were released on bail and when you didn't show up by 5pm,
Hannah went into care and we all knocked off for the day" yet this patently
absurd claim does not appear on his note for file written after the fact on the
12th June 1990? Why did Topzand insist that this was normal DSW procedure and
then, at his own request, visit us at home two months later after 7pm?
-
Why did the police and the court office deliberately delay releasing me on bail
for over two hours, just enough time to allow the DSW office to close?
-
Why has everyone lied in this matter, what have they got to hide?
Conclusions
1) They had already conspired to refuse me bail and take Hannah from Mary
before the morning of the 23rd May and would have done so if Mary had not so
sensibly and providentially "cut through their games" by leaving the
court. They so obviously just used Mary's brief absence from the court as a
convenient ploy so as to justify the unjustifiable, kidnapping a 5 week old
breast feeding baby from her father and mother.
2)
All the statements written by the above co-conspirators were compiled
afterwards to obscure what really happened and to provide an after-the-fact
justification for their improprieties and provably so. In particular none of
the statements or explanations made by DSW hold true but are "red
herrings" and simply designed to take the focus off their own criminality.
3)
A careful scrutiny of the events of the 23rd May and a proper examination of
everyone's behaviour leaves any unbiased or impartial person in no doubt as to
the horrifying corruption which infests the whole system here. No effective redress
is available and all appellate channels are themselves fully implicated and less
than useless.
4)
McEnteggart and White in particular are grossly over-indulged, lying, deranged
and emotionally retarded game players who should be physically restrained for
the safety of themselves and others. They do less than nothing around the court
system - rather they hinder, obstruct, confuse and distress apart from costing
the tax payer enormous amounts of money better used to settle my motel
accounts. These females could not however be so out-of-control unless the males
within the system (especially the judges) were not as useless, abdicated,
ineffectual and corrupt themselves.
5)
The attitude and behaviour of the Police and DSW both then and now is simply
consistent with an extraordinary level of guilt and a desperation to escape
detection. They have been prepared to go to any lengths to discredit what we
have spoken and written about corruption, both here and in
Michael Shelley †
To:
John Newman January
1991
We needed to write to you as the only sane way of
expressing our outrage at what is being done to our daughter (sister) Hannah by
you and your staff at that den of deliberate deprivation, the Princess Mary
Children's Hospital. I am dictating this while Paul writes. In
contrast to so many so-called public servants today, we do not focus our anger
violently, sadistically, vindictively or illegally against defenceless members
of the public - we are adults, not aged, un-weaned infants.
The Princess Mary Children's Hospital is a complete confirmation and validation
of everything I have written and notably the truth about hospitals, doctors and nurses.
The actual situation in
This situation would not be so bad if you were open and sensible enough to even
consider and discuss some of the valid criticisms and allegations made about
you and your staff. However, like all essentially corrupt and
conscienceless people the world over, you arrogantly behave as though you are
beyond any rebuke whatsoever and react to any complaints in an unreasonable,
irrational, rude, imbalanced and hostile manner. This of course only
serves to confirm just how valid the criticisms really are because people with
nothing to hide (like ourselves) do not behave in this closed and defensive
manner. What is so infuriating is the unfounded presumption that you have
all the answers when there is so much abundance of evidence to the contrary all
around you, right under your noses so to speak.
You have a fragile and tenuous hold on reality and display absolutely no
self-awareness whatsoever yet this is the first essential step to understanding
anything real about human behaviour or the human condition. Your attitude would be
laughable if it were not so dangerously destructive and foolishly deluded -
nothing of enduring value or worth is best learned out of books. The only
way to begin to understand what babies really need is t <=o
spend continuous time with one or more of these wonderful little people from
their conception onwards, throughout their pregnancy, birth and the first year
or so of their lives, being actively involved in all practical aspects of their
care. You, for example have never even begun this essential
"apprenticeship" and you never will - you have no real desire to
learn and you avoid heart-felt contact with people, especially babies.
The "thriving" issue highlights just how diametrically opposed and
mutually exclusive is my practical and verifiable wisdom about child health
when contrasted to your own theoretical, damaging, largely useless and
fundamentally flawed nonsense. I have summarised thriving adequately,
simply, understandably, comprehensively and sensibly in a single quarto page of
typing whereas your three so-called "authoritative" publications,
written by that charlatan Kim Oates (to whom I have separately written some time
ago) were complicated, confusing, misleading, self-importantly academic,
superficial, lacking in real insight and finally which deals with symptoms and
not causes, as usual.
Hannah was thriving in all respects until effectively stolen from us yet again
under the flimsiest pretext, forcibly delivered into the hands of you and your
staff. From that point on the 24th October 1990 she most certainly failed
to thrive and her physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health and well
being has markedly deteriorated since. She has not been handled with any
gentleness or care, she has not been kept clean nor changed regularly, she has
not been dressed properly, she has been constantly disturbed, woken and
intruded upon, no caring adult has spent any quality time with her (except the
three of us), she has been deprived of essential sunshine, fresh air,
sufficient natural exercise and time spent with the very people she has so
sensibly and reasonably come to love and trust. Finally, she was
assaultively fed nine times a day, not out of any concern for Hannah's physical
nourishment needs but out of a warped desperation to find or fabricate a flaw
in our reasoning and so discredit the truth we have both spoken and written
about frauds like you. In your eagerness to escape reality, you even had
Hannah fed 30-40% more fluid than the unhealthy amount already prescribed by
your own dietician - 150mls every four hours! With all the resources and
understanding of modern medical science, you have actually managed to prove
that by force feeding a defenceless infant on vast amounts of fluid that she
will put on weight rapidly! For this we waste so much public money and
indulge unintelligent individuals like you by encouraging you to waste seven
years at university pretending to learn about health and healing and then to
impose yourself on some section of the unsuspecting community.
You could not even display the proper
professional detachment and impartiality necessary to prove anything conclusive
from the horrendous hospitalisation Hannah has been forced to endure for the
past two weeks. A proper scientific approach would obviously have been to
maintain Hannah's feeding regime at the same level as we said we fed her on at
that time, a diet which had been repeatedly ratified and complimented by your
own so-called professional colleagues including the hospital dietician.
By assaultively feeding Hannah in such a debilitating environment has only
proved the outrageous lengths that scoundrels like you will go to avoid facing
the truth about yourselves.
Hannah today weighs just under 7 kilograms and
she has never been in worse shape in any respect. She is completely worn
out, over-tired, puffy, full of fluid, tight, tense, jerky, rough and she hits
herself, all clear { signs of neglect and deprivation.
She even shows less strength and a regressed development aptitude in standing
and sitting (Gross Motor) than she did a fortnight ago. With your rigid
and irrational beliefs about weight and diet, quantity and not quality you have
successfully in such a short time greatly distressed and literally abused
Hannah, setting her growth back three full months.
In our considered opinion John Newman, based on the ample,
verifiable, factual evidence available to us so far, you are an arrogant,
self-opinionated, ignorant and dangerous child-abusing deviate who deservedly
should be imprisoned and who would be if people like yourselves did not equally
infest the judicial system and legal profession. We are so incensed at
your inexcusable, execrable and scandalous experimentation on Hannah that we
want nothing further to do with you, with your staff or with your
hospital. Unless Hannah is returned to our care immediately, enabling us
to patiently and painfully undo the damage you child molesters have done to her
yet again, you can confidently expect the sort of chastening from your MAKER
that I have accurately predicted for so many other people throughout this
country and Australia over the past ten years in the course of my Ministry. What we have all seen, heard and felt in your
hospital has made us so sickened, disgusted and infuriated that words cannot
adequately describe the outrage we feel.
To believe that no-one knows, understands or
appreciates what is really going on underneath the carefully cultivated
pretence, self-serving excuses and platitudinous self-justifications is foolish
enough but to continue as though GOD HIMSELF does not see into your heart and
understand what you are really about is asinine stupidity.
Michael, Mary
& Paul Shelley †
To: Graham Aitken (General Manager -
Ron De Witt (Acting G.M.
- " "
) 2nd
October 1990
Re: Complaint regarding
the Mistreatment of Hannah Shelley
I needed to write to you both to express my family's and my own concern
regarding the treatment of my 6 month old baby sister, Hannah Shelley who is
currently being detained in ward 31 under the "supervision" of John
Newman, Paediatric Consultant and his assistant, Raewyn Gavin, Paediatric
Registrar. Firstly, Hannah is currently the focus of a serious dispute between
ourselves and the Department of Social Welfare, the circumstances of which are
highly contentious. Hannah was in excellent health when admitted to the
hospital on the 24th October and we confidently anticipated that this would be
confirmed by the paediatric examination and tests. Subsequent behaviour by
staff has been unreasonable, secretive, spiteful, irrational and unfair and we
reasonably feel that the treatment we have all received would be very different
if we were not who we are and if we had not written what we have written about
hospitals, doctors and nurses. Our case is not being treated on its own merits.
Before we agreed to take Hannah to the hospital for tests, we first carefully
arranged over a week beforehand through our local G.P. on
The original admission we were told was for a maximum of 24 hours yet we were
greeted by a nurse at the ward (Raewyn Palm) who told us that Hannah would be
in for several days. A little later whilst bathing Hannah we spoke at length to
Raewyn Gavin who had an excellent opportunity to clearly see how well Hannah
was. At this stage Gavin confirmed for us what we already knew - that Hannah
was a healthy, thriving baby who would obviously "pass her O.T.
assessments with flying colours", certainly "enough to keep DSW
happy". We later spoke to Rhonda Akroyd, the hospital dietician about
Hannah's diet and she also validated the correctness, nutritional balance and
sufficiency of what we fed Hannah - it would not be an exaggeration to say that
Akroyd was both surprised and impressed with our dedication to responsible
feeding. We had every reason to expect that we would be able to take Hannah
home that evening without needing an overnight stay as she had been admitted
early in the day, examined and been subject to a large number of tests. We
anticipated a further visit to the hospital to discuss the results and the
implications of these tests a few days later.
Hannah was however held overnight and I stayed with her in order to minimise
the distress caused to Hannah by the strange surroundings and by the noisy, rough
and intrusive staff. I found this situation most difficult because I had been
actively involved in a great deal of Hannah's care since she was returned to us
at just under 4 months and our standards of care are obviously so much better
than those of the hospital staff. Also together with Michael and Mary I had
spent many, many painful and infuriating hours undoing the damage inexcusably
caused to Hannah whilst in DSW's control by people exactly like many of the
hospital staff - I had every good reason to be firmly protective of my sister! On
the following day Hannah w “as given an O.T. assessment by Janet Milne
and she demonstrated exceptionally good development in all respects for her age
- Milne reluctantly gave us a copy of her assessment in response to my request.
Late that afternoon John Newman came to the ward to see Hannah (deliberately?)
while Michael and Mary were absent. I was quite surprised by his manner because
he came to the open doorway and just stood staring at me unpleasantly without saying
a word - I had to take the initiative to introduce myself. Despite our prior
arrangements Newman insisted on examining Hannah and I was understandably most
unhappy about this and quietly objected when he tried to take her nappy off. Newman
was very rude, closed, defensive and hostile from the very outset, the
behaviour of a guilty man with much to hide (and lose) despite having had no
contact with me whatsoever prior to this meeting and despite my own efforts to
be amicable.
Newman was offended at my objection and said he could not see the
difference between me touching Hannah around her private parts and him - he was
a supposed expert on babies and a consultant to the hospital. It was as though
we should suddenly change all our deeply held beliefs just to accommodate his
childish whims and demanding self-indulgence. Not only is this the exact
opposite of what is supposed to happen with dealings by public servants with
the public but it is even contrary to the Auckland Hospital Board's Code of
Rights and Obligations for patients. Newman refused to answer any of my
questions about Hannah's situation or give me the results of any of the tests
and he left saying he would come back when Michael and Mary returned. He did
not honour this obligation and he obviously did not wish to give us any
information which would validate our competence as care-givers. Later when I
discussed Newman's attitude with Michael and Mary we all realised that he and
Topzand had deliberately conspired to deceive us and they never had any
intention of complying with our request for a female paediatrician. DSW had
obviously agreed beforehand with Newman that he provide a diagnosis that,
although not consistent with the facts, would be damaging to our reputation and
would justify the unjustifiable - taking Hannah from us again! No impartial
professional would behave like this.
Newman later sent a social worker by the name of Judy Clayton to see us to whom
we explained the situation very clearly. We all also sensibly took advantage of
this opportunity to express some of our indignation about the situation and
about the shameful things we had already seen in the ward. The next morning
Friday 26th Peter Topzand of DSW arrived looking decidedly unpleasant and tried
to imply that we were behaving unreasonably (he was!) even though he had
previously agreed to our requests for a female paediatrician. Topzand
effectively FORCED us to accept Newman's examination, against his own
department's legal obligations even though there are female paediatricians
attached to the staff of the hospital. Topzand used the ploy that "the
sooner Newman's examination was complete, the sooner we would be able to take
Hannah home". This sort of culpable deviousness and deceit has been a
feature of Topzand's behaviour and dealings with us for the entire past four
months although he is not very good at disguising this.
Newman arrived gloomy and unpleasant and stated arrogantly that he had read
some of what Michael had written but "was not prepared to discuss it"
even though he is PAID and obliged to do so in this serious situation. Michael
said that he was not surprised by Newman's (closed) attitude and added that
although he accepted that Newman knew much more about paediatrics, that he
(Michael) knew much more about babies and children. With Topzand's insistence
we had no choice but to allow Hannah to be examined by Newman although we were
very suspicious as to why this was being done when there were female
paediatricians on the staff. We have NEVER objected to or refused any gentle or
careful examination of Hannah by any number of female nurses or doctors.
We were all repulsed, disgusted and sickened at the way Newman effectively
fondled Hannah in a sexual and highly provocative manner as if to say
"don't tell me what I can and can't do in my hospital!" He completely
unnecessarily prolonged and repeated the actual examination despite Hannah's
obvious distress and Topzand actually enjoyed all our discomfort. The truth is
that any competent and caring expert in these circumstances could have only
used their eyes to assess accurately whether Hannah had sufficient
sub-cutaneous fat tissue. Newman then stated quite categorically that Hannah
had insufficient fat tissue, a diagnosis that we reasonably believed was a
"fait accompli" prior to Hannah's admission to the hospital. Newman
was aware of a letter Michael wrote to Nigel Stewart, a fellow paediatrician
and one of his colleagues months before in which Michael deplored the state of
Stewart's pregnant wife, his other children, his own home and obvious
hypocrisy. Newman then announced gleefully that he wanted Hannah to be kept in
hospital another ten days - when closely questioned he agreed that we could
take Hannah home for the weekend and come back on Monday but we decided to have
her stay as this (we hoped) would cause her least disruption.
A little later that day, Judy Clayton and Cherrie Scott came in to our room and
announced that we were "obstructing the staff in their care of
Hannah". We were absolutely amazed and outraged at this completely
unfounded allegation and insulting, dishonest nonsense. There was no
implication at any time that the staff were to be responsible for looking after
Hannah and when she was first admitted, we agreed with both Raewyn Gavin and
the nursing staff that we would continue to feed, clothe, bathe and play with
Hannah õ as we have for months. This we
thought would distress Hannah least and give those interested an opportunity to
see how we cared for Hannah, providing a basis for a sensible and impartial
discussion, focusing on Hannah's needs. It had even been agreed that we fill in
Hannah's charts and no-one had voiced any objections previously. We had not
even complained when the X-ray staff were sadistically brutal with Hannah and
only quietly objected when those collecting blood samples made such a mess of
doing this simple task that Hannah started to scream. Clayton's statement was
so obviously a deliberate deception, an attempt to disguise their sinister and
covert plan of action which was to prove that there is something wrong with our
care of Hannah and to stop our scrutiny of the staff themselves. We also
believe that the staff were very threatened and even jealous of the exceptional
care we were giving Hannah and wanted to "obstruct" us. We were asked
to not spend nearly as much time with Hannah and to only visit her for half an
hour or so, three times a day.
What is so disgraceful about their behaviour is the deceit and lies which they
practise so unnecessarily and so regularly due to the complete absence of any
involved supervision. Although we would not have been happy about the
situation, we would have at least understood it and complied reluctantly with a
request to allow staff to look after Hannah. The manner in which they did this,
especially in trying to blame us for their own dishonesty and underhandedness
is exactly like the criminals in Queensland involved with Elijah, Saul and Joshua,
my half-brothers in foster neglect there. Their behaviour completely vindicates
and validates everything Michael has spoken and written about "Hospitals,
Doctors and Nurses", a copy of which Newman no doubt has read. Like so
many people involved in our case, the primary motivation underlying their
behaviour is to vindictively discredit and find fault with us regardless of the
facts. Newman deliberately refused to accept the evidence of his own eyes
because of his pre-disposed antagonism and bias and his conduct is most
unprofessional in every regard. That someone so small spirited should be
allowed such latitude without proper supervision is a danger and a disgrace and
an indication of one of the serious problems within the hospital system in
Since Hannah was put in your hospital five days ago she has suffered and
stopped thriving because Newman (and many of the nursing staff) wants to focus
against Hannah things that have nothing to do with her (or us) and he knows
this. Hannah has had to endure the following in the last 5 days:-
1) Being assaultively over-fed on large quantities of fluid, disruptively
doubling her fluid intake suddenly with no adjustment period. The actual diet
fed to Hannah is even more than that prescribed by Rhonda Akroyd.
2) Being changed from our excellent and fully approved diet spuriously and
perversely, not in accordance with Hannah's needs but in a desperate attempt to
prove a point and out of competitive and provocative trouble-making.
3) Being continuously left in wet (saturated) nappies while staff sit, talk and
eat patients food.
4) Being repeatedly distressed, disturbed, roughly handled and intruded upon
and getting absolutely no real love or care (e.g. gentleness, peace, quiet
etc). Liz Hall and Lorraine Ledger in particular are brutal, sadistic and very
intimidating and are totally unfit people to be in charge of children or
babies.
5) Being left in far too much clothing and
becoming sweaty and hot with no choice of her own.
It is incredible to me that the Code of Rights and Obligations for patients
specifically requires them to be open, honest and considerate, especially as
regards noise yet the staff do not even make the slightest attempt to observe
this themselves. We have even needed to ask the father of another child in the
same ward to turn down the radio on which he was loudly listening to the races
- the staff of course said and did nothingg because they are worse. We are all
supposed to be entitled to "considerate respectful care" and by no
stretch of the imagination does this describe the attitude or treatment by your
staff.
Hannah was on the 3rd percentile when admitted to hospital and was in
everyone's opinion alert, responsive, happy, strong, exceptionally developed
and healthy and she has excellent relationships with her father, her brother
and as far as possible with her mother. Almost all your own staff have
commented on just how beautiful and happy Hannah is, a validation of all the
care WE have given her - some of the staff are obviously suspicious as to what
are the real reasons for her being held in hospital. The concerns about
Hannah's weight need to be addressed openly, with compassion and in detail and
our well-founded opinions about this properly listened to and dealt with.
Your urgent attention is required to this matter
and we are staying in the hospital family unit (2) at
Paul Shelley †
Footnote –
I was asked to leave the hospital a few hours
after submitting this complaint despite our best efforts to co-operate with the
staff. I was even told to vacate the provided hospital flat immediately
(Michael and Mary had gone back home for the weekend), deliberately making
access to Hannah very difficult as we were living on
Their behaviour was and is consistent in every
way with guilt-ridden people who have a lot to hide and who totally misuse and
abuse their entrusted power against the very people they are paid to serve. I
was even asked to give them my own careful notes about how the staff had
behaved and how Hannah had been neglected and put upon by them - I of course
refused. The written reply to my fully justified complaint arrived nearly two
weeks later and was insultingly inadequate and superficial, full of the usual
self-justifying platitudes and excuses with no responsible follow up or proper
investigation.
Notes regarding the Hospital's Treatment of Hannah
- Hannah was rarely changed and they used double nappies to make life easy for
them.
-
The staff lied about Hannah's disposition and about her habits in order to make
them seem reasonable, efficient and competent and to validate their behaviour
and treatment.
-
Sometimes there is only one nurse for ten babies.
-
Meat was introduced straight away into Hannah's diet without proper adjustment
period in contravention of their own pamphlets and despite Hannah's acceptable
iron level.
-
Hannah was regularly fed more than the dietician's recommendations and the
approach was to give her as much as they could possibly force her to take. This
was irrational and extreme, denied Hannah's essential rights and space and
again contravened a Department of Health guideline.
-
Formula tasted like chalk and was absolutely revolting with no sugar added -
why change Hannah from cows milk when she clearly digested it adequately based
on organic tests.
-
Hannah's toilet habits completely disrupted for no good reason and she was
never tried on the pot despite our example and request upon admission.
-
They made a pathetic attempt to exercise Hannah in the middle of a busy ward
floor - they cannot stand to go outside even though this took no longer.
-
Hannah not bathed every day and her hair regularly is unwashed - convenient use
of sponge bath.
-
Hannah tense, tight, frantic, unhappy, agitated, distressed and terrified,
slept only fitfully, constantly disturbed, woke crying (often in the middle of
the night) yet despite all these clear indications of neglect and abuse, they
stolidly maintained their entirely unfounded perspective and delusions about
what was acceptable care.
-
Hannah was bloated, not burped, force fed, deprived of any proper holding and
even fed in a high chair - why?
-
Hannah licks at the cot bars which she has never done before and her jaw is
swollen from constant sucking.
-
Hannah fed on bottles immediately before or after solid meals, usually six
fluid meals totalling from 720 - 1140 mls per day, woken two or three times
every night. This total nine meals a day and up to 30% more than recommended.
Hannah is even fed at midnight because she would not sleep. As a general
practice they wake babies up to feed them which is literally torment and this
is done, not because they need it, but to use them as a focus for their
unresolved anger and pain - deliberate sadism and enjoyment of what was done to
them as babies.
-
The nurses mess up everything they touch, never cleaning up after themselves
and never putting anything in order. Despite the fuss about cleaning, the ward
was never properly cleaned and we needed to ask a nurse to clean up mess
underneath the cot which made her really angry.
-
Everyone had a different opinion and no-one really knew what was going on.
Hannah was moved out of the most appropriate private ward on her own which was
peaceful and quiet and put in the worst ward which very ill, screaming children
who needed constant attention and disruption.
-
Hannah was moved three times in two days within the ward and deliberately
placed in the noisiest section away from the window and fresh air - we had to
open the window and no staff close or open windows.
-
Hannah had bad nappy rash, running chapped nostrils and at one stage was given
Amoxil syrup and paracetamol for an ear infection and a high temperature.
-
Instead of real involvement and care Hannah was given huge, filthy plastic toys
and stuffed animals and dolls using the assumption that the more rubbish you
give children, the more distracted and quiet they will be.
-
Without conscience they destroyed Hannah's trust and did their level best to
ruin her relationships with her father, mother and brother.
Sunday, July 28, 2002 9:45 PM
From: "michael
To: New Zealand Ombudsman
Mary and I also both need to herein make a
further complaint (together with our 22 year old son Paul) about the treatment
accorded to our 7 month old daughter Hannah during her recent five weeks
enforced stay in ward 31 of the Princess Mary Hospital here in Auckland. Some
details of this are contained in a recent complaint written to the Ministers
responsible, a copy of which was sent to your office here in
With GOD's inimitable timing the New Zealand
Herald just recently reported your "unbalanced, unsubstantiated and highly
damaging" report into the situation at the hospital following a complaint
by Brett Boyle. Our own experiences at the hospital over six full weeks,
covering all seven days of the week gave us an excellent, comprehensive and
thorough insight into all aspects of this hospital's activities and we have
absolutely no doubt that Boyle's claims are true in every respect. Your report
on this can only be honestly termed a criminal outrage, a completely corrupt
piece of contemptible collusion and a transparently contrived white-wash. Those
involved in the hospital inspection and in the compilation of the report should
be dismissed and charged with conspiracy!
One of the "outstanding" features of the Princess Mary Hospital and
one which was confirmed in all our discussions with several other parents was
the extraordinary presumptive arrogance of the staff who interfered, intruded,
provoked, were rude and generally behaved as though they were beyond any
criticism or censure, a law unto themselves. Our own observation with not only
Hannah but with at least seven other patients was that the staff have an
enormous amount to hide and that they are guilty of a great deal of totally
unnecessary and completely inexcusable child abuse, neglect, deprivation,
intimidation and even literal sadistic torture. It is our experience that
no-one wants to face the truth about the medical/nursing professions today
because they foolishly and naively depend so inappropriately on them with
disastrous results.
To quote the newspaper article and Gary Taylor, the chairman of the Auckland
Area Health Board in its proper
context, we can "never be fully compensated for the trauma and personal
suffering this irresponsible and scurrilous" behaviour by staff "has
caused" - Mr. Taylor obviously has a great deal to hide himself, a very
large personal investment in being less than frank and honest and ample reason
to feign outrage to disguise his real underlying guilt and total abdication of
responsibility. That Paul was asked to leave the hospital and we were all asked to vacate the hospital flat provided only
after Paul had made a reasonable complaint to the general manager in writing is
a clear indication of just how spiteful, unreasonable and over-reactive even
senior management can be. It is really disgraceful that people like us are
actually punished for standing up for ourselves or for making legitimate
complaints yet this situation generally exists and will get worse as long as
appellate organisations like yours effectively collude with those responsible.
Taking exception to this statement will not help the situation at all!
We reasonably need your urgent attention to this and would insist that we be
not further insulted by any of the customary platitudinous self-justifications
and baseless excuses which are so conveniently forth-coming in these
situations. Any unbiased, diligent and scrupulously fair examination of the
facts will prove beyond any doubt the veracity of our claims.
“O” - Hannah’s Diet as Reccommended by
Rhonda Akroyd (
Hannah's Diet
This diet was stipulated for Hannah upon her
release from hospital late in November 1990. Hannah was then just over 7
months old and was well above the 10 percentile for weight distribution.
200mls of formula (Karitane, SMA, Nurture)
every 4 hours except for 0200 hour feed.
Total daily = 5x200mls
= 1000mls or 1kilogram plus Breakfast - rice, farex, junior muesli, creamoata,
fruit puree plus milk Lunch - puree meat and mashed potato, half a yoghurt or
custard pottle (100mls) plus fruit puree or mashed bannana Dinner - puree meat
or chicken with gravy, mashed potato/kumara/pumpkin/silver beet, milk pudding
with or without fruit puree Total amount = 2-2.5kilograms of food per day or
over 30% of Hannah's body weight per day!
It should be noted that this diet specifies
more than twice the authoratitive recommended daily allowance of fluid and milk
products. Coupled with grossly derelict general care and insufficient
encouragement to exercise, any baby anywhere within the weight distribution fed
on this diet would be subject to what can only literally and accurately be
described as assaultive over-feeding and abusive maltreatment.
This diet cannot be
justified on any sane or informed nutritional basis but merely reflects a
conspired desperation by the hospital and DSW to force Hannah to weigh much,
much more than what for her is a healthy and satisfactory weight. They are
obviously just using Hannah in an attempt to prove a point which in normal
legal and professional circumstances cannot be proved with no regard whatsoever
for the horrendous short and long term consequences for her.
“P” - Non Organic Failure To
Thrive Articles (NOFTT)
1) AUSTRALIAN
PAEDIATRICS JOURNAL (1984) 20. Pages 95-100
"Non-organic
failure to thrive"
R.Kim
Oates
2) A.J.D.C. - Volume 138 - August 1984 Page
764
"Development
in Children following Abuse and NOFTT"
R.Kim
Oates, Anthony Peacock and Douglas Forrest
Childrens
Medical Research Foundation,
3) PEDIATRICS
- Volume 75, No. 1, January 1985
"Long-term
Effects of NOFTT"
R.Kim
Oates et al.
“Q" - Letter to first
Foster Female dated 5th July 1990
To Hannah's
Foster Females
Sunday, July 28, 2002 9:00 PM
To: Hannah's Foster Females (Mary Pukohu
Gillies/ Anne Mitchell) 5th July 1990 I needed to write to you following our recent
three access visits to our precious daughter Hannah. As her father and on
behalf of her real mother, Mary I need to make the following points about
Hannah's position, health and general well being.
First it is important to off-set any of
the untruthful information put forward by both Social Welfare and the Press
about what happened on the 23rd May at the court. Mary and I are exemplary
parents and have never abandoned any of our children and never will.
In truth, the police in typical criminal
and spiteful fashion, conspired to steal Hannah from us in a clumsily
orchestrated charade, using the flimsiest and most transparent of excuses. As
you have now accepted responsibility for Hannah, you are an accessory after the
fact to child stealing, both morally and legally.
Social
Welfare's behaviour on that day showed them to be entirely complicit with
corrupt police, determined to remove Hannah from our outstanding care and
committed to not giving her back, no matter what the emotional and physical
distress this would (and has) cause(d) a tiny, vulnerable and completely
defenceless breast-feeding baby girl, our daughter. Like the police involved,
Social Welfare have complete contempt for truth and for proper legal processes
and pay scant regard to the law themselves or to their paid responsibilities
under the Children's, Young Persons and Their Families Act, 1989.
On
Hannah's first visit last Friday we clearly saw the horrendous deterioration in
her physical health and emotional well being since being forcibly separated
from us. However we are Christians and always behave with patience and
restraint under what to most people would be intolerable provocation. We did
however verbally draw a number of things to Peter Topzand's attention as the
responsible person in Social Welfare and I subsequently wrote these in a letter
to him, a copy of which is also held by our solicitor.
Despite these reasonable and quietly
voiced concerns about Hannah, she arrived for the next visit in worse shape and
clearly no-one was interested in listening to our extensive experience and
sensible suggestions about Hannah's care. It is impossible to get competitive,
threatened people to listen, really listen because their perspective of life is
so twisted by the obvious feelings of inadequacy, insecurity and impotence
which dominate their existences.
On
Monday Hannah cried in great emotional distress which was clearly unrelated to
the physical illness she (predictably) had the previous Friday 29th June. When
Hannah was in our proper care, she was always peaceful, relaxed, regularly
changed, clothed with care, handled gently, given the space to sleep soundly
without disturbance or noise, bathed with gentleness and treated with LOVE and
not the pretence which is such a feature of the average New Zealand house and family.
She was then thriving - what a contrast to now! Topzand told us on Monday 2nd
July that she had been examined by a Plunkett nurse that morning and that she
weighed 11lbs or so - no other comment was made about her health or emotional
state despite the fact that even an unqualified amateur could see that Hannah
was in dreadful shape in all respects except her gravitational attraction to
the centre of the earth - her weight. The visit on Wednesday 4th July
(yesterday) only served to confirm for us what is really happening to Hannah
whilst in your so-called "care", more correctly called neglect.
To be specific:
Hannah
always arrives in a sopping wet nappy and has painful nappy rash - not just wet
from a short time of not being changed but clearly from hours of being left
unchanged. This is gross dereliction of responsibility and inexcusable
laziness. Hannah at five weeks of age in our care was already showing good
control of her bladder and bowels when held securely and carefully over a pot
or the toilet, a little after her meals, just after waking and regularly
between times. We do not expect you to do this or even realise that it is
possible but we do expect Hannah to be changed frequently. It is especially
disgraceful that she is not given to us changed and dry - we are not put on
this earth to clean up other peoples' irresponsibility and mess!
We
have been told that Social Welfare has bought clothing for Hannah yet she is
never dressed properly nor with any care. On Friday and Monday she was dressed
in an awful pink all-in-one which was far too small for her, a fact admitted by
Topzand. This acrylic garment was then replaced yesterday by an old cotton
dress. What is so hard about clothing Hannah as we requested for her well being
in cotton singlets (new), cotton T-shirts (simple, plain, pastel colours -
new), terry towelling nappies (new), a warm woollen top (only when necessary),
woollen over-riders and wrap her in cotton or woollen rugs?! That is how we
treated her until Welfare abducted her from us! If they had shown themselves to
be at all reasonable or responsible, they would have arranged to obtain
Hannah's own complete clothing set from us or buy something similar for her. It
is no surprise that the new, good quality over-riders Hannah was wearing when
stolen from us are nowhere to be seen yet these are adjustable and usable up to
six months or longer. The old synthetic over-riders you dress her in are
less than satisfactory, especially the pink, fluffy acrylic ones which I washed
out myself because they smelt and hadn't been washed for a long while.
Hannah
arrives in an expensive carry "basket" which is hard and more
reminiscent of a coffin. She is put on a thin foam mattress with nothing soft
underneath or around her to help her feel safe and secure - the only covering
to the mattress are old Auckland Hospital Board nappies, no sheets and not even
a waterproof. She is always on her stomach because she is so jumpy now from
your rough, noisy, intrusive and inconsiderate handling that she no longer goes
to sleep on her back as she did before.
Hannah
shows clearly to anyone at all interested in her welfare that she has been
deprived, neglected, terrified, put upon, not listened to and generally treated
like a doll with no feelings for the past six weeks since the 23rd May.
Yesterday she was in a worse space than Monday and it was again nothing to do
with any problems with her physical health which is also deteriorating -
everyone involved is desperate to find a convenient excuse which will "let
them off the hook". In every regard except weight, Hannah is failing to
thrive right now and only a fool (or an incompetent and ignorant doctor, nurse
or social worker) could say otherwise.
When with us Hannah delighted in being
bathed or in coming under the shower with Mary or I - now she is literally
terrified and one may reasonably ask why?!
When
with us Hannah's skin had an excellent tone and was lightly tanned - now she is
puffy, white and drawn, reflecting no fresh air, no sunshine and a revolting diet
of formula, another excuse for laziness. I would not feed a domestic pet on any
proprietary formula and nor would any parent who really loved their
children. Hannah repeatedly throws up and vomits out this rubbish and has
done during all three of her visits so far - that is how she expresses how she
feels about this awful tasting mixture, about the amount she is forced to drink
and about the manner in which these bottles are administered. I could not
express my own disgust more succinctly!
Despite
everyone's obsession with overweight babies, Hannah has not even gained weight
since our first visit and this again has little to do with her
"illness". She would get better immediately if returned to our
proper, lawful and responsible care. Hannah is physically and emotionally
exhausted and is obviously not sleeping properly for a number of good reasons.
We are certainly not deceived by the lies you tell the Plunkett nurse about
Hannah's sleeping pattern, deliberate fabrications to try to hide your real
irresponsibility and deceive everyone that you are competent and caring - you
can't fool children and you can't fake love!
First Hannah needs to be held gently and
firmly for a number of hours each and every day by someone quiet, peaceful and
aware, a real adult and not some frantic, emotionally retarded, unweaned, aged
infant posing as one. This is what builds trust and allows her to relax and
sleep soundly when put into her bed. Next her environment is no longer
structured to suit her real needs - quiet, peaceful, considerate, unselfish -
and she is regularly and frequently intruded upon, woken up, roughly handled,
disturbed, frightened, hurt, shouted at and not responded to. There is no other
reasonable explanation for her degraded emotional state and what has and is
being done to Hannah is a CRIMINAL and SADISTIC OUTRAGE!
Typical of the double-standards applied
in our case, if we treated Hannah with the off-handed, casual indifference and
maltreatment you and Social Welfare do, we would be arrested and charged. There is simply no comparison with how Mary
and I cared for Hannah before she was abducted from us and how she is neglected
now. Hundreds of people before and during the court proceedings saw and
commented on how well she looked, how peaceful and relaxed she was, how alert
and aware she was and how "good" and easy to look after she was, even
during difficult times for us. In your cases, Mary Gillies and Anne Mitchell,
you have no excuse and so far you thoroughly deserve my contempt and disgust.
You are paid to look after Hannah and I cannot honestly think of one aspect of
her care by you that even approaches satisfactory - not one!
I
have only taken this opportunity to write to you because no-one else who is
also paid to look after Hannah's interests has or will listen and do something.
Peter Topzand of Social Welfare is completely useless and like so many
abdicated and ineffectual males today will not even confront you with Hannah's
needs. Instead he mutters platitudinous self-justifications, makes baseless
excuses, tries to ignore or trivialise all that we voice our concern about and
he (deservedly) deteriorates himself every day as his guilt and culpability in
this crime of child abuse and theft eats away his spirit. If he had even tried
to talk to you about our concerns and had effected even minor improvements in
Hannah's care, we would have persisted with the "status quo" with our
customary remarkable patience.
Next we have Deidre Milne, the solicitor
supposedly paid (so far) hundreds of dollars to represent Hannah's interests.
This individual cannot care for her own body or spirit yet with enormously
overdeveloped and exaggerated ideas of her own importance, presumes to accept
money for doing less than nothing for Hannah. Milne has not even seen her
client, not talked to us about our care of Hannah, not taken advantage of the
abundant opportunities to spend time with us all as a family, she is totally
uninterested in our position as Hannah's parents, she is clearly biased
unreasonably and unfairly towards Social Welfare despite the abundant evidence
of their improprieties and negligence, she is hard, lacking in any compassion
and has done none of the things anyone who really cared for Hannah would have
done and be doing. Like the Family Court Judge Frank Bremmer and Peter Topzand,
what she does best is sitting, doing nothing active, talking, posturing, posing
and worst of all, extortionately and fraudulently accepting money for working
against Hannah's best interests. By any reasonable and authoritative definition
of literal meaning, this is bludging and parasitic, not to mention corrupt.
Like
pawns in some macabre and bizarre game of chess, Hannah and ourselves are moved
around with no regard for what is lawful, decent, humane, just and fair. All
those involved and especially the females are really just motivated by a desire
to separate Hannah from the obvious love she gets from her family, out of
simple jealousy and spite. They gain twisted and perverted pleasure out of
focusing their own un-faced pain against a vulnerable and defenceless baby girl
whilst muttering all the usual completely unjustifiable, sanctimonious and
self-righteous pretence of concern and patronising disapproval. Well Mary,
Hannah nor I need this nor do we need to have any further contact with such
criminals.
Everyone
at the court heard my complaints and did nothing except waste a lot of time and
be paid money which would have been better and more fairly spent in settling my
outstanding motel accounts. In contrast to these frauds and imposters, I earn
all I am paid and really work - W-0-R-K.
Which
brings me to you, foster females (you are clearly not mothers) - I enclose two
documents for you to read. The first is a report written by myself with
considerable input and help from Mary, Hannah, Elijah, Saul, Joshua and Paul on
the care of babies (and mothers) during pregnancy, birth and the first crucial
twelve months. In this we demonstrate without any doubt what Hannah needs -
nothing more needs to be said.
I enclose also a letter to Women
Everywhere, all of which is true of your life, your parents, your childhood and
now, your own family. You need to read this very, very carefully and take the
warning in it both personally and seriously. If you are silly enough to believe
that GOD does not reward the just and punish the unjust (especially those who
live off the spirits of children!) in very clear, specific and identifiable
ways and if you continue to abuse Hannah, you are in for a series of most
unpleasant surprises, all thoroughly deserved! Unless Hannah is delivered to
us, properly cared for in the simple, sensible, practical, reasonable and
inexpensive ways we have asked for, we will not accept access.
We have quite enough to deal with
emotionally without picking up yet another person's responsibilities - already
in this country I have had to show and tell hundreds of public servants what
they are paid to do - police, social workers, judges, doctors, psychiatrists,
nurses, lawyers etc., etc. - NO MORE!
Everyone
knows what I do best and everyone knows what they can expect, including you. If
it is too much on your own, you have no business fostering children just to
fill the void in your own empty, dreary and monotonous existence and to use
them as distractions from the horror within yourself. In any case it is your
responsibility to ask for help and support, not mine. Your husband could grow
up and be a man for a start and you could get something more than just words
from the numerous lazy and selfish females (and males) that infest Social
Welfare and do nothing but clutter the planet.
WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH!!
Even
our access to Hannah is half-spoiled and ruined by the pain of seeing her in
such a dreadful state and by having to spend most of the time so reluctantly
made available undoing the damage all you BLUDGERS do to her, both directly and
by default. You will not be permitted to destroy our wonderful relationships
with Hannah in this way and now you can all justly accept the consequences of
your own criminality, in your own lives and your own families.
Faithfully,
Michael Shelley †
N.B. - The above females are sisters and
the following information was contained in an affidavit by Gillies to support
the DSW application to remove Hannah from our care. First it should be
noted that Mitchell was the approved foster "mother" who "looked
after Hannah for the last week of May, 1990" at which stage Gillies
"moved into her house to care for Hannah whilst she was away on
holiday."
Gillies "cared for Hannah Shelley
from the beginning of June 1990 until the 8th August 1990 when she
was returned to her parents' care".
This bizarre and peculiar arrangement
was clearly not in Hannah's best interests but is indicative of the incredible
incompetence and casual indifference DSW displays in the majority of its foster
placements and management. Gillies at that time was pregnant herself and
had two other children aged 6 and 2 years and she obviously was in no fit
position to take on any other responsibilities - it is clear from her affidavit
that she was not looking after her own children!
Gillies maintained that Hannah was
"an undernourished baby" when she first started caring for her which
doesn't say much for the efforts of DSW or her sister in this regard - remember
that Hannah was right on the normal or 50th percentile for weight on the 18th
May when with us, two weeks prior!
Gillies predictably took exception to
the above reasonable expression of concern and anger but took no notice of it
whatsoever because it was the truth and she doesn't care at all about children.
The truth is always "insulting and upsetting" to those who are so
desperate to avoid facing it and who simply will not change. Her response was
to try to "get at" us by deliberately lying about us, even in a sworn
affidavit. She declared that we "always" returned Hannah after access
visits in "torn up hospital towels" when this is a complete
fabrication that never occurred. She also maintained that Hannah's "skin
became clear, losing all the wrinkles it had when she first came" which is
another deliberate lie solely designed to discredit us. Gillies certainly does
"babble a lot" by her own description, "enjoys feeding
times" and foolishly believes that undernourished babies can somehow be
happy!
“G” Dealings with Foster Female (Wendy Claxton)
December
1990 to April 1991
No-one
will look at our complaints openly yet substantial changes to Hannah's care are
effected covertly after input from ourselves. Of course no-one will acknowledge
that this marked change is in any way related to our painstakingly and
diligently compiled complaints nor will they acknowledge that there was any
problem. It is remarkable what they are able to do when pushed by us to do it
although they usually just eke out the barest minimum of legitimate
concessions, the absolute least they could get away with making.
Hannah
is continuously confused and obviously distressed by their arbitrary and
inconsistent actions and she is never allowed sufficient time to adjust to
carefully introduced change. Hannah is very overweight and her thighs and
upper legs and stomach are absolutely revolting - her thighs are in fact half
the size of her fathers' and it is quite bizarre and incomprehensible that any
sane person could believe that they need to be or should be anything like this
size and there is no sane justification for this obscene disproportionality.
Somehow,
as I have repeatedly written, babies are seen as a separate race of people
entirely and the sensible, practical and simple commonsense approach to older
children is ignored or discarded for reasons which cannot possibly be
rationally justified. All the improvements to Hannah's care are effected as a
result of our efforts and everyone else (especially DSW) does less than
nothing. In truth DSW with the complicit support and encouragement of a number
of sinister and senior public servants, politicians, police and judiciary have
deliberately placed Hannah in a foster situation which they knew would upset us
and put us under an intolerable strain in order to coerce us into agreeing to
have Hannah sent to Australia.
In
essence they have absolutely ruined Hannah's life, spoilt the quality of her
surroundings, destroyed her trust, disrupted her key relationships and the
stability and pattern of her existence, callously separated her from those she
loves (and who love her in action) and finally have subjected Hannah to a great
deal of real neglect, deprivation and abuse.
It
is neither abusive, histrionic, insulting or over-reactive for us to feel
absolutely incensed nor to label all those directly and indirectly involved in
this national outrage as parasites, vultures, imposters and vermin of the most
despicable kind! Parents and a brother who really love Hannah could not be
reasonably expected to feel otherwise nor have any better opinion of these
contemptible criminals.
- When with us, Hannah would naturally wake
rested every morning, smiling. Hannah now wakes crying and distressed.
- Her stomach is bloated from the awful
"solid" food, she is tired, has nappy rash, suffers ‘accidents’, has
a nasal discharge, is dressed in too tight pants and her clothing was
unattractive, uncomfortable and inappropriate.
- grinds her teeth, yet another abnormal
response and indication of her continued foster neglect.
- Hannah of course when around real care shows
no sign of distress at not eating for this short period nor any real desire to
do so and she is so obviously healthier afterwards.
- she shows unequivocally that she has been
very roughly handled and badly terrified whilst bathing by Claxton and/or Reid
- Hannah has probably been left alone in tthe bath, unsupervised and then
slipped under water.
- Hannah is obviously left alone by
Claxton/Reid which is especially irresponsible and remiss because Hannah is
very frantic, rough and untrustable with herself, a faithful reflection of
these two females who live off her spirit. Claxton expects Hannah to fit in
with her existence whereas we allow her the space for what she needs no matter
how much this alters our lives.
- Due to guilt, Claxton and Reid are often
rude, hostile and unfriendly
- dedicated sadism of
a group of so-called professionals, experts and public servants.
- Tracy Reid used to mow the lawn or burn off
for no good or urgent reason whenever we sat out in the back yard on a blanket,
just to disturb us.
- Hannah is being encouraged to call Claxton's
nightmarish mother "grandma" even though everyone knows this is a
temporary and short term foster situation. How are we supposed to feel about
this piece of deliberate and provocative sadism?
- Hannah is being fed on pork and ham against
our known religious beliefs.
- Under the existing access arrangements, we
get to see our own precious daughter/sister a grand total of 18 hours a week
out of an available 168 hours. Of this time, we spend three hours driving
and Hannah sleeps 7/10 hours each week leaving about 8 hours every seven days
to enjoy being with her. What injustice! This "improved" arrangement
was only itself achieved through an enormous amount of effort by ourselves and
the average person unfortunate enough to fall into the clutches of DSW and the
attendant medical/Family Court system would have no hope whatsoever.
- The foster female Wendy Claxton extorts over
$100 per week of public money to deprive and neglect our daughter.
- Hannah had several fleas on her from the
Claxton's menagerie of unwashed and unrestrained animals.
- Hannah is really angry and fat and doesn't
like standing up for any length of time. - Gross Motor retardation is only one effect
of her being so over-weight.
- Claxton says what she hopes people will
believe is going on rather than the truth of the situation. Claxton simply cannot admit ANYTHING about
herself or her own behaviour and this is not only totally unrealistic and
unfair but dangerous for Hannah. Any reasonably astute judge of character can
quickly discern the real violence in Claxton's nature which only truly emerges
when no-one but children are around.
- Claxton lamely (and dishonestly) tries to
blame this on "new foods introduced" rather than her own ignorance,
incompetence and laziness. Hannah is very distressed and in the worst emotional
space ever, even worse than when returned to us by DSW last August. We wonder
what is being done to her and decided to have our local GP, Deidre O'Neil check
her out.
- We have been concerned about the apparently
inflamed appearance of her ‘private parts’ for over a week now but have been
loath to do anything about this because of the delicacy of the situation and
the likely unfortunate repercussions to ourselves and to Hannah.
- we
have had the door slammed in our face as well as other violence
There
is a strong predisposition and great pressure to find no evidence of
interference because the implications of any proven abuse would be disastrous
for DSW and Claxton and both supportive and a validation of our contentions.
Not being really honest and we have significant reservations about her openness
and frankness.
Re: Affidavits filed by DSW in support of their Guardianship Application
Set out below is a
representative sample of comments taken from the affidavits of the so-called
professionals involved with Hannah's case. In essence they are insulting,
"malicious", self-serving, reflect a closed and irrational attitude,
they are "warped and corrupt" and full of "consistent and
intentional lies". Without doubt, they reflect the typical response of
those with a lot to hide when under criticism or subject to close scrutiny, an
attempt to try to put onto their accusers (us) what was really true of
themselves. Their statements can however be used to provide a wonderful insight
into the truth of their own beliefs, position, approach and attitude. For
example, one nurse stated that we had said that "all doctors are
liars", a complete fabrication which reflected her own secretly held
opinion about doctors - one could reasonably ask how this view would affect her
own ability to discharge her own paid responsibilities properly? We see it as
an excellent example of the "obsessive, distorted and paranoid views which
affect their ability" in general terms.
What I believe, I
speak and write openly as evidenced by my notes entitled "Hospital, Doctors
and Nurses" (attached and marked "E") to which such superficial
exception was taken without any attempt to address the serious and well-founded
issues raised, at least some of which would be accepted as reasonable by the
more open and insightful members of this "profession". If I believed
that all doctors were liars, I would not hesitate to say so and there would be
considerable support for such a claim if the opinions of John Edmond Newman,
Paediatrician are to be taken as representative of the whole
"profession" (See Attachment "N"). We were "unable to
speak with" him "in any rational and constructive way" despite
repeated attempts and offers to do so. He was totally "unpleasant and
aggressive" and "abusive" from the very outset and his opinions
were "extremely distorted and of no constructive use whatsoever". His
attitude is well illustrated in his affidavit and statements, "his
theories are at variance with reality" and "his ignorance and
attitude are life threatening". One only needs to look impartially at the
babies and children he is supposedly caring for and see all their preventable
ailments, difficulties, afflictions and mortality when compared to my own
unblemished record in this regard to see exactly who is the imposter and fraud,
who "has a very precarious hold on reality"!
He "makes
statements that show scant regard for factual truth with no supportive
evidence" from his patients (the children) yet he has been
"vehemently derisive of" us with "a completely distorted
view". The only aspect of his affidavit that we ‘can wholeheartedly agree
with is his contention that he has "been practising in the area of child
abuse since 1978" and has "trained in the area of child abuse in
Without doubt, Newman
has "an intense and rigid parenting style" and beliefs which are
"dangerous to any child but particularly dangerous when coupled with the
unrealistic expectations of weight and diet so vehemently expressed" by
him. One can only appreciate just how dangerous and misleading Newman really is
when a close analysis of what he tries to put onto others is carefully applied
back onto him - there is, for example, no evidence whatsoever that we have ever
been anything but open and flexible about growth and weight gain, none
whatsoever so these accusations must be true of him. With the exception of
ourselves, everyone involved with Hannah has certainly been "preoccupied
with issues of weight" and "their ideals on weight are
unhealthy" indeed.
Their "views on
weight and diet are distorted and fanatical" and these "strong and
rigid beliefs on weight and diet do not enable them to parent their (own)
children and protect their life and health". They simply have not dealt
with the fact that Mary substantially on her own did an exceptionally fine job
of mothering her son, Paul and daughter, Amby before meeting me –and that she
states unequivocally that she and I have fulfilled this responsibility much
better in every respect with Elijah, Saul and Joshua. With Hannah, she believes
unreservedly that Paul and I were able to give her all she needed and more. Our
experience with Hannah at the
There was no evidence
to support a conclusion that Hannah was in a "state of malnourishment on
admission" which "was not the cause of an inorganic illness but as a
result of a deprived diet" - how can they sensibly continue to maintain
that Hannah was in any way deprived after her very successful O.T. assessment,
the day following her hospital admission. It is fatuous nonsense to suggest
that any sane NOFTT diagnosis can be made with any confidence whatsoever in the
case of a child like Hannah who was so well (by their tests), so happy, so
developed, so full of energy and so free from sickness! They indeed
"espouse disturbed, distorted and generalised views, . . . dangerous and
life threatening". The authoritative articles published on the NOFTT
syndrome (See Attachment "P") show, if nothing else, that Hannah can
be confidently and unreservedly excluded from this diagnosis as she displays
none of the identifying symptoms, none.
Finally it should be
noted that it is they who have "fixed and distorted views of men and women
and their relationships with one another" and they who ascribe to commonly
held but quite indefensible fallacy that men and women are somehow
"equal". This statement makes no sense anyway and it certainly cannot
be justified in physiological, emotional and spiritual terms. In contrast, our
relationships are based on openly and honestly discussed, mutual needs
established over years of careful consideration and observation and are
Biblically consistent in every way with true Christian principles. They in turn
have merely accepted as absolute fact a recent (and passing) trend which takes
no account of peoples' real needs but rather reflects the expressed insecurity,
immaturity, selfishness, dishonesty and cowardice of our so-called "modern"
and "civilised" society.
It should be noted
that every society in human history in its last throes of self-destruction has
ascribed in fact (if not in words) to the effective dominance of females
over the males around them, an established facet of the essentially twisted and
mutant pseudo-maternal relationships which feature throughout the world today.
If we are to be judged as parents according to this foolishness, then the
concept of religious freedom is theoretical indeed! Finally attention is drawn
to the note at the conclusion of Attachment "Q". DSW in this country
repeatedly makes absolutely disastrous decisions and arrangements which
dumbfound us (albeit temporarily) with their un-rebuked incompetence. They recently
fostered out several children to a Maori female who had been convicted of
murdering her own children some years before! That they should sit in judgment
of us is absolutely laughable, that they should presume to give us advice about
what our children need is the epitome of impertinence, effrontery and
hypocrisy!
“S” Hannah's Warning
1990
From: "michael
Email: "[email protected]
To: Wide Circulation in New Zealand & Australia
Hannah
Shelley
Our five week old, breast feeding baby
daughter, Hannah Shelley has been illegally stolen from our exemplary care by a
group of corrupt, brutal and sadistic deviates fraudulently posing as police,
judges, court officials, barristers, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses and social
workers. These contemptible criminals conspired to do this in a clumsily
orchestrated charade, not out of any concern whatsoever for Hannah's well being
or needs but rather to fulfill their own twisted and insane emotional agendas,
to try to off-load their own guilt and in a desperate and inexcusable attempt
to try to discredit us as credible and articulate witnesses to their own
incompetence, ignorance, impropriety and collusive criminality.
The situation here in
All those directly and indirectly
responsible for this atrocity need now to take the warning in the enclosed letters both personally and seriously.
Michael †
“T” Letter to Clare Ward,
Medical
Practitioner,
Princess Mary Children’s Hospital
Grafton
Auckland
cc
Deidre O'Neil (Solicitor for the Child) 29th
January 1991
We needed to write to you following the
time we spent with you last week when you examined Hannah at the Hospital. We
enclose for you a letter to Women Everywhere and an extract about hospitals,
doctors and nurses, all of which is true of your life, your parents, your
childhood and now, your relationships and what you call work. You need to read
this very carefully and take the warning in it both personally and seriously.
It was a real education to watch
carefully how you responded to our concerns and the difference between a
genuine desire for the truth and the usual entirely contrived, superficial
medical performance. First you kept us waiting for three quarters of an hour
completely unnecessarily while you read the file when there was absolutely no
reason to do this first. What has the
history of Hannah's case got to do with whether or not she has been interfered
with? Any impartial and honest doctor would have examined Hannah first with no
preconceptions whatsoever and then listened to both sides of what is so
obviously a highly contentious and adversarial case.
We reasonably believe that you, like all
your colleagues improperly align yourself with the DSW and police position in
all these matters despite the abundant evidence of their corruption and
impropriety. In Hannah's case, DSW have an enormous amount to lose if Hannah
had been molested by her foster female (mother is not an appropriate description)
and your whole attitude reflected a predictable bias and an unacknowledged
commitment to find nothing wrong. You pretended to be diligent, thorough and
careful when in real terms you ignored or glossed over the obvious evidence of
some degree of interference - just because her hymen is intact does not mean
that the foster female has not totally inappropriately been molesting Hannah
around her outer genital area and both our own and Deidre O'Neil's observations
were accurate and noteworthy - there was real evidence of something having
happened!
Instead of noting this and dealing with
it, you then proceeded with a totally unnecessary intrusion into Hannah's
space, what was effectively a molestation in itself (even though you were
reasonably gentle). Somehow all the very
expensive swabs and culture dishes were supposed to replace a simple but
insightful examination and to fool us that nothing was really wrong. This
approach was consistent with your laughable initial assessment that Hannah was
"a good looking and } well cared for baby"! Hannah was in fact in
much better shape when originally admitted to the hospital on the 24th October
last year - she certainly had clear eyes and lovely skin but had no nappy rash
then, was stronger and more advanced for her age than now and was peaceful,
gentle, open and settled (in contrast to frantic, distressed and rough).
You clearly believe what you want to
believe and if this is the level of incompetence you introduce into your
so-called professional life, your salary is accepted under false pretences. You
know nothing about yourself and if it were possible, even less about babies and
children. Anyone who understands even the most basic and simplest aspects of
child care knows that you can immediately determine how emotionally healthy a
young child is simply by holding them firmly, peacefully and gently. You avoid
such inexpensive and accurate diagnostic methods because the vast majority of
children you have contact with, especially your own would fail such a simple test.
I have the greatest contempt and disgust
for all those who choose to directly or indirectly live off the spirits of the
most precious and vulnerable of GOD's gifts, babies. If you believe you are
getting away with this, you are self-deluded indeed.
Michael Shelley †
“U” To the Presiding Magistrate
Toowoomba
Children’s Court
Re : Our
daughter Hannah Shelley
Written
I have today been given a copy of a submission to the
Court by the Department of Youth & Families (DYF) seeking an order that my
wife Mary and myself, Hannah's natural parents, be prevented from having any
contact with our own daughter for yet another 12 months. I have the following
to say about this;-
1) It is
important to dispel the myth that the DYF or the Juvenile Aid Bureau care in
any way for our children – quite the reverse. In action they have for 20 years
tried to disrupt and destroy their key relationships with us and with each
other. Any order in their favour would simply continue to adversely affect
Hannah’s quality of life and relationships.
2) Any
consideration by the court of any order in relation to Mary and myself must
under law look at the facts in relation to each of us separately - and our
behaviour, actions and individual responses to the unlawful and malicious
destruction of our family unit, especially in relation to Hannah have been very
different. I am Hannah’s father and Mary is Hannah’s mother and we each choose
to be true and faithful to our very different essences as a man, husband and
father and woman, wife and mother. Mary as a woman of remarkable courage,
decency, integrity, devotion to her family and dedication to her GOD is far
more vulnerable and sensitive. However, despite this and the incredible,
violent provocation to which she has been illegally subject, Mary has managed
to not resort to any violence or self-destructive behaviour as is so common in
these situations. In fact the measures to which she has been forced under
extreme duress to resort have been remarkably restrained and reasonable in the
circumstances, in her determination to have the contact with Hannah to which
she is legally entitled and to ensure that Hannah is properly cared for and not
subject to any physical, emotional or sexual abuse
3) The
DYF and the Toowoomba JAB Police will expend any effort, squander any amount of
time, money and public resources and break any law to avoid doing what they are
morally and legally required to do as per relevant legislation in relation to
my family, to avoid giving our children what they really need, no matter how
bizarre or absurd the situation they create in the process of what literally
constitutes an illegal conspiracy. We, Elijah, Saul, Joshua, Hannah, Mary and
myself have been the persecuted targets of a vicious vendetta for more than 20
years only because Mary & I have been courageous enough to speak and write
the truth and expose the widespread corruption & immorality, incredible
ignorance and incompetence, flagrant misuse and abuse of power and scandalous
waste of public money in the government, public service and criminal justice
system of this completely corrupt state. This action is yet another example of
this blatantly obvious infamy
4) DYF
have appended to their court documents an E-mail purportedly from Hannah to her
mother - typically this E-mail has never actually been sent to us nor has any
other despite Hannah, her brothers Saul and Joshua and DYF knowing our E-mail
address for over 10 years!!! DYF have obstructed and lied about communication between
ourselves and our children for 20 years. This is confirmed by our son Elijah
who was himself deprived, neglected, abused and misled and misinformed about us
whilst in DYF control and who has recently chosen to live with us. They have
all been given a completely distorted and untrue concept of who we are and what
we are really like, a situation actively caused by DYF and to a lesser degree,
the foster parents themselves. Therefore Hannah cannot be expected to give an
informed opinion and make an informed choice as to what she needs in relation
to myself especially - we have not spoken, seen one another nor has she replied
to any of my numerous letters for years. DYF actually lied to us and told us
that Hannah refused to accept and read our mail and that it was kept in a
cupboard at their office. Yesterday Mary spoke with Hannah at
5)
Yesterday Mary also spoke with the foster mother Lenore Blaine who remarked
that in her opinion the situation with access could have been easily sorted out
relatively amicably years ago if it were not for the (malicious machinations
of) DYF staff who are so guilty, who have so much to hide and who are so
desperate to not allow this at any cost.
6) It is
a good measure of what violent scoundrels and destructive human vermin DYF
really are when it is known that Hannah yesterday indicated a desire to be
adopted formally when Mary discussed this as a possible option for her. Anyone
who honestly cared in any way for Hannah’s real needs could never countenance
granting an order to stop her having the contact she so obviously needs with
her natural father (and mother) at this critical stage of her life and under
these circumstances.
I need to
speak with my daughter Hannah by phone at times that are convenient to us, I
need to be able to exchange E-mails with her and I need to see her when we
agree that this is convenient to us. The DYF is an insignificant and
unnecessary irrelevancy and minor irritation and annoying distraction in this process
and needs to be told to go away and stop interfering.
As a true
Christian Minister, those who deny me my reasonable, lawful needs or who
otherwise intrude violently into my life will soon find that the GOD WHOM I
serve so faithfully will make HIS extreme displeasure known to them personally
as only HE can. This of course implies no threat whatsoever as I am renowned
for my commitment to non-violence. I am however equally renowned for my faith.
You have been warned!!!
Faithfully,
Michael Israel †
“V” - To the Presiding Magistrate -
Re our daughter Hannah Shelley's
Thursday
5th September 2002
I refer
to our own previous Affidavit and attachments filed with the Brisbane
Children’s Court in relation to Hannah in 1991 (appended below) - this has been
forwarded weeks ago by E-mail to the solicitor for the child, Megan Giles of
Legal Aid - and to other material filed by both Giles and by the Department of
Youth, Families & Community Care (DYFCC). Next I draw the attention of the
Court to the audio cassette delivered to the Registrar on Wednesday 4th
September 2002 which constitutes my wife Mary’s submission from the comparative
safety of New Zealand and to my own complaint dated 11th September 2002 already
sent to the United Nations in Geneva about corruption and human rights abuses
in Queensland (separately forwarded by E-mail). Finally I rely upon this
document together with the E-mail reply from my son Saul (aka Stephen Blaine).
For
reasons made abundantly clear below, neither Mary nor myself will compromise
our integrity, lower our standards nor endanger our safety by appearing at the
hearing tomorrow. On the day prior to the last hearing date, corrupt police and
public mental health personnel turned up at the hostel where I am living to try
to unlawfully detain (and possibly forcibly medicate me) so as to prevent my
appearance at the Children’s Court. As usual GOD confounded the nefarious
schemes of these scurrilous scoundrels and malicious miscreants. These will
therefore constitute our only submissions.
I need to
emphasise the following points about our daughter Hannah's present and past
situation:
1)
Hannah, a breast feeding baby, was brutally and callously kidnapped at 5 weeks
of age by the Department of Social Welfare in
Unlike the violent criminals who take improper refuge
in the JAB police and DYFCC, we would ensure that this process was done
responsibly and gradually in keeping with Hannah's ability to cope, causing the
absolute minimum disruption to her life.
2) Due to the furore I created by widely publicising this unconscionable
action in
3) Hannah was removed again at 6 months under the flimsiest of pretexts
using as justification an invalid NOFTT diagnosis which did not remotely apply
nor stand up to even the most superficial scrutiny.
4) It was our decision as Hannah's parents to have her placed in foster
'care' with her brothers in
5) Everyone involved in this case are now conspiring to so conveniently
'gloss over', discount and treat the past as irrelevant.
6) All my earlier assertions and allegations of widespread misuse and
abuse of power and corruption in the
7) Mary has been repeatedly assessed by a number of psychiatric health
professionals outside this corrupt state and it is notable that only in
Queensland have there been serious concerns expressed about Mary's 'mental'
health. An excellent example of a fair assessment is the recent one on the 23rd
June 2002 by Dr Eleni Nikolau at the Henry Bennett Centre,
8) The indefensible, deliberate, unwelcome intrusions into our lives and
disruptions to the sanctity of our family have caused Mary & I and all our
children the most enormous amount of ongoing pain, distress, confusion and
torment, violence far worse than physical assault, for which those responsible
have never been held publicly accountable (We do however know that privately
GOD has so deservedly made many of their lives a living hell). Those involved
have done this because they won't stand up to corrupt police and/or refuse to
look at themselves and their own personal and professional misconduct.
In
particular staff at DYFCC have never been kind, compassionate, caring,
conciliatory, understanding and supportive of our needs as Elijah's, Saul's,
Joshua's and Hannah's natural parents. In fact since our return to
9) Hannah's and Saul's (and Joshua's and Elijah's) present antagonistic,
hostile, adversarial, unreasonable and rigid attitude towards both myself and
Mary is a faithful reflection of DYFCC’s own stance. This confirms that since
1982 they have been dedicated to the total destruction of our family and all
our vital natural, biological and spiritual relationships including those
between Paul, Amby and Elijah and their younger siblings and all those between
our children and Mary’s brother, sister, nephews and nieces. There is no better
proof of DYFCC’s true intentions and continued criminality. I refer to my
E-mail to Saul 3rd June 2002, Saul's reply to me on the 4/5th June 2002 (which
of course DYFCC neglected to attach to their material) and my reply to Saul on
the 6th. DYFCC are completely and totally responsible and have caused this
deplorable situation by their manifest manipulation of their relationships with
us and the deliberate misinformation they have given Hannah and her brothers
about us. To quote Hannah, DYFCC certainly does "write bad things and try
to brainwash her" against her natural parents with their derogatory, judgmental
and demeaning attitude towards us.
10) The material sworn by Heather Smith for DYFCC and Anjanette Humphreys
for Legal Aid is typical of what we have come to expect over the past 20 years.
These affidavits contains so many lies, half-truths, outrageous omissions,
infamous innuendo and inaccuracies, deliberate fabrications and distortions of
the facts, unfounded allegations, unsubstantiated opinion, malicious and
mischievous misinformation, unprincipled bias and idle comment as to render
them completely unable to be relied upon. In fact their depositions literally
constitute perjury, a clumsy attempt to pervert and obstruct the course of
justice and they are simply speaking in clear contempt of court. Typical of the
guilty hypocrite, they "strain at a gnat (make the greatest fuss over
inconsequential and understandable actions of our own) and swallow a
camel" (whilst offhandedly ignoring, overlooking, discounting or
minimising the most serious illegality of their own). Their driven desperation
to find something wrong with us at all costs is even more blatantly obvious in
their final depositions. These show that they have elicited the help of the NZ
Children’s, Youth & Families Department to effectively stalk Mary
throughout New Zealand, unlawfully access her confidential medical records and
transmit this information in a highly selective and misleading way.
11) It is also notable that they try to mix Mary and I in together because
they simply don’t have insufficient incriminating evidence to justify their
criminal acts in relation to me. Mary and I have very different positions in
relation to our children, in particular as regards contact with Hannah. Of
course the differences between a father-daughter and mother-daughter
relationship completely escape the ignoramuses in DYFCC because they wish to
obstruct all contact no matter what the long-term detrimental effect on Hannah.
12) Hannah is quoted as saying that her brothers also "want them to go
away" - this is hearsay and should be ignored. A good question to ask is
why didn't they interview Saul? The answer is because he would have told them
things that DYFCC don't want on public record in court. No proper court could
possibly rule on this matter without an appearance by Saul.
13) During her visit to the foster house, Mary did not get angry with
Hannah's brothers, she asked Joshua to put on a shirt which he refused to do.
When he refused, she simply turned her back on him. With Saul she had a very
productive, amicable and amazingly satisfactory conversation considering the
extraordinary circumstances. Saul actually agreed to consider driving down to
14) I have never threatened to abduct Hannah and never would - I see this
as inappropriate at this stage but fully understand how Mary feels and why. If
Mary did in fact accomplish this rescue, it would be far, far less of an
illegal act than what DYFCC has done on 3 occasions with 4 of our children.
15) We had magnificent relationships with all our children, all of which
these jealous, spiteful and vicious child abusers have systematically
destroyed.
16) Let me dispel one myth - these arrogant, ignorant and intolerant
upstarts posing as child experts do not care about children and know nothing
about their true needs. For all their worthless theoretical academic
qualifications and useless experience, they do not demonstrate as adults,
spouses and parents 1% of the dedication, devotion, maturity, emotional
restraint, competence, awareness and knowledge that Mary and I do ourselves.
Most are abject failures in all these regards and their nefarious activities
impact disastrously upon children's welfare generally in this completely
corrupt state!
I have
just spent another 2 months on remand in the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre
where I was surrounded by the human detritus and abject misery which is an
inevitable consequence and direct result of the misguided and/or malicious
meddling of these marauding menaces fraudulently extorting their publicly
funded salaries under false pretences in this state. It is they who are
themselves responsible for the completely predictable and easily preventable
subsequent problems shown by so many unfortunate, much abused, fostered and
adopted children with whom they have contact. These difficulties include
emotional distress and confusion, degraded self-esteem, low standards of
self-care, addiction to tobacco, alcohol and drugs, criminal offending,
psychiatric disorders (especially violence and depression) and relationship
difficulties. The various agencies responsible most notably DYFCC deliberately
destroy or considerably dilute the key relationships between children and their
natural family and are also accountable for the subsequent deprivation, neglect
and abuse that these victims of their destructive interference later subject
their own children to when parents themselves.
It is not
that these parasitic freeloaders living off the public purse merely fail to do
what they are paid to do; it is that many are biased, unfair, discriminatory,
dishonest and deceitful, adversarial, highly selective, rarely say anything
positive and turn a simple, inexpensive, easily resolved short term, acute
difficulty into a major, costly long term chronic crisis which destroys
generations of family's lives. It is no exaggeration to describe them as
violent sadists, disturbed psychopaths and depraved deviates who themselves
carry a perilous load of un-faced personal and professional guilt. They are
gravely deluded, live in substantial denial and have a tenuous grip on reality
indeed.
In fact
many display all the indicative symptoms fully meriting a diagnosis of clinical
paranoid schizophrenia with their fixated rigidity of thought, obsessional,
defensive, dangerous, vindictive and violent behaviour and their weird,
superficial beliefs about child care, growth and thriving, about spiritual
beliefs, relationships and life. This certainly includes so many of those who
make money within the welfare and criminal justice systems responsible for
juveniles & adolescents - social workers and managers in DYFCC, JAB police,
health, mental health, counselling, courts and detention and detainment
personnel, staff of all the adoption and fostering agencies and the people
employed and funded as foster parents.
There are
a plethora of excellent examples of their clumsy, destructive, unwelcome home
invasions, only one of which is the case of Craig Morris and his family. Morris
has 3 children including a small baby he was supposed to have assaulted. The
evidence was far from compelling or conclusive and there had been no previous
problems with the older children. Despite this, DYFCC came to the hospital
where Morris and his wife had taken their baby to be treated for bruising, took
all the children including the breast feeding baby into what they dishonestly
describe as "care" and placed them with a foster family. Morris was
charged and irrationally and unfairly refused bail and 4 weeks later DYFCC
returned the distressed, totally uncared for, emotionally and physically
damaged children to Craig's wife with no follow up support.
These
divisive, dangerous DYFCC lesbian deviates then aggressively encouraged her to
leave Craig and told her that if she visited him in prison with any of the
children, they would take them away again. Their daughter Brittany who had a
lovely relationship with her father was absolutely devastated by the whole
experience and would no longer sleep properly or ever smile. If Craig and his
wife had stood up for themselves like Mary and I have done, they would have
been subject to exactly the same kind of illegal persecution and vindictive
vendetta focused against us involving the full ambit of the criminal (describes
the behaviour of most of those who make money therein) justice (the commodity
the system knows nothing about) system.
Our son
Elijah is himself another example of the above. He was placed in foster neglect
by DYFCC from 1982 where he was badly deprived, mistreated, abused and
discriminated against. Subsequently he has grown into a very confused, furious
(very like his brother Joshua) young man who has reputedly fathered a child to
an aboriginal female, been in jail and is estranged from all family contact,
natural and fostered – another DYFCC success!! I wouldn’t put an animal into
the control of these emotionally unweaned, cruel, twisted incompetents, a kind
of sub-human species and alien life form.
Saul,
Joshua and Hannah by their admission have fared much better but only due to the
fact that we as their natural parents ensured they were placed together and so
had one another. If we had not insisted upon this, DYFCC would definitely have
placed Hannah separately.
It is no
exaggeration to claim that all the good things about our children are entirely
due to the excellent start in life we gave them all. Conversely all their
dysfunctional behaviour, extraordinarily superficial and narrow perspective on
life, fantasized spiritual beliefs, unreal obsession with sports, preoccupation
with running the academic obstacle course, rigidity of thought and debased
quality of emotional awareness, honesty and relating is due to DYFCC and the
appalling foster ‘parents’. They have turned our children into typical
Australians and this in absolute terms is nothing whatsoever to be proud of!
All our children are falling far short of their true potential and this is not
surprising in view of DYFCC’s nonsensical definition of thriving as measured by
babies' and children's gravitational attraction to the centre of the earth!!
What folly!!
17) Megan Giles, ‘the solicitor for the child’ is not neutral, does not
even remotely represent Hannah's best interests and has deliberately refused to
deal with the substantive issues of Hannah's situation and true welfare. Giles
is simply another biased legal ‘stooge’ for the combined corrupt forces of
DYFCC, the police, the courts and forensic mental health. Legal Aid notably
will not in contrast fund any legal representation for us, Hannah's natural
parents.
As to the
report by her Social Worker, Anjanette Humphreys, this might as well have been
done by a DYFCC social worker for all its superficiality and partiality. To be
specific:-
(i)
Humphreys lied to minimise our impact and importance in Hannah's early life.
Hannah has not "been in the care of DYFCC since she was 1 month old";
she has been in their insidious clutches since 1 year of age. She was with us
for most of her first 6 months, the most crucial early stage of any child’s
development. Humphrey’s comments about "some" indirect contact does
not even remotely describe the intense, extensive, exceptional, regular, caring
letters, cards, brochures, presents and photographs sent to Hannah and her
brothers many, many times a year over a period of 12 years (the whole of
Hannah's life!), most of which remains unappreciated, unanswered and
unacknowledged.
(ii) Hannah (and Elijah, Saul & Joshua) has had no
direct contact with us because of DYFCC’s unlawful obstruction and their
unreasonable attitude. Since July 1998 Mary and I have tried unsuccessfully to
have direct contact with our children and circumvent dealing with DYFCC and the
horrendous foster 'parents'. DYFCC has actively obstructed and sought to
minimise contact so as to bring about exactly the situation that they are now
misusing to justify closing off all contact with all our children. They have
caused the problem and now want the court to use our fully justified and
understandable response to their divisiveness to further divide and separate us
from our daughter (and sons). Any court that became a party to this obvious
illegal ploy must itself be equally immoral and corrupt.
(iii) Hannah and Saul and Joshua all use the internet
and have done for years yet they have never been encouraged or allowed to use
this secure, immediate, easily monitored form of communication despite our
repeated requests in the 8 years they have known our E-mail address.
(iv) It is Mary and I that have well-founded
"safety issues and concerns" and DYFCC had no legitimate reason from
the moment we left the country in 1990, before Hannah was born, for their
absurdly high security restrictions. This has just been another obvious ploy
and excuse misused to justify and conceal their covert, improper behaviour
because they have so much to hide and be guilty and ashamed about.
(v) Humphreys did not even bother to interview Elijah, Saul or Joshua, each
of whom can give a relevant and important insight into this serious matter.
This was a deliberate decision for the reasons mentioned above.
(vi)
What we have written to our children and their 'carers' is the truth and those
who find the truth "abusive" are just trying to avoid facing their
own guilt and misbehaviour.
(vii) Humphreys is lying about Hannah's presentation and
demeanour - in fact she is oppressed, edgy, unsettled and her leg jiggles up
and down constantly. However her comment that most foster children in this
state lack a positive identity and robust self-concept is yet another
compelling condemnation of DYFCC's competence, capability and commitment. As
real love reverses all prior damage done to deprived, neglected and abused
children, clearly there is not much true love or care in all those foster homes
for which DYFCC is responsible, something we have claimed for over 20 years.
Our children by comparison are in much better shape only because of our own
input especially when they were young - we gave them all the best possible
start - and the fact that the three of them have grown up together.
(viii) What DYFCC has done with the relationships with my
now blessedly deceased mother Marie and extraordinarily immature brother Tom in
Conclusion
Typical of this bizarre, even surreal scenario that
has continued for over 20 years, neither Hannah nor her natural parents will be
present at a court case which will presume to make orders about our immediate
contact with one another. In fact the outcome has been already decided months
ago and the empty, meaningless, carefully contrived and well-rehearsed charade
to take place on September 5th will simply waste further hundreds of thousands
of dollars of taxpayer’s money in funding these freeloaders' salaries. It will
merely continue the cover-up and maintain the unremitting violence focused at
our family by a group of people whose actions are deserving of imprisonment for
life. An eternity in hell will be their thoroughly deserved reward, thank GOD!
Neither
Mary, Paul nor myself are interested in the slightest in the outcome as in
absolute terms it is irrelevant. We will as GOD wills have the contact with all
our children that we need, whenever we need it, in writing, by phone or face to
face. We view this court and these proceedings with the gravest suspicion and
treat all those who collude to unlawfully conspire against us with the most
profound contempt and disgust.
Instead
we have yet again appealed to the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations
in
Faithfully
Michael Israel †
“W” - Letter to Children's Commissioner 8th January 2002
Robin
Sullivan 8th January 2002
Queensland Commissioner for Children and
Young People
5th
We refer
to your letter of the 12th December 2001, posted the following day. We are far
from happy or satisfied with your office's belated response to our detailed
formal complaint dated 8th September, sent over three months earlier. We first
spoke with Anthony Benedetti and Kathy Mandler of your office over a year and a
half ago and at that time provided extensive information concerning ongoing
difficulties with the Department of Youth, Families & Community Care. We
have also previously sent copies of letters to Government Ministers to your
office - these could and should have afforded the basis of a complaint
requiring your urgent attention because of the serious issues involved. We with
ample justification believe that the gravity of our allegations about the Dept.
of Youth, Families & Community Care involving a number of senior staff from
several Directors General downward should have prompted some tangible
intervention and involvement from your office at that time.
Upon my
release from custody by order of the Court of Appeal in February 2001, I again
spoke with Anthony Benedetti to find out what was going on and to check on
progress. At this time he told me that he had been "meaning to write"
and would be doing so straight away. I still had not heard anything from him
several months later when I dropped the FOI files into your office for your
perusal and action. As a consequence we have now needed to make a special trip
from
In fact
dealing with your office feels exactly like dealing with DYFCC - everything is
delayed, protracted and complicated, it takes months to do what could easily be
effected in a few hours and we are forced to make all the effort, do all the
follow up and take care of the details. We have the decided impression that
this matter would not be progressed or acted upon unless we expend a great deal
of our own energy in following it up. Yet we are not paid to serve you ¡¦you
are paid to serve us!!! Perhaps this is something to do with the self-serving
climate which appears to have infected the public service in your state.
It is a
disgrace that in this whole time not even a preliminary report has been written
and your letter of 12th December, 2001 is an insult, a wordy and lengthy
unnecessary re-hash of the same points we have been making for several years
now. We with ample justification feel that your letter is more designed to make
it appear for your file records that you are actually doing something and are
genuinely concerned when in action you obviously are not. Your office had
already seen volume 4 of the FOI files and been given more than adequate time
to go through it and take copies of relevant material. Meanwhile DYFCC are
continuing their systematic campaign of deliberately destroying the
relationships all OUR four children could and should be having with us, their
natural parents.
If you
cannot or will not effect something of substance and value in this unique case,
you will not be able to do anything tangible of benefit for all the other
children so shabbily mistreated and abused by DYFCC and the other
quasi-governmental agencies which intrude so destructively into children’ lives
in Queensland.
Hannah
will be 12 years old on the 18th April 2002 and Mary has been trying without
success for over three years to organise one 5 minute phone call to her own
daughter - what is so difficult?!!
We need
action and I need it today and there are no excuses!
Michael & Mary Shelley † (changed to
Israel in 2000)
Letter to
Robyn Sullivan
(
To: Robyn Sullivan Children's Commissioner
cc Howard Hobbs MP Parliamentary Criminal Justice
Commission
Ms Desley Boyle MP " "
Stuart Copeland MP " "
Dr John Kingston MP " "
Andrew McNamara MP " "
Mr Kerry Shine MP " "
Ray Rinaudo Criminal Justice Commission
Mrs Sally Goold " "
Dina Browne " "
Margaret Steinberg " "
Graham Brighton (Executive Director - PCJC)
Steven Finnamore (A/g Research Director - PCJC)
8th
September 2001
Your
office has now had more than sufficient time to peruse the enormous amount of
material obtained by us from the Department of Families, Youth and Community
Care (DYFCC) under an FOI request. The files supplied should be read against
the background of all the other reports sent to Corrective Services, the Police
Complaints Authority, the Premiers Department, the State Ombudsman, the Human
Rights Commission and the United Nations over the past 20 years.
Anthony
Benedetti from your office told us months ago that he was writing to us in
response to this matter - in the absence of any correspondence from him, we
have decided to submit this formal complaint about DYFCC (and its various
mutations over the years such as the Department of Children's' Services). Due
to the substantial, obvious evidence of widespread corruption uncovered and the
serious implications for the whole of government in
To be
specific:-
1) The removal of our sons Elijah (in 1982), Saul and Joshua (in 1984)
and our daughter Hannah (in 1990) from our exemplary care was in all cases
improper, unlawful and motivated largely by reasons which had nothing
whatsoever to do with any genuine concern for their health, development,
welfare or safety. The litany of lies, half-truths, implausible excuses, idle
comment and spurious speculations put forward to justify the actions of DYFCC
(supported by various corrupt or "compliant" juvenile aid police,
social workers and public health professionals) have been repeatedly altered,
modified, reversed and/or retrospectively applied in an attempt to justify and
cover-up their own incompetence, impropriety and high handed misuse and abuse
of entrusted power.
2) The
NOFTT diagnosis finally misused as a ploy to justify taking Hannah ten (10)
years ago (and then retrospectively applied to Elijah, Saul and Joshua) is not
even remotely correct nor relevant as a clinical diagnosis and simply does not
stand up to any diligent examination of the facts. Our children have never
shown any of the indicative symptoms of NOFTT and they gain weight and other
size indicators at a healthy rate which is right for them. Not only does this
in no way compromise any aspect of their growth and development but in fact
they clearly lead the population in general in all respects except their
gravitational attraction to the centre of the earth. In fact weight is a
completely useless, even counter-productive criterion of thriving which has
been widely misused by health professionals and parents worldwide with
disastrous consequences, one of which is the plague of obesity increasingly
afflicting both child and adult populations throughout the developed world. In
effect we gave in our 1984 report “Pregnancy, Birth and the Care of Babies and
Young Children” (see www.geocities.com/michael_the_one) a vital insight into
the underlying causes of this blight 20 years ago but were ignored and
ridiculed due to the arrogance, intolerance, ignorance, jealousy and childish
insecurity of health and child care professionals.
Our
children have all been given exceptional care by us in every single regard
including nutrition and these so-called experts could and should have taken
this GOD-given opportunity to learn about the importance and implications of an
excellent standard of both mothering and fathering, something increasingly rare
today. Even Dr Barry Heyworth of the
DYFCC
have resolutely refused to deal with or even discuss the substantiative child
care issues and have never acknowledged our documented claims about Elijah,
Saul and Joshua's development despite the abundant evidence available. They
discounted our claims, misrepresented our beliefs and lifestyle, distorted our
dedication and actively tried to discredit us as parents and Christians. They
also totally ignored the proven experience that Mary had shown in three
different situations as a mother - bringing up two children on her own,
bringing up her children within her first two "marriages" with no
supportive husband and father presence and finally, caring for our children in
an excellent marriage, together. It is very important to look at the difference
between children who have a father really involved on a day to day basis when
compared to the "norm" today, especially in relation to most babies'
preoccupation with and excessive consumption of food and drink and early,
physically and emotionally unhealthy weight gain.
Even if
the NOFTT diagnosis had some basis in fact, it is only has relevance for the
first 3-5 years of childrens' lives yet at no stage has DYFCC ever even offered
to discuss the reunification of our family under any circumstances. Nor have
they ever done an annual review involving us as parents in front of the
3) All those directly and indirectly involved have been far more
interested in pretending to be concerned about our childrens' development and
in trying to find fault with us rather than being fair, open, balanced and
proper in their considerations and determinations. In Elijah's case, for
example, they stubbornly refused to listen to the opinions and observations of
a number of people who had actually lived in close contact with us - Noel
Hackett (Catholic Priest), our landlord (Legal Aid solicitor) and neighbours in
West End and the two couples with whom I shared a house, also in West End - all
these are on record.
The DYFCC files also show that we were actually highly
praised as parents by both them and public health professionals until we
started to object to their reprehensible behaviour and criticise their
disgraceful actions and inaction. Their abrupt change of attitude and dramatic
"about face" was simply the common, typical and predictable spiteful
response of people with considerable unresolved personal and professional guilt
agendas of their own who refuse to look at themselves and who are desperate to
prevent their own incompetence, negligence and impropriety from being exposed.
To be
specific they tried to imply that we were incapable of being good parents
because they are themselves, that we wouldn't be reasonable and listen because
they wouldn't, that we had an irresponsible and unhealthy lifestyle because
they do, that we were spiritually misled because they are and that we were
violent or potentially violent (the "bombs and guns" myth invented by
corrupt police) because they are.
Jennifer
Wiltshire of Childrens Services and Dr Barry Heyworth (and later, Inspector
David Jeffries of the JAB) became highly adversarial only after we expressed
our outrage at their abject failure to discharge their responsibilities in
relation to our son Elijah, then 1 year old in 1981, who nearly died as a
result of their neglect, inaction, deprivation, abuse and brutality. Instead of
being open and professional, from this point they became incredibly
antagonistic, spiteful and impossible to deal with. Similarly, senior management
of DYFCC, rather than deal with or even discuss the disruption and distress
caused to Elijah (and later to Saul, Joshua and Hannah) by various corrupt
police, prison staff and management and other public servants, tried to blame
us, as usual, instead of standing up to these contemptible individuals as they
are paid to do.
4) The
police, DYFCC social workers and management and health professionals with few
exceptions have been completely committed to discounting or ignoring any
evidence favourable to us as adults, spouses, parents and Christians. Incensed
by our truthful exposure of their own incompetence and impropriety, they
systematically mounted a national and international campaign of untruthful
information, infamous innuendo, unfounded rumour and deliberate defamation
funded by taxpayers' money as usual. They did this in a vain attempt to justify
their own actions and to discredit us as credible and articulate witnesses of
their self interest, literal corruption and flagrant misuse and abuse of power.
With
these highly inflammatory lies and unfounded accusations they tried
(unsuccessfully) to provoke Mary, Paul (our oldest son now 33) and myself to
violence or to some other unwise and ill-considered (though fully reasonable,
understandable and justifiable) response. Again this would have been misused as
a retrospective excuse for their criminality and an "a posteriori"
justification for their own violence. It is no exaggeration to say that these
organised gang of scurrilous scoundrels have threatened, menaced and stalked my
whole family over a period in excess of two decades without restraint, public
comment or intervention. It is important to note that we have had no
significant difficulties with the police in any other state of
5) The
situation rapidly deteriorated into a vindictive vendetta mounted against us
which involved corrupt police as well as prison administration, magistracy,
judiciary, senior public servants and several members of Parliament notably the
(blessedly deceased) Russell Hinze and past Premiers Johannes Bjelke-Petersen
and Michael Ahern. This illegal collusion was prompted by our own extensive
reports publicly exposing the wide-spread corruption that existed throughout
the
There has
also been a great deal of highly improper influence exerted illegally by the
established "Christian" churches in an effort to denigrate, discredit
and destroy my Ministry. This was proving to be an enormous embarrassment to
the Catholic and Anglican churches and Salvation Army in particular whose
carefully cultivated, entirely false public images, like the equally fraudulent
government's, differed (and still differ) markedly from the private reality of
their true hypocrisy, selfishness, gluttony, avarice, pretence and spiritual
bankruptcy.
The actions taken (and still being taken) by all these essentially
corrupt individuals over the years in relation to our children and ourselves clearly
constitute an illegal conspiracy to pervert and obstruct the course of justice,
to commit child abuse and child abduction and the systematic deprivation of our
four (4) childrens' liberty.
6) Four (4) of our children have been taken from us
and committed to the "care and protection" of DYFCC until their 18th
birthdays by orders of Childrens Court magistrates here in Queensland on three
separate occasions even though we were not present nor legally represented in
any of these proceedings. During these proceedings in the Emerald and Brisbane
Childrens Courts, certain police and health professionals and DYFCC staff
knowingly perjured themselves and were in contempt of court by presenting
false, biased, imbalanced, highly selective and exaggerated submissions by
sworn affidavit in order to secure draconian custody orders which were not even
remotely appropriate, warranted or necessary in the circumstances.
All
magistrates were totally indifferent to the serious implications of this highly
contentious case and resolutely ignored our obvious vigourous objections,
notably with the only court submissions we were given an opportunity to make,
those in relation to Hannah. In every case they summarily proceeded in our
absence and illegally handed down the most stringent orders possible despite
knowing our whereabouts and being fully aware of our claims of impropriety -
either they were/are dangerously naive, manifestly manipulated or criminally
corrupt or some bizarre combination of all three.
Although
we easily met all criteria for assistance and despite the crucial importance of
these proceedings, we were always refused legal aid, even in Hannah's case when
we were in
7) There
is no doubt that if Mary and I had lived a "usual" (but far from
normal) suburban lifestyle and had money, power, position and community
standing in keeping with our background and education, our children would have
never been removed from our exceptional care nor would our care have even been
questioned. Our lifestyle, however cannot be (mis)used to justify the decision
to take our children as we have markedly changed the way we live over the past
21 years. In particular they have conveniently ignored the totally different
individual scenarios with Elijah, Saul, Joshua and Hannah and tried to group
them all together for deceitful reasons of their own. In fact we have had a
fixed income and owned cars, campers and caravans and rented homes for most of
this time. Clearly the comments made in the file about our lifestyle giving
rise to our problems are and have been inaccurate and irrelevant, especially in
relation to Saul, Joshua and Hannah, yet another implausible pretext misused to
distract from the real issues. It is no exaggeration to say that the unique
quality of life GOD has so clearly blessed us with over this time is far, far
superior to that which our children have been forced to endure in foster
neglect and far better than that of the children of all those who have so
arrogantly, impertinently and hypocritically presumed to criticise us. In
particular it needs to be noted that when we had Saul and Joshua living with
us, we had a wonderful and healthy life which was deliberately disrupted by the
malevolent machinations of the Queensland Police Force and DYFCC.
8) All
those involved have totally failed their legislated responsibilities in
relation to all members of our family and have stubbornly and illegally refused
to deal with and discuss any of the spoken and written material we have so
exhaustively provided over so many years. Like the police they behave as though
they are above reproach, have no need to answer any criticism and simply turn
on and spitefully misuse their power against anyone who has the courage,
decency and integrity to stand up for themselves. The spoken and written
complaints and reports we have provided are in fact essential to any proper
determination of ours and their fitness as parents. The main reason that they
refuse to deal with these is because they show the sinister nature of many of
their activities and the highly dubious value of the nonsensical theories and
theoretical qualifications they hold so dear.
Most of
the social workers who have presumed to interfere and pass judgement on our
fitness as parents are young single females fresh from university who have
acquired all their highly theoretical knowledge from books, who have never been
involved in a long term committed relationship, never been pregnant, never
given birth naturally or otherwise, never breast fed or weaned a baby and never
looked after any child for more than a few hours at a time. Those with children
of their own most often actively avoid their maternal responsibilities and have
other people look after their children. The males involved, especially the
senior management of DYFCC and upper echeleons of all sections of the criminal
justice system and the parliament, are typical of the absolute worst,
abdicated, useless and ineffectual excuses for Australian husbands and fathers.
In contrast to myself, none have spent continuous time with their wives when
pregnant, breast feeding and weaning, none have delivered and cared for their
own children when young and none have even 1% of the useful, relevant
experience, understanding and commitment that I have - not one!
9) Our
detailed exposure of corruption was misrepresented as indicative of mental
illness (paranoid schizophrenia) and corrupt, accommodating or easily
intimidated or influenced psychiatric personnel within the public mental health
system themselves became fully involved accessories to this unlawful
conspiracy. Police and DYFCC placed on their files, widely circulated both
internally and externally and gave credence and weight to one or two highly
biased and maliciously motivated psychiatric and pseudo-psychiatric diagnoses
about Mary (and myself) whilst ensuring that the abundant, well-informed and
clinically correct, supportive and favourable material from a number of other
highly qualified health professionals with in-depth knowledge of our lives,
behaviour, beliefs and actions were resolutely ignored or off-handedly
discounted.
Mary and
our eldest son Paul, now 33 years old and taking refuge in New Zealand have
been repeatedly detained, regulated and forcibly medicated in our efforts to
obtain justice - in all the three of us have spent nearly three years falsely
imprisoned or otherwise detained, most of this un-sentenced and unconvicted. In
a sense we were harassed and when we said so it was claimed that we were
deluded, labelled as mentally ill and then further persecuted by being
unlawfully confined and drugged in an illegal attempt to intimidate, oppress,
silence and punish us.
10) DYFCC
by covertly spreading their lies to their counterparts in other jurisdictions
seriously compromised our standing both nationally and internationally, at
first totally unbeknownst to us. This deliberate trouble making caused
completely avoidable difficulties, conflict and antagonism in other states of
11) DYFCC
has steadfastly refused to discuss or even try to negotiate a sensible, rational
and satisfactory outcome in relation to our children for over eighteen (18)
years. During this period, consistent with their impropriety and guilt they
have taken a completely passive and highly reluctant reactive stance with the
case, never taking the initiative in accordance with their statutory
responsibilities under the relevant Parliamentary Act. During this entire
period hey have been easily able to contact us without difficulty and most
often have known our residential and postal addresses, phone, mobile phone and
fax numbers. For the past 7 or 8 years they have known my E-mail address which
they have never used even though we lived in
12) DYFCC and all foster parents have systematically turned our children
against us and completely poisoned their vital relationships with their
natural, biological parents through a malicious campaign of misrepresentation
and deliberate denigration. The current state of our relationship with our
oldest son Elijah now 21 is deplorable, and the appalling, confused emotional
and behavioural ("mental") state he is in with an enormous load of
unresolved anger, pain and fear is clear evidence and irrefutable proof of
their criminal culpability not to mention abject incompetence. Consistent with
their deliberate stated intentions all along, Elijah's intense unexpressed
feelings are of course being allowed and encouraged to be improperly focused
against us and worse, against himself, instead of against those who caused this
and who thoroughly deserve it - his foster parents, past and present DYFFCC
staff, corrupt police etc.. We have spoken to Elijah once in 18 years, an
extremely difficult and painful half hour phone call in September last year
organised reluctantly by DYFCC despite Elijah's prior expressed willingness to
speak to us months beforehand.
Subsequently
we have made extensive enquiries in an effort to locate Elijah to speak with
him - predictably DYFCC won't help and have now "washed their hands"
of any responsibility, taking convenient refuge in the Privacy Act.
Miraculously we this month managed to locate a young man called Michael Nunn
who has the same birthday as our son Elijah Michael Shelley (8th September
1980) - Michael has lived in Rockhampton until recently (where we were told
Elijah has been living and attending university). If in fact he is our son (and
there is considerable rational evidence to support this conclusion), then
clearly Michael has been systemically violated, abused, neglected, deprived and
invalidated in DYFCC foster neglect over many, many years. Michael dropped out
of his Information Technology course at the
The
relationships that we also don't have with Saul, Joshua and Hannah and the
relationship that Elijah doesn't have with his three younger siblings also
undeniably confirms their total incompetence and concerted plan to destroy our
family as I have claimed and foreshadowed for nearly twenty (20) years.
Consistent with this, DYFCC have obstructed, censored, delayed and otherwise
interfered with our correspondence to and other contact with our children in
order to hide their own culpability and disguise the true circumstances of this
obscene injustice. We were in fact denied any contact whatsoever with our sons
Elijah (from 1982) and Saul and Joshua (from 1984) until we fled as refugees to
13) There
has never been any account of the effect of the unlawful deprivation of our
children upon us as their natural parents and DYFCC has never made any
concessions for the enormous distress and emotional load their improper actions
have placed us under. In fact they are always self-indulgently
"bleating" about how difficult it has been for their staff in dealing
with us in a situation for which they are completely responsible. Their
behaviour, again entirely consistent with considerable personal and
professional guilt of their own, has deteriorated rapidly over the past few
years as our children grew to the age of greater awareness and curiosity and
now constitutes clinical insanity. They are all desperate to prevent any of the
truth about what has happened to us being publicised or investigated and the
police in particular will stop at nothing - there has been several attempts on
our lives, two of which occurred in New Zealand and our presence here in
Queensland is tenuous, to say the least. No rational person could possibly be
unconvinced of their impropriety and even a sub-normal simpleton could see that
something is and has been drastically very wrong.
14) When
we arrived back in
15) DYFCC
cannot claim in our case or in general that they are short of staff or are
under-resourced. The most obscene amount of resources has been squandered in not
doing what was morally and legally required in our case and this scenario is
not uncommon. DYFCC in general wastes most of the resources entrusted to them
in activities that have nothing whatsoever to do with their legislated charter
(caring for and supporting children and families), notably endless meetings and
the self-interested endeavours of their ambitious senior management. It is also
not unfair to say that DYFCC interferes with disastrous consequences in
situations where there is absolutely no need to do so and fails to act where
they should be diligently involved and in general the quality of their
interventions is abysmally poor.
Conclusion
We have been given a unique insight into the
activities of the Children’s Services department, police, prisons, mental
health, magistracy, judiciary and other sections of the criminal (in)justice
system, of the public service and of parliament here in Queensland in the
natural course of our life and my work. Our experience is unparalleled, like no
other living human being in the entire history of this state, and the ongoing
dealings had with all these instrumentalities has involved first hand, personal
contact with senior levels up to and including the Directors-General or heads
of several government departments (Police, Prisons, Health, Families, Justice,
Attorney-General's and Premier's), a considerable number of government
Ministers and members of opposition parties and all Queensland Premiers, past
and present over the past 21 years.
As such
the enormous amount of information we have so exhaustively and unselfishly
documented at our own expense should be taken seriously, listened to and acted
upon. It of course would be in a system of government that even remotely
adhered to and valued the precepts of decency, morality, humanity, justice,
equity and truth. The fact that we have so obviously been persecuted and
shamefully mistreated for over 20 years is a clear and unequivocal condemnation
of all
In
conclusion to quote consultant psychiatrist Dr. Diana Lange in her report to
the Patient Review Tribunal concerning Mary, dated 26th March 2001:-
"In perusing all of the information with which I
have been provided I have not become aware of any evidence which would, on the
face of it, be indicative of adequate reasons for the total removal of all of
the children and the refusal of access. There has been no physical violence or
sexual assault to the children, the parents are not substance abusers, and far
sicker people than Mary have had access to their children. The main evidence is
about their failure to thrive and in the early days much weight was placed on
percentile charts. Michael has a set of beliefs in this matter which are also
held by others. Many of the paediatric reports do not have findings that are
persuasive that I have seen with the one exception of one child where there is
clear evidence of a problem but the causation is less evident."
We of course reasonably take great exception to the
implication that Mary is in any way suffering from any mental illness and this
is also the expressed, documented opinion of a number of past and present
health professionals closely involved with our case. In fact it is only Mary's
admirable emotional maturity, incredible forbearance, amazing courage and
exemplary faith that have helped her to survive and maintain her integrity as a
Christian woman. However it should be noted that this is the conservative and
carefully phrased conclusion of one of the best qualified people within the
public mental health system, someone with extensive, in-depth experience with
and exposure to our lives and beliefs. Lange casts grave doubt as to the
propriety of what has been done and is still being done - will anyone listen???
Our own
position with DYFCC is now clear and unequivocal. We treat all past and present
staff of this completely corrupt department from Ministers, Directors-General,
regional directors, district managers, case workers, foster parents and all
those others directly and indirectly associated with our case with complete
disdain, derision and disgust with few exceptions. We will never, ever
correspond with them, speak to them or have anything further to do with them -
they are beneath contempt! There is nothing that could even begin to compensate
us for what we have all been forced to endure at the hands of these violent
criminals, free-loading parasites and grossly underutilised bludgers living off
the public purse, vicious vagrants wandering from one act of criminal
interference to another - nothing!
There is
no "middle ground" here, no "fence sitting" and no excuse
for inaction - clearly our case divides the corrupt from the caring, the
cowardly from the courageous, the self-interested from the serving, the
dastardly from the decent, the horrendous from the humane. Thousands of people
of all political persuasions and other professional backgrounds in other states
and overseas have listened with horror and disbelief to what has been done to
us. Almost all those outside
We are
Christians, real Christians and as such are never violent, no matter what the provocation
or circumstances. We serve GOD and HE sees every action, hears every word and
knows every evil intention and wicked imagination of the hardened, impenitent
hearts of all those implicated. Rest assured no-one involved in this case will
get away with anything in this life or the next and eventually those who choose
to remain publicly unrepentant will all go to hell for eternity, a fate from
which there is no release. We could ask for no more.
Faithfully,
Michael & Mary Shelley † (changed to
Israel in 2000)
“X” - Letter to Anna Bligh
Minister for Family Services
Strictly Confidential - Addressee’s Eyes Only
To:- Anna Bligh Michael
Shelley
Minister
for Family Services ‘Tara’
GPO
Box
Fax
00617-3210-2190 Whangamata
00647-865-6181
E-mail:-
michael*@xtra.co.nz
17th
July, 1998
Attached
is a copy of a self-explanatory letter first sent well over a year ago to both
Kevin Lingard and Alan Male along with the follow up letter subsequently sent
to Rob Borbidge, Joan Sheldon and your predecessor Naomi Wilson. Please send a
copy to the Premier Peter Beattie.
I need
immediate action with this matter.
Faithfully,
Michael & Mary Shelley † (changed to
Israel in 2000)
Strictly
Confidential - Addressee’s Eyes Only
To Rob
Borbidge Michael
Shelley
Premier
Surfers
Unit
50, Isle of Capri
Surfers
New
Phone Number:- 00647-866-3151
E-mail: michael*@xtra.co.nz
13th
April, 1998
Attached
is a copy of a self-explanatory letter sent well over a year ago to both Kevin
Lingard and Alan Male. Predictably and typically absolutely nothing has changed
or been done about this disgraceful situation - in fact there has been a
further marked deterioration.
Unless
you personally intervene immediately and effect some major improvement in the
whole fostering arrangement for the benefit of our entire family, we will
without hesitation institute proceedings to:-
1.
obtain a mandamus writ to
compel all individuals responsible within the Queensland Government to
discharge their statutory obligations under law
2) charge all those directly or indirectly implicated
with criminal malfeasance and deliberate negligence, and
3) claim damages from all those personally and professionally involved,
both past and present.
The Department of Family Care, in collusion with and
subject to illegal pressure from external influences, continues to (mis)treat
us unprofessionally, illegally and highly provocatively in every aspect of
their handling of this quite unsuitable, iniquitous and totally unnecessary
fostering arrangement. A succession of irredeemably corrupt, totally
unprincipled and completely unscrupulous parasites, imposters and criminals
posing as public servants (particularly within the parliament and systems of
criminal (in)justice, family care and public (ill)health) parrot the same
dishonest clichés and platitudes, faithfully reproduce the same utterly
implausible excuses and unbelievable explanations, assiduously avoid the
substantial issues and deliberately dodge the key questions.
In fact
the Queensland Government and its various instrumentalities and appellate
bodies continues without justification or excuse to improperly try to focus
against two entirely innocent, totally non-violent Christians and their four
beautiful children all the feelings of their own that they haven’t the decency,
courage or integrity to deal with in their own private and professional lives.
This protracted form of emotional torture and torment perpetrated without
legitimate excuse or justification is particularly insidious, depraved and
spineless because it is so indirect and covert. This shameful misuse and abuse
of power, far worse than simple physical violence (which at least is honest and
open on some level), is increasingly commonly today within all institutions and
organisations in society, resorted to by all those who stoically refuse to face
the truth about their own parents and childhoods and grow up. It is also extremely
provocative and reasonably incites even normal, sane, balanced, law abiding
people to react with fury and outrage. This is often a deliberate ploy set up
by corrupt, violent police in the first place who then misuse the
understandable and fully justifiable response as an excuse to brutally
overreact, mistreating and persecuting their innocent (by comparison) victims
even further.
In fact
it is you who are all extremely violent by everything you do and don’t do, by
delaying, being obstructive, divisive and perverse, by repeatedly lying to us,
by being spiteful, destructive and spoiling the real care we put into
everything we do and have done for our children, by pretending in words to be
caring and concerned whilst in action behaving exactly the opposite way, by
being at best useless, abdicated and ineffectual and at worst by criminally
conniving and conspiring and finally by all supporting directly or by default
what is no different to a thinly disguised case of ‘legalised’ serial child
abduction. It is you who all pose a positive danger and tangible threat to our
entire family every single day (and have done for nearly 18 years) and we
reject your pathetic, dishonest attempts to put your own enormous guilt as
adults, parents, professionals and public servants onto us.
We
certainly repudiate any suggestion that we in any way have threatened anyone,
ever, and those of you who are not aware of the substantial difference between
a warning and a threat are not fit to be in any position of public trust. What
I do as a Man of GOD, Minister and Prophet is to warn people of the present and
future consequences of their actions. If they are too stubborn, arrogant and/or
stupid to choose not to listen, they can hardly blame me anymore than the
speeding motorist who crashes can blame the warning road sign he so foolishly
chose to ignore.
Although
your malicious machinations, uninvolved disinterest, unrestrained ambitions,
unsatisfied greed and depraved voyeurism may make us sickened, disgusted and
furious - something we as adults and Christians have the decency, courage and
integrity to only ever discharge non-violently either verbally and/or in
writing - we are only too pleased to leave you squarely in GOD’s hands certain
in the knowledge that in the long term you will individually and collectively
be far more satisfactorily and satisfyingly dealt with by HIM. We will both see
and enjoy this full and fair recompense, not vengefully like you jealous,
spiteful, emotionally stunted and disabled aged infants, but as a clear
indication and confirmation of HIS inevitable and eventually irreversible
justice.
Faithfully,
Michael & Mary Shelley † (changed to
Israel in 2000)
cc Joan Sheldon (Deputy Premier), Naomi
Wilson (Minister for Family Services)
6) Letter to
Kevin Lingard (Minister for Family Services)
Strictly Confidential - Addressee’s Eyes Only
To: Kevin
Lingard Michael
& Mary Shelley
Minister
For Family Services
Parliament
House Hahei
E-mail
address:- michael*@xtra.co.nz
Re: Elijah, Saul, Joshua & Hannah Shelley 28th
October 1996
I need
something real and tangible done immediately about the completely
unsatisfactory nature of the current situation with our children Elijah, Saul,
Joshua & Hannah Shelley, currently in the control of the Department of
Family Affairs in Queensland, and especially as regards the communication
between them and ourselves in both directions. There should be no need to
reiterate our numerous legitimate complaints as these have been clearly
expressed and comprehensively and repeatedly documented in previous
correspondence from ourselves over a period of many, many years.
There is
an enormous amount of self-explanatory material carefully and specifically
detailed by us on your files which will provide more than sufficient background
information. I especially draw your attention to the affidavit we lodged in
Brisbane for the Children’s Court hearing of Hannah’s case, a copy of which was
first sent to the Director General prior to the Court hearing in 1991, later
copied to Anne Warner on the 1st August 1993 and in general communicated to all
those involved in this case.
Despite
our own efforts to promote truthful, direct and productive dialogue, nothing
has been done to even discuss the issues we have raised nor any attempt made to
remedy the difficulties we have continuously experienced. In particular
everyone involved in the department with our case has resolutely resisted
trying to satisfactorily resolve what is a ridiculous, absurd and untenable
situation that has now been artificially and unlawfully prolonged for 15 years.
They continue to avoid a proper review or complete reassessment of this case,
so obviously needed and long overdue, for no good or valid reason and
steadfastly avoid talking to us about our present or future role in our
children’s lives.
In fact
the department with high-handed arrogance never replies to our letters,
responds to any of our suggestions, supplies any of the information to which we
are legally entitled, complies with any of our requests nor answers any of our
questions. Consistent with the behaviour of guilty people with a lot to hide
and be ashamed about, they are completely closed, narrow-minded,
uncompromising, inflexible and aggressively unwilling to be diligent, fair and
just, try to put all the blame and culpability onto us, never take the
initiative and deliberately fail to deal with crucially important issues about
our children’s overall position. Typically they have stolidly refused to even
consider (let alone investigate) the legitimate grievances, criticisms and
allegations of departmental impropriety and misconduct that we have so fairly
made for over 16 years now, especially their collusion with corrupt police
incensed at our exposure of their illegal activities, despite the serious
implications and far reaching consequences of these, nor to look at their own
non-compliance with the Act.
At best
the department has shown appalling incompetence, inexcusable insensitivity,
callous cruelty and disgraceful disinterest in the welfare and sanctity of our
family - at worst both directly and by default, those involved have chosen to
become implicated in what is literally a particularly insidious and spiteful
form of persecution directed against an entirely innocent, blameless and
essentially defenceless Christian family. This illegal act of provocation has
been a transparent attempt to discredit us as credible and articulate witnesses
of the corruption that continues to infest so much of the political and public
service bureaucracy in
In stark
contrast to the patently false litany of lies, half-truths, distortions of
reality, obscure irrelevancies, untrue insinuations, unfounded innuendoes,
defamatory allegations, spurious speculations, idle comment, outrageous
omissions, unreasonable bias and malicious misrepresentations put forward as
fact about us, all our claims can be readily proved with a minimum of effort
and expense. If 10% of what has been expected of ourselves was expected of them
and if their own actions were scrupulously scrutinised, it could only be
concluded that a grave and abiding miscarriage of justice has occurred.
Certainly anyone who blithely accepts the department’s fabricated explanations,
implausible excuses, simplistic platitudes, offhanded generalities and
rationalised self-justifications without question becomes an accessory to their
crimes - there is nothing that can justify the current situation.
If there
was no corruption, the inconceivable situation which exists for our children
and ourselves could not possibly be tolerated for one week, let alone fifteen
(15) years. How in any civilised, law abiding society can four (4) children be
forcibly removed from the care of their intelligent, sane, balanced,
emotionally aware, dedicated, caring, capable and law abiding parents and be
subject to what is effectively a de facto adoption just because their parents
have the decency, courage, integrity and faith to so legitimately criticise the
way the children’s services authorities, prisons, police, court system and
health professionals conduct themselves in your state.
Our
numerous complaints have if anything resulted in a marked deterioration in the performance
of paid responsibilities and both the department and all foster parents have
consistently failed to fulfil their legal and moral obligations towards both
ourselves and our children in most important respects. Despite the department’s
dishonest claims to the contrary, communication with us has never taken into
account the real needs and circumstances of our children, of ourselves or even
of the foster parents themselves. The department may well say in words that it
has “sought to facilitate greater communication” with us but this is the exact
opposite of the truth, a deceitful and dishonest pretence for the public record
which the most superficial investigation of their actions will demonstrate. Ken
Otter, the departmental officer responsible for the last 6 years up until
recently, had me incessantly repeat our criticisms ‘ad nauseam’ but predictably
did nothing about them, ever. He pretended to be dopey and innocent whilst
sending our mail to addresses that he knew had not been current for years - we
have consistently informed them of all address changes and diligently redirect
mail for months afterwards. Otter was however careful to ensure that the
department’s files deceitfully reflect a wholly unwarranted superficial
appearance of diligence and responsibility by them.
I sent a
number of examples of this behaviour to the Ombudsman’s office if you are
interested but the last thing the department needs is “ more time to implement
the requests” - they are certainly not “endeavouring to address the communication
issues”, just pretence and more protraction. Despite our own considerable
efforts and commitment, there has been no improvement whatsoever in the
quantity and quality of communication between ourselves and our children,
rather a marked decline in both, and no proper review or reassessment of how
our contacts with our children have progressed.
To the
best of our knowledge there has been no attempt whatsoever by anyone in well
over 10 years to supply us a single photograph of our oldest son Elijah, now a
young man of 16 separated (illegally) from his natural parents for over 14
years, despite our repeated requests. Elijah has also been inexcusably lied to,
outrageously misinformed and misled by the department about the reasons for his
separation from his natural parents and about our real love for him (and for
his brothers and sister). As a consequence he understandably is confused,
resentful and angry, his feelings about us have been deliberately tainted and
our communication with him poisoned. This incredibly simple and easy to resolve
situation has been intentionally caused and exacerbated by those in the
department to suit their own most unsavoury emotional agendas.
Our mail
is being deliberately obstructed, censored and delayed and the legally entitled
communication and contact between ourselves and our children has been generally
distorted, contrived and made very difficult indeed. A good question to ask is
“What is the department scared of” and “What have they got to hide?!” What
should take a few days, takes them from months to a year, what should be sorted
out in a few weeks has not even been started after six (6) years and they are
clearly hoping that the resolution of custody will be postponed until all our
children are grown up - whether this is what they need or deserve is immaterial
to these unconscionable individuals. This infuriating and game-playing
behaviour is of course deliberate as they hope to provoke us into some form of
ill-advised action or illegal response which, though fully justified and
completely understandable in the circumstances, will provide them with yet
another convenient excuse to be more unreasonable, more controlling, more
obstructive, more disruptive and cause everyone more distress.
The
department lamely continues to misuse the convenient though unfounded
justification that it finds “it necessary to develop strict reporting
guidelines in order to preserve confidentiality regarding placement of the
children” - the real reasons for this approach are to rigidly control all
communication so as to ensure that our children never discover the truth about
their separation from us, what really happened and why. The department of
course created the problem in the first place by illegally preventing any and
all contact between ourselves and our children for nearly 10 years, despite
what they now claim, placing us in an intolerable situation as parents and
inciting us to direct action.
Because
of the truth we have spoken and written specifically about corruption in the
departments of children’s services, prisons, the courts and the police force in
Queensland and generally about the state of children’s health and of the health
service, we have been systematically discriminated against and provably so. The
reason no-one will do anything about this nor acknowledge this fact publicly is
because it is true, not because it is not.
As
Elijah, Saul, Joshua and Hannah’s father, what I need as a barest minimum is
the following –
1) An immediate and proper complete review of the whole situation as to
our children’s placement and we formally demand yet again that they be returned
to us, their natural parents, without further delay, if necessary under the
supervision of the Children’s & Young Persons Service here in New Zealand.
If this reasonable request is denied, the department needs to be compelled to
fully justify its continued position.
2) A firm
and definite reassurance in the meantime that all our correspondence to our
children will be delivered promptly to them as sent by us, in the carefully
decorated envelopes provided by ourselves. We are to be fully informed of any
and all censoring whatsoever of this mail by the department or by any of the
foster parents.
3)
Regular written correspondence from all our children appropriate to their ages,
at least four (4) times a year plus something at Christmas time and for our
respective birthdays (15th January (Mary’s), 26th April (Paul’s) and 18th May
(mine)) - just as we do for them. This correspondence needs to include a
detailed acknowledgement of what we have written to them and enclose school
reports each and every term (not just one every now and then in response to a
complaint we have made to some external body of appeal like the Ombudsman's
Office).
4) We
need regular contact by mail with both foster fathers and mothers - these individuals
are after all supposed to be looking after our children and are well paid for
this extraordinary privilege. If either set of foster parents really loved our
children in action, this would already be happening, today. We have had no
reply to our past letters to both foster mothers, the first written in
September 1992, replying in response to their own one and only letters, and we
believe that the department has totally misrepresented our position and
attitude in this regard to them and may have even forged or failed to deliver our
replies.
5) We
need contact with our children by audio and/or video cassette tape as well by
E-mail with the same diligence and detail in acknowledgement and reply. We have
sent a number of audio tapes with no real response or reply.
6) We
need some neutral, unbiased and trustable outside person to be put in charge of
this delicate situation, responsible for diligently following up and checking
all complaints and requests - Ken Otter miserably failed to do this and we were
predictably not even informed that Margaret Neeson was appointed as his
successor several months ago. This special provision is wholly warranted in the
“most contentious, unusual and difficult child fostering case in the history of
7) The
Department needs to be obliged to be honest about its present commitment to
destroying the sanctity of our family unit and to justify this openly instead
of their pathetic efforts of minimal pretence of compliance with the Act. There
is and never has been, for example any real effort made to reunify the family
as per their responsibilities clearly stated in the Act, quite the reverse, and
those responsible for this need to be held to account (and will be without
doubt, thank GOD).
8) We
need good photos of our children sent at least once a year. We have now been
asking for a photo of and letter from Elijah for over seven (7) years - this in
itself gives an excellent insight into exactly what the departments’ officers
are really all about!
9) We
need our input into our children’s care, education, activities and interests to
be listened to, acknowledged and at least discussed.
10) Our
children need to all spend time together regularly, no matter what the logistic
problems that the department has deliberately caused may be. This is what they
need.
11) We
have offered at our own expense to have any or all of our children over here
for a few weeks holiday, again under appropriate supervision by CYPTFS if
necessary. We have an excellent home with two (2) spare bedrooms, certainly
better facilities and more beautiful, healthy and appropriate surroundings than
either foster placement, and have had sufficient space to accommodate them all
for many years.
We as
Elijah, Saul, Joshua and Hannah’s parents are increasingly concerned for our
children’s’ welfare. In view of and despite the excellent start we gave them
ourselves, it is clear to us that they are by our high standards very lacking
in self-awareness and emotional maturity and are receiving (and have received)
nothing like the care and devotion they would have naturally been given by us.
They have had no choice but to live life on what is to us an incredibly
superficial, boring and monotonous level, justified as ”predictable and
consistent” by the department, with little variety, adventure, excitement,
richness or beneficial change. They utilise a fraction of their true potential,
have been given a very narrow education, show the typical involvement with
superficial religious hypocrisy and have become obsessed with infantile,
essentially unhealthy and wasteful activities like competitive sports rather
than being really healthy in the course of a natural, active and productive
life. Just because this is so common today, usual but certainly not normal,
makes it no less reprehensible.
My family
and I need you and your staff to demonstrate the diligence and responsibility
required of your office to look into this without delay or prevarication. This
ludicrous situation has gone on for far too long - we need action and we need
it today. Our phone number is (00647) 866-3021 if further detail is required or
if someone takes the urgency of the situation seriously. It is action, not
words which confirms the truth of peoples’ motives and intentions.
Faithfully,
Michael & Mary Shelley † (changed
to Israel in
2000)
cc
Alan Male, Director General
Norm Alford, The Queensland Children’s Commissioner
Bob Bottom, Advisor on Organised Crime & Child Abuse
Lorraine Bird MP
“Y” Affidavit to
In the Matter of
an Application for the Admission of Hannah Shelley to the Care and Protection
of the Director-General, Department of Family Services and Aboriginal &
Islander Affairs, Queensland, Australia
We, MICHAEL D'ARCY SHELLEY (Teacher, 45
years), KATHERINE MARY SHELLEY (known as MARY, Wife and Mother, 48 years) and
PAUL SHELLEY (Farmer, 23 years), all of Whangaripo Valley via Wellsford, New
Zealand do hereby jointly and severally make oath and attest as follows:
1. We are the father, mother and brother of HANNAH SHELLEY respectively.
2. We herein set forth our objections to the application by the
DEPARTMENT of FAMILY SERVICES and ABORIGINAL and ISLANDER AFFAIRS to admit
HANNAH SHELLEY into their care and protection.
3. We earnestly emphasise to the court that this is an extremely
contentious, complex and important case which has ramifications not only for
the future and welfare of HANNAH SHELLEY but also for her brothers ELIJAH
MICHAEL SHELLEY, SAUL S SHELLEY and JOSHUA SHELLEY who are already subject to
similar orders to which we also take vehement exception.
4. We note that JACQUELINE PHIPPS-ELLIS, the applicant for the Care and
Protection order has never met any of us, never spoken to any of us nor has
received from us nor written to us any communication whatsoever. We hold the
opinion that this person's opinions and statements are entirely hearsay, not to
be relied upon and are largely irrelevant to Hannah's situation.
5. We have NEVER been given a proper, legal or adequate opportunity to
defend the custody of any of our children in Queensland nor to put our side of
the case and a close scrutiny of the history of our dealings with the said
Department and its predecessor, the DEPARTMENT of CHILDRENS SERVICES shows
clearly to an unbiased and fair observer or arbitrator that there is abundant
evidence of bureaucratic and political impropriety, negligence, incompetence
and corruption underlying this case.
6. Our contact with the said Department began ten years ago in August
1981, not as is alleged in the Affidavit of the said JACQUELINE PHIPPS-ELLIS
"following concerns about the parents' psychiatric history and itinerant
lifestyle" but as a result of our own verbal and written complaints about
the behaviour of Departmental officers, notably Jennifer Wiltshire, currently
Manager, Child Protection Section. It is significant to note that none of our
complaints or concerns has been addressed in any way to this date and they are
unable or unwilling to address the serious issues that have constantly been
identified in relation to their inexcusable misconduct, not only in this case
but in many others as well. The court is referred to the letter written by
MICHAEL SHELLEY to various Government Ministers here in New Zealand dated the
13th December 1990 (attached hereto and marked "A") for a brief
history of this case and to Attachments "K" and "L" to
refute any fictitious assertions as to our "psychiatric unfitness".
Further details can be supplied on request as they are on the files of numerous
State and Federal Government departments including the Australian and Queensland
Ombudsman's offices and the Human Rights Commission as well as the United
Nations Human Rights Committee files in
7. There is no competent or informed evidence that any of our children
has ever been physically or emotionally deprived in any way (most especially
nutritionally) whilst in our care, quite the reverse. We provably have an
exceptionally high standard of caring for all our children in every conceivable
way and we vigorously deny and refute these assertions. These allegations have
been provably fabricated by public servants in both
8. We have had and still have grave concerns for the safety and welfare
of all our children when subject to the real abuse, confusion, deprivation,
nutritional insufficiency, emotional invalidation and spiritual hypocrisy which
so provably has been and still is a feature of all their lives whilst under the
control of the said Department. Following months of unsuccessful efforts by
ourselves to gain redress for our very reasonable grievances about the
situation with Elijah through both the Australian Federal Government in
Canberra and the United Nations in Geneva, we rescued our son Elijah from the
horrendous foster placement in Queensland on the 7th day of November 1983.
Prior to this date the said Department had acted with callous disregard and
arrogant high-handedness in its attitude to our needs as a family (and still
does), imposing a regimen of access to Elijah that was both impossible and
cruel for us all. This was a deliberate and spiteful act of provocation by them
because of the guilt they so reasonably felt (and still feel) about their own
actions and about our specific, clearly articulated and fully documented
exposure of them. They have never shown any commitment to maintaining any of
our children within their natural family and their current application
demonstrates that they have no intention of changing, ever.
9. The said Department was itself responsible for this so-called
"abduction" of Elijah yet they have used this so deceitfully as an
excuse to completely deny us access to all our children until a few months ago,
eight years later. Officers of this Department have made no effort to contact
us in any way whatsoever during this entire 8 year period despite being aware
of our mailing address (or being able to easily discover it) for most of this
time. Officers of this Department have notably (and arbitrarily) decided late
last year (1990) without any consultation or communication with ourselves, to continue
to deny any of us any personal contact with our sons/brothers using as a
sufficient justification that we continue to express our fully justified
disgust and anger at their criminal actions and effective abduction of three of
our sons. In essence they are "punishing" us for telling them the
truth about how we so reasonably feel, yet another completely unjust misuse and
abuse of their entrusted power.
10. Our son/brother ELIJAH MICHAEL SHELLEY was admitted to the Care and
Protection of the said Department on the 29th day of March 1982 and the
presiding magistrate, Bert Latham made this draconian order in the absence of
ELIJAH'S parents and in the absence of any parental legal representation
despite knowing and having complete control over our whereabouts. Latham's
actions were no less than the perversion and obstruction of justice and his
collusion with corrupt police constitutes criminal conspiracy. We have never
gained any satisfaction to our reasonable grievances in this regard and
magistrates in both NSW and the ACT have themselves expressed serious concerns
about what happened. Our other equally unsatisfactory and unjust dealings with
other members of the Queensland magistracy and the District and Supreme courts
in that state have led us to conclude that all sections of these supposedly
independent, impartial and uninfluenced judicial bodies are as equally infected
with corruption as was (and still is) the Queensland Police Force as shown so
convincingly by the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Those magistrates and judges who have
adjudicated in the numerous court cases involving our family are scurrilous
scoundrels thoroughly deserving of imprisonment.
11. The said Department has only recently pretended to allow extremely
limited and highly controlled written access to our sons in order to disguise
the present and past impropriety of their behaviour throughout this entire case
and to make it appear as though their attitude and approach has been and is
somehow reasonable - it so obviously has never been! The said Jennifer
Wiltshire has claimed earlier this year in phone conversations with us that
there has "never been any problem with writing to ELIJAH, SAUL or
JOSHUA", an outrageous lie! We have over the past 8 years made numerous
written and personal representations to the said Department, both direct and
through many intermediaries about access of any kind and we have always been
summarily refused any and all contact. Since being permitted to write to our
own sons a few months ago (notably just before the scheduled Family Court
hearing about Hannah here in New Zealand!), we have received one letter from
ELIJAH of less than a dozen words and Wiltshire has herself admitted freely
that ELIJAH'S foster mother will not encourage him to write to us. Elijah has
apparently not replied to most of our letters and our repeated requests for
present or past photographs of him are simply ignored. We believe that there is
something about Elijah's appearance and/or behaviour that the Department is
deliberately trying to hide from us with their customary deceitfulness. In
truth all of ELIJAH'S very reasonable and understandable anger at his illegal
abduction from his real parents, his total and continued separation from his
parents and his inhumane mistreatment since is being focused against us rather
than against ´´those who deserve it - the said Department (especially
Wiltshire) and a series of awful foster parents. We have no reasonable
expectation that the said Department will behave any less unreasonably with our
daughter/sister HANNAH SHELLEY and the said Department simply cannot be trusted
to keep their word to us about any aspect of our dealings with them nor to
honour any commitment to or arrangements with us unless compelled to do so by a
court order. We would like to be more positive about our contact but
realistically we have come to realise that we are dealing with some very
guilty, sinister and unprincipled people with an enormous amount to hide.
12. Orders were signed on the 28th October, 1985 to remove SAUL and JOSHUA
SHELLEY, later admitted to Care and Protection on the 13th day of January 1986,
from their mother prior to either of them being examined or assessed by a nurse
or doctor. This is typical of the unreasonable and indefensible approach taken
by the Department in our case who have shown themselves to be prepared to go to
any lengths to cover up their own inexcusable actions and to attempt to
discredit us as credible witnesses of their own improprieties even if this
involves the unnecessary separation of four children from their natural caring
parents with all the attendant emotional distress, confusion and cost. We refer
the court to the "Notes on Queensland Reports about Elijah, Saul and
Joshua" compiled by ourselves and attached, marked "C". It needs
to be asked why no attempt was made to contact us in any way by the said
Department in the 6 month period between the date of the initial Care and
Protection Order for Saul and Joshua (13th January 1986) and when they were
placed in a long term fostering situation on the 23rd June 1986?
13. We did not, as alleged by PHIPPS-ELLIS in her affidavit sworn on the
2nd May 1991, "come to the attention of the Department of Social Welfare
(here in N.Z.). . . due to the complaints about the family's behaviour and
concern for the child Hannah". DSW first learned of our presence here in
New Zealand when Wiltshire alerted them to our presence here not long after our
arrival, hoping to cause trouble and disrupt the final weeks of Mary's
pregnancy. Our contact with DSW subsequently came as a result of an offer of
assistance by Paula Wallis of their Social Work department to Mary (declined)
and a request that Hannah at six weeks be examined by a senior Auckland Area
Health Board Doctor (readily agreed to). The examination showed Hannah to be
normal, healthy and thriving. A copy of the notice we wrote about Hannah's
birth is attached marked "D" and we also refer to references about
this in Attachment "A".
14. We have only consented to the transfer of HANNAH to
15. The Department of Social Welfare here in New Zealand has predictably
failed to honour its stated intentions to assist us with contact with our
children as per their stated plan for Hannah lodged with the Family Court and
in fact now obdurately refuses to answer or even acknowledge correspondence
from us. This undertaking by them was just a ruse and an affected facade of
pretence and this is completely consistent with all our dealings with them - we
have no expectation of any substantial change in their attitude or behaviour.
16. The whole situation is absolutely preposterous and quite absurd.
Even if we had in some concrete and identifiable way not given our children an
acceptable level of care, the law requires the public servants involved to make
every conceivable effort to preserve the sanctity of the family unit. They have
never, ever done this or tried in any substantitive way to resolve this horrendous
and inexcusable affair in 8 years nor made any effort whatsoever to assist us
to resume care of our children. If they obeyed the law, we would have
undoubtedly had our children returned into our custody years ago. The NOFTT
diagnosis is for example highly contentious and debatable but it is only of
major concern with very young babies and children anyway. Despite this, those
responsible for our children in
17. Elijah has very limited and entirely unsatisfactory contact with his
brothers Saul and Joshua and Department assurances in this regard simply cannot
be believed. The Department has also completely poisoned our relationships with
all our sons (especially Elijah) by totally misleading them all about us, by providing
them with confusing, contradictory and fundamentally untrue information about
us and by determinedly refusing to allow them to hear our side of the situation
openly and in a fair and unbiased manner. The statement by them that "they
have been provided with appropriate knowledge about their natural parents and
their fostering status and they have developed a healthy understanding and
feeling of security about these issues" is absolute nonsense and a
completely fabricated fantasy. Despite both Saul and Joshua themselves
requesting us to write often, Wiltshire was (and is) already playing the
anticipated game of obstructing and limiting communication, changing her
attitude entirely once Hannah was in
18. We agree that HANNAH SHELLEY is in need of Care and Protection today
(as are her three brothers ELIJAH, SAUL AND JOSHUA today) and that she has been
in need of this since her removal from our care on the 24th October 1990. We
further know that none of our children in the said Department's control have
proper care and guardianship exercised over them and that they are in the full
literal sense of the words neglected, exposed to physical and moral danger and
are in the custody of people who are unfit by reason of their conduct and
habits to have custody of any children.
19. We know that the interests of HANNAH SHELLEY would be best served if
she were placed back in the care of her natural parents along with her siblings
under negotiated supervision and that real Care and Protection cannot be
afforded by any other means.
ALL the facts and circumstances herein
deposed to are within our own personal knowledge and experience.
Sworn severally at Wellford on this day of
July 1991
by Michael
D'Arcy SHELLEY Mary SHELLEY Paul SHELLEY
Note We were
predictably denied legal aid and representation before the Children's Court
despite making a detailed application, despite being in another country and not
having anyone in
To: Clerk of Court Michael,
Mary & Paul SHELLEY Childrens Court c/-
Wellesley Street P.O.
18th
May 1991
Re: Our daughter/sister
Hannah Shelley - Reference No. 74/91
We
have two days ago received first notice about the court proceedings which are
to determine Hannah's legal position and custody in
We
believe this matter has been set down for hearing sometime during the week
after next, the week ending 1st June 1991.
We
need however a fair and reasonable period in which to respond to the documents
received from the Department of Family Services which incidentally were
incorrectly addressed on the information supplied by the Department of Social
Welfare here in
We
also need time to prepare for what will be a contested hearing in order to
brief counsel.
We
would herein like to emphasise that we believe as Hannah's parents and brother
that she should be represented by a separate counsel and that we be given an
opportunity to supply said legal representative with complete and detailed
information about the entire history of this case. To not do this would
be to deny Hannah and ourselves a fair and unbiased hearing and could not
conclude a just determination of Hannah's future.
As
a consequence we request that the matter be adjourned for a further month during
which time we will supply affidavits and exhibits direct to the court as well
as being able to communicate the same information to the solicitor for the
child.
Please
address all correspondence to the above address which has proved both reliable
and rapid since our arrival in this country over 12 months ago.
We
thank you in anticipation of an early reply.
Faithfully,
Michael, Mary & Paul Shelley †
“Z” Relevant Extracts from My Submission to the Fitzgerald Inquiry into
Corruption 1988
Societies are integrated systems and
illegality and impropriety in one area can only exist and flourish with the
full support and connivance of all other sections - so it is with governments.
To understand the roots of corruption and to deal with it effectively therefore
means not to limit the inquiry to one relatively unimportant and insignificant
area of police activity (in this case licensing) but rather to recognise that
similar criminal activity must also exist in all government instrumentalities
and agencies, especially in the magistracy, the judiciary, courts
administration and the legal profession itself. The police force in any
jurisdiction can only become corrupt if the legal and court system is itself
equally tainted and it is a dangerous, deceitful and cowardly delusion to
believe otherwise. There is, for example not one magistrate in the entire state
of
To not see that the situation is rapidly
getting worse is to accept at face value what is effectively just a more
convincing facade of external pretence and again is a convenient fantasy. Only
those who themselves choose to not deteriorate concurrently in morality along
with society at large are in a position to perceive this worsening situation
clearly. All others become knowing accessories to what is happening, either
because they enjoy and profit from the situation or because they lack the
courage and conviction to speak out against it - in the final essence there is
no substantial difference between these two groups.
You have had a Premier in Bjelke-Petersen who
exemplifies all that is worst about males and so-called Christians today. He
has only ever been concerned for himself and has used all those around him (his
wife, children, electorate, fellow party members, politicians, public servants)
to aggrandises himself, amass financial wealth, maintain power at any cost and
most importantly to avoid facing the truth of his own childhood and growing up.
He blatantly and obviously lies openly, he has perfected the art of pretence
and media manipulation, he is accomplished at taking the focus off his own
nefarious activities, has completely misused and abused his entrusted authority
and has effectively spread his evil influence throughout every section of the
Queensland community.
The least worrying aspect of corruption in
the police force relates to financial impropriety because this is of least
importance and does least real harm in absolute terms. Of much more concern is
the polices¡¦ complete
contempt for the law themselves, the unfairness and injustice of their own
practices, their illegal influence throughout the magistracy and judiciary,
their improper persecution, provocation, ill-treatment and subsequent
imprisonment of the most vulnerable and defenceless in our society (especially
young people, women and aboriginals), their actual deviate and sadistic
enjoyment of violence, intimidation, crises, emergencies and sexual perversion
and their flagrant disregard for human life itself. It is not that police corruption
is widespread, it is total.
It is extremely hard if not impossible to
find one single policeman in Queensland today who literally obeys the law
himself, who treats everyone politely, directly, justly, fairly and honestly
(irrespective of their age, position, wealth, sex or race), who tells the truth
under oath, who only uses physical force appropriately when absolutely
necessary for restraint purposes, who values the sanctity of life, who is
helpful, diligent and active and who would not fail to report illegal or
improper behaviour by a superior officer, publicly if necessary, without fear
of the consequences. Just like good nurses, good doctors, good teachers, good
prison officers, good magistrates, good judges and good lawyers, good policemen
soon get disillusioned and disgusted and resign or choose to remain and become
tainted and corrupted (or discriminated against, ostracised and isolated) by
their colleagues. The police in
Like the courts, all appellate bodies,
tribunals, Ombudsmen and the Human Rights Commission itself are exhausting to
those most needing the assistance, time wasting and delaying with the outcome
inevitably being unsatisfactory, incomplete and unjust. People with genuine
grievances in
Your preoccupation with what is essentially a
fringe area of corruption (licensing) is sensational but serves only to
conveniently take the focus off the more substantiative issues.
One example of how transparent and deceitful Premier
Michael Ahern’s own motives are and the off-handed contempt with which he
treats the