July 12: Diagnosis of a crime series; Investigation of the day; Part 5: Zita and Ravi: New Zealand: Newsroom Podcast series, Shaken baby syndrome and so much more: Joris de Bres authored this story for Newsbreak,..."I am the parent of two daughters with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bones, and I am the grandparent of another. My wife and I know what it is like to take a child with an unexplained fracture to a hospital with no bruising, especially when the underlying condition hasn’t been diagnosed. There is a spoken or unspoken suspicion you have hurt the child. It was a common experience of parents of children with osteogenesis imperfecta. There were cases internationally where such parents or carers had their children taken from them and were charged, convicted and imprisoned for child abuse. I know the hospital checked with our GP after one of our daughters had two successive skull fractures as an infant before their brittle bone condition had been diagnosed. Perhaps we were lucky that we were Pākehā professionals with an address on Auckland’s North Shore. I am always alert to news stories of parents whose babies are taken from them because of unexplained fractures. I heard of one such case in 2017...."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY:  "Finally, after seven years apart, the whole family was reunited and able to live together once again.  But as I told them at the outset, the real obstacle to achieving justice was what was called by the Judge at her trial, the Court of Appeal, the Parole Board, the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Immigration Tribunal, the “overwhelming medical evidence” that she had injured her daughter. This “overwhelming” evidence was that their eight-week-old baby could only have suffered her brain injury by what is called abusive head trauma, previously known as shaken baby syndrome, and that her multiple rib fractures could only have been caused by squeezing.  All unnoticed by midwife, Plunket nurse and GP before her admission to hospital despite thorough examinations."

--------------------------------------------

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The diagnosis of abusive head trauma is regarded as medical orthodoxy in New Zealand hospitals, but it has increasingly been challenged internationally as unscientific and responsible for the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of parents and carers. In Zita and Ravi’s case, their baby had a severe vitamin D deficiency (which can affect bone mineralisation and may increase the risk of fractures), and Zita’s labour and delivery had been traumatic.  Nevertheless, the Starship doctors dismissed other possible explanations and within the first 24 hours after she was admitted to hospital diagnosed the baby’s injuries as non-accidental. As one international medical expert said in the Fractured podcast “They rush to judgment and there’s nothing for them to lose if they make a false allegation and ruin a family because there’s no consequence. They’re completely immune to any accountability.”

---------------------------------

PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "When doctors tell Oranga Tamariki, the police and the courts that they believe it is a ‘non-accidental injury’ case, the parents or caregivers are deemed to be guilty unless they can prove otherwise.  mThis is a reversal of the normal principle of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The proof of guilt offered by the state is the medical evidence.  But doctors are not qualified to diagnose a crime, nor is it appropriate for them to do so."

--------------------------------------------

PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "Those who are responsible for child protection or prosecution (Oranga Tamariki, the police and the courts) largely base their decisions to take children or prosecute parents on this medical advice, even though there are no witnesses and there is no external evidence of injury, and the parents have no idea what’s wrong with their baby or how the injuries happened. Recently, the New Jersey Supreme Court in the US went so far as to disallow evidence by a medical expert who was to testify “not only about the injuries observed on a child through medical examinations and tests, but also that the only explanation for those injuries is child abuse,” finding that the evidence was “unreliable and inadmissible at trial”.

--------------------------------

 That type of evidence is no longer permitted in the state of New Jersey and increasingly challenged successfully elsewhere.

STORY; 'Wrongfully accused, wrongfully convicted and still waiting for justice," by Joris de Bres, published by Newsroom, on July 7, 2026. (Joris de Bres was NZ’s Race Relations Commissioner from 2002-2013. He was previously a general manager at DoC and head of industrial relations in the NZ Public Service Association.)

SUB-HEADING: "Former Race Relations and Human Rights Commissioner Joris de Bres urges the NZ medical establishment to reexamine its rigid handling of wrongful child abuse convictions."

COMMENT: "The story of young Indian migrants Zita and Ravi* and their infant daughter was the subject of last year’s podcast series Fractured by Newsroom investigative journalists Melanie Reid and Bonnie Sumner."

GIST: "This article is about how I first came to hear of Zita and Ravi’s plight and became a voluntary advocate for them in their struggle against the many arms of the state. 

I am still involved, together with Reid and Sumner, in seeking justice for them.

I am the parent of two daughters with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bones, and I am the grandparent of another. 

My wife and I know what it is like to take a child with an unexplained fracture to a hospital with no bruising, especially when the underlying condition hasn’t been diagnosed. 

There is a spoken or unspoken suspicion you have hurt the child. 

It was a common experience of parents of children with osteogenesis imperfecta. 

There were cases internationally where such parents or carers had their children taken from them and were charged, convicted and imprisoned for child abuse. 

I know the hospital checked with our GP after one of our daughters had two successive skull fractures as an infant before their brittle bone condition had been diagnosed. 

Perhaps we were lucky that we were Pākehā professionals with an address on Auckland’s North Shore.

I am always alert to news stories of parents whose babies are taken from them because of unexplained fractures. 

I heard of one such case in 2017. 

A young South African migrant couple had their second child taken by Oranga Tamariki at birth, because they were still under suspicion of having injured their first, also taken from them as a baby. 

I became their voluntary advocate.

The elder child turned out to have a type of osteogenesis imperfecta, although the Starship doctors maintained that wasn’t the cause. 

Police charges were ultimately dropped, and both children were returned to their parents. 

But their family life had been completely upended and they had paid thousands of dollars in legal fees. 

I  published stories about them and ‘the baby with the broken bones.’

Ravi contacted me because he found my articles online in his search for an explanation for his daughter’s injuries.

 He was desperate. 

His wife, Zita, was in prison, convicted of injuring their daughter with reckless disregard. 

Their daughter, now four years old, had been taken by Oranga Tamariki at nine weeks and put in foster care. 

Ravi was only allowed to see her once a month. Zita wasn’t allowed to see her at all.

Zita faced deportation at the end of her sentence because she was now a convicted criminal.

 Ravi also faced also being thrown out of the country because he was on a partnership visa, cancelled because of his wife’s conviction, and their daughter would be kept in New Zealand under the care of the state.

It is also worth explaining that even though Ravi was found not guilty in the trial, he was not given back custody of his child – Oranga Tamariki seemingly considered that because Zita continued to maintain her innocence and he supported her, he was complicit.

All the while, their daughter was in the care of someone of a different ethnicity and religion, living in a different town. 

Struggling with his limited English, Ravi had to engage with the hospital, Oranga Tamariki, the police, the courts, Corrections, Immigration NZ, the Parole Board, the Immigration Tribunal, even the Ombudsman. 

He was unable to work because his visa had not been renewed. 

He and Zita had nowhere left to turn and they felt utterly defeated and desperate. 

I agreed to help

. Step by step over the next three years we made progress. It was incredibly frustrating.

 A loving mother had been demonised, her husband was not trusted.

 I appealed to social workers, chief executives, Members of Parliament, ministers. Every step was hard fought and often I felt I was banging my head against a brick wall.

Nevertheless, for Ravi, there was a gradual improvement in access, a successful appeal to the Immigration Tribunal against immediate deportation and eventually his daughter was able to come and live with him and his sister.

For Zita, the improvement was being able to see her daughter on video from prison (after zero contact for two years) and being released on parole. 

Despite an imminent threat of deportation, we were able to get this halted. 

Finally, after seven years apart, the whole family was reunited and able to live together once again. 

But as I told them at the outset, the real obstacle to achieving justice was what was called by the Judge at her trial, the Court of Appeal, the Parole Board, the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Immigration Tribunal, the “overwhelming medical evidence” that she had injured her daughter.

This “overwhelming” evidence was that their eight-week-old baby could only have suffered her brain injury by what is called abusive head trauma, previously known as shaken baby syndrome, and that her multiple rib fractures could only have been caused by squeezing. 

All unnoticed by midwife, Plunket nurse and GP before her admission to hospital despite thorough examinations.

The diagnosis of abusive head trauma is regarded as medical orthodoxy in New Zealand hospitals, but it has increasingly been challenged internationally as unscientific and responsible for the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of parents and carers.

In Zita and Ravi’s case, their baby had a severe vitamin D deficiency (which can affect bone mineralisation and may increase the risk of fractures), and Zita’s labour and delivery had been traumatic. 

Nevertheless, the Starship doctors dismissed other possible explanations and within the first 24 hours after she was admitted to hospital diagnosed the baby’s injuries as non-accidental.

As one international medical expert said in the Fractured podcast “They rush to judgment and there’s nothing for them to lose if they make a false allegation and ruin a family because there’s no consequence. They’re completely immune to any accountability.”

When doctors tell Oranga Tamariki, the police and the courts that they believe it is a ‘non-accidental injury’ case, the parents or caregivers are deemed to be guilty unless they can prove otherwise. 

This is a reversal of the normal principle of the presumption of innocence until proven guilty.

 The proof of guilt offered by the state is the medical evidence. 

But doctors are not qualified to diagnose a crime, nor is it appropriate for them to do so. 

Those who are responsible for child protection or prosecution (Oranga Tamariki, the police and the courts) largely base their decisions to take children or prosecute parents on this medical advice, even though there are no witnesses and there is no external evidence of injury, and the parents have no idea what’s wrong with their baby or how the injuries happened.

Recently, the New Jersey Supreme Court in the US went so far as to disallow evidence by a medical expert who was to testify “not only about the injuries observed on a child through medical examinations and tests, but also that the only explanation for those injuries is child abuse,” finding that the evidence was “unreliable and inadmissible at trial”.

 That type of evidence is no longer permitted in the state of New Jersey and increasingly challenged successfully elsewhere.

While the authorities in Zita’s case were convinced by the medical evidence of Starship doctors (no alternative medical evidence was presented by the defence at trial or in the Court of Appeal), I was not. 

But I didn’t know how to challenge it. Zita and Ravi had already spent upwards of $100,000 on lawyers to challenge the various authorities and had no money and no hope.

A year after I became involved, the situation was still bleak. 

The prospect of both Ravi and Zita being deported without their daughter loomed. 

As a last resort I contacted Newsroom’s senior investigative reporter Melanie Reid, known to me from her reporting on the uplift of Māori babies by Oranga Tamariki, which had led to a number of reviews and major policy and structural changes in Oranga Tamariki in relation to whānau Māori. 

I sent her an 80-page narrative I had written about Ravi and Zita’s nightmare journey.

Reid and her colleague Bonnie Sumner began to delve into their story and found a few previous cases in New Zealand in which the state’s evidence of shaking and squeezing of babies had been successfully challenged by overseas experts. 

These families had lawyered up and one case won on appeal. 

But the reality was grim for other parents who were accused and had their children removed. 

Some were convicted and sent to jail, because, as with Zita, no alternative medical evidence was presented at their trial. 

At least one such parent is still in prison today.

Reid and Sumner began contacting overseas experts who had testified in big international cases and somehow, I don’t know quite how, they managed to persuade them to look at the medical evidence that led to Zita’s conviction pro bono.

They obtained the medical files, CT scans and x-rays that were relied on by Starship and sent them overseas for review. 

The months ticked by but finally their reports started to come through. 

 They came from a professor of neurosurgery at Bergen University in Norway, a professor with expertise in genetics and biochemistry from the University of Amsterdam, an obstetrician/gynaecologist from Los Angeles who had pioneered the method of foetal monitoring during labour, and a neuropathologist and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

They disputed the diagnoses and considered the baby’s fractures and brain injury were likely due to extremely low vitamin D and birth trauma (Zita had had a long and painful birth, with both forceps and ventouse suction). They questioned whether some of the fractures were even fractures at all.

Now we had four reports from highly qualified international experts saying this was an ‘overcall’ and not due to abuse, and that there were other obvious medical issues that had been overlooked or wrongly discounted. 

Reid, Sumner and I together lodged a new application for a review of Zita’s conviction with the Criminal Cases Review Commission in July 2024. It was accepted for review, a thorough assessment is well advanced and a full investigation will hopefully follow.

In light of the application, Associate Immigration Minister Chris Penk last year allowed Zita, Ravi and their daughter to remain in New Zealand for a further 18 months while the Criminal Cases Review Commission assessed it. 

That time is nearly up, but a finding by the commission is a long way off. They will again be liable for deportation in September unless they are granted a further reprieve.

This issue goes beyond Ravi and Zita’s individual case. 

Their story, as told in the investigative podcast series Fractured, has already brought many other cases to light. 

Reid and Sumner have been contacted by some 20 families in response. 

They have told the stories of another three in a further podcast series, Diagnosis of a Crime, which includes the case of a professional athlete. 

He was tried on similar charges in Dunedin and was found not guilty by a jury after Reid and Sumner secured international experts to appear for the defence to challenge the ‘diagnosis’ of abuse.

This is clearly a systemic issue and needs to be inquired into independently to put right past injustices and prevent future ones. 

We are all rightly concerned about child abuse, but we must also care for those who are wrongfully accused of it.

It can’t just be left to parents to try to challenge this on an individual basis. 

They are traumatised by the taking of their children, police interviews and court proceedings. 

Their children are often traumatised by being taken from their families and placed in foster care. 

They fear societal censure and shame through being accused of child abuse. 

They don’t have the knowledge or resources to hire overseas experts. 

They live in a small country where doctors who know them and believe them are reluctant to go up the medical establishment. 

They may even, like Ravi and Zita, be in a foreign country with another language. 

They cannot explain why their child was injured, but they know they did not, and never would, hurt them. 

While internationally these diagnoses are increasingly challenged, the medical establishment in New Zealand remains unmoved.

Zita, Ravi and their daughter must be allowed to stay in New Zealand until the Criminal Cases Review Commission has completed its review of Zita’s conviction. 

And an independent inquiry must be conducted to hear the parents’ stories and critically examine the validity of the scientific and legal basis on which such prosecutions are being brought. 

Otherwise, there is a real risk that more parents will be wrongfully convicted and more children will be unnecessarily removed from their parents by the state.

*Not their real names.""

The entire story can be read at:
https://newsProom.co.nz/2026/07/07/wrongfully-accused-wrongfully-convicted-and-still-waiting-for-justice/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

Jimmie "Chris" Duncan: Death Row: Louisiana: Question of the day: (Nola.com): (From our 'I couldn't agree more!" department); "When a man serves 28 years on death row for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit, and then two courts find him “factually innocent” under a law passed five years ago by a conservative, tough-on-crime legislature, he shouldn’t be subjected to yet another trial. Indeed, a new trial could be unconstitutional. So why is a prosecutor in Monroe saying he intends to charge and try the man again?" Read on!

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "I wrote about this case for the first time one year ago this week, when the trial-court judge found that “bite mark” evidence used to convict Duncan was based on junk science and that several other evidentiary claims were extremely dubious — including the very notion that the girl had been sexually assaulted, with medical analysts now saying otherwise. Suffice it to say that by now, the near-certain truth is what Duncan has claimed all along: The little girl, who had a history of seizures, had another seizure and drowned while briefly left alone in a partially filled bathtub. As state Supreme Court Justice Cade Cole wrote for the unanimous court, “Had the ‘new’ evidence, in light of all relevant evidence, been presented at trial, no rational juror would have found Duncan guilty of the first degree murder of Haley beyond a reasonable doubt.”

-----------------------------------------

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The legislators got the policy mostly right, and all the judges on the state Supreme Court got the facts and law right. Chris Duncan has suffered long enough for leaving a child unattended while he washed dishes in a nearby room. Let this man finally live free without further persecuting him — and perhaps amend the law to remove the chance for prosecutors to retry men already found factually innocent."

--------------------------------------------

COMMENTARY: "Quin Hillyer: Louisiana courts shouldn’t play double jeopardy with a freed man’s life," by Columnist Quin Hillyer, published by Nola.com, on July 11, 2026.

GIST: "When a man serves 28 years on death row for a crime he almost certainly didn’t commit, and then two courts find him “factually innocent” under a law passed five years ago by a conservative, tough-on-crime legislature, he shouldn’t be subjected to yet another trial.

Indeed, a new trial could be unconstitutional.

So why is a prosecutor in Monroe saying he intends to charge and try the man again?

On June 29, the Louisiana Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower-court ruling that Jimmie “Chris” Duncan had been wrongly convicted on a horrid charge of raping and murdering his girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter in 1993. To be clear, this decision didn’t involve letting Duncan off on some procedural technicality; this was a slew of judges finding the original conviction itself was factually mistaken.

I wrote about this case for the first time one year ago this week, when the trial-court judge found that “bite mark” evidence used to convict Duncan was based on junk science and that several other evidentiary claims were extremely dubious — including the very notion that the girl had been sexually assaulted, with medical analysts now saying otherwise.

Suffice it to say that by now, the near-certain truth is what Duncan has claimed all along: The little girl, who had a history of seizures, had another seizure and drowned while briefly left alone in a partially filled bathtub. As state Supreme Court Justice Cade Cole wrote for the unanimous court, “Had the ‘new’ evidence, in light of all relevant evidence, been presented at trial, no rational juror would have found Duncan guilty of the first degree murder of Haley beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Cole, by the way, is far from a judicial leftist: He was the Louisiana College Republican state chairman and a member of the Federalist Society.

Nonetheless, Steve Tew, the district attorney for Ouachita and Morehouse parishes, told Kaitlyn Maness of the Ouachita Citizen on Wednesday that he wants to retry Duncan for murder, although he isn’t sure which “degree” of murder he wants to charge.

Yes, that is within Tew’s authority under Act 104 of the 2021 legislative session, through which Duncan secured his post-conviction release based on being “factually innocent.” That act explicitly says a new judgment in the convict’s favor “shall not prevent (him) from being retried for the offense.” And Louisiana’s legal definition of forbidden “double jeopardy” says double jeopardy doesn’t apply when “judgment has been arrested” on the convict’s “own motion.”

Well, I’m no expert on strange wrinkles in “double jeopardy” jurisprudence, but this idea of retrying someone whom multiple courts have found to be factually innocent seems to violate the letter of, and certainly the spirit of, the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. To quote it: “Nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”

Either way, why is Tew hellbent on further punishing Duncan? The man had no criminal record before the tragic event; eight judges decided the most essential “evidence” against him is junk and the other supposedly incriminating testimony has been convincingly refuted. And all the relevant family members of the victim, including the child’s mother, believe Duncan is innocent.

Surely no jury, 33 years after little Haley Oliveaux’s death, would find Duncan guilty of anything worse than some sort of manslaughter charge based on carelessness. Louisiana law says the maximum prison term for “negligent homicide” is 10 years. Duncan has already served three times that long, most of it under a death sentence.

Again, what’s the point?

There’s a crucial principle at play here, one at the heart of modern American conservatism. Namely, the American framers’ whole point in designing so many “checks and balances” in government is that safeguards and redress always should be available — because all government officials, including prosecutors, can make mistakes. That’s the essence of conservatives’ desire to limit government’s power: to protect citizens from government’s error or abuse.

That, too, is why Louisiana’s conservative lawmakers this very decade passed Act 104: to give convicts a chance to show that newly understood facts now exonerate them.

The legislators got the policy mostly right, and all the judges on the state Supreme Court got the facts and law right. Chris Duncan has suffered long enough for leaving a child unattended while he washed dishes in a nearby room. Let this man finally live free without further persecuting him — and perhaps amend the law to remove the chance for prosecutors to retry men already found factually innocent."

The entire commentary can be read at: 

https://share.google/OzQuQjAR8KBVnoxCw

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

July 11; Diagnosis of a crime: series; Investigation of the day: (Part 4): From our 'point well made' department: This entry in Newsroom's Diagnosis of a Crime Series, by Investigative Reporter Bonnie Sumner, is sensibly headed, "It's time doctors stopped acting as detectives." As the sub-heading tells us: For decades, a small group of specialists at Starship Hospital’s child protection unit have played a central role in some of NZ’s most serious physical child abuse cases. Their opinions trigger police investigations, child removals, criminal prosecutions and prison sentences. In many cases, their medical findings are treated as the starting point for everything that follows. But what happens if some findings are wrong?"

DIAGNOSIS OF A CRIME PODCAST: (Episdes): 

https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/10/04/diagnosis-of-a-crime-melanie-reids-new-podcast-investigation/

--------------------------------------------------------------

BACKGROUND: "Over the past three years, Reid and her team have been investigating a series of cases involving allegations of non-accidental injury in infants, covered extensively in two podcasts, Fractured and Diagnosis of a Crime, on Newsroom’s investigative podcast arm, Delve. They obtained the medical files, scans and x-rays used to accuse and convict parents of causing the injuries, then engaged internationally recognised specialists in radiology, orthopaedics, pathology, genetics, obstetrics and neurology from England, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and the US to review them. These experts were asked a simple question: do the medical findings support the conclusions reached by the New Zealand doctors? In all of the cases, the answer was no."

---------------------------------------

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Captured in the season finale of Melanie Reid’s latest award-winning investigative podcast, Diagnosis of a Crime, the recent criminal trial of a professional athlete marked what may be the first time the opinions of New Zealand hospital paediatric doctors were seriously challenged in court by international medical experts. The evidence heard during the trial, and the result, has drawn attention to a developing global controversy that has been likened to Satanic Panic, a moral hysteria fuelled by pseudo-science that gripped institutions around the world in the 1980s and 1990s and led to dozens of wrongful convictions. (In New Zealand, this played out in the Christchurch Civic Creche case.)"

------------------------------------

STORY: "What is going on at Starship’s child protection unit?," by Reporter Bonnie Sumner, published by Newsroom, on  July 6, 2026.  (Bonnie Sumner is part of the Newsroom Investigates  Reporting Team.)

SUB-HEADING: "For decades, a small group of specialists at Starship Hospital’s child protection unit have played a central role in some of NZ’s most serious physical child abuse cases. Their opinions trigger police investigations, child removals, criminal prosecutions and prison sentences. In many cases, their medical findings are treated as the starting point for everything that follows. But what happens if some findings are wrong?"

GIST: "It took three weeks of evidence, 30 witnesses and four hours of deliberation for a jury to reach a verdict that will reverberate far beyond the Dunedin courthouse it was delivered in.

Captured in the season finale of Melanie Reid’s latest award-winning investigative podcast, Diagnosis of a Crime, the recent criminal trial of a professional athlete marked what may be the first time the opinions of New Zealand hospital paediatric doctors were seriously challenged in court by international medical experts.

The evidence heard during the trial, and the result, has drawn attention to a developing global controversy that has been likened to Satanic Panic, a moral hysteria fuelled by pseudo-science that gripped institutions around the world in the 1980s and 1990s and led to dozens of wrongful convictions. (In New Zealand, this played out in the Christchurch Civic Creche case.)

Over the past three years, Reid and her team have been investigating a series of cases involving allegations of non-accidental injury in infants, covered extensively in two podcasts, Fractured and Diagnosis of a Crime, on Newsroom’s investigative podcast arm, Delve.

They obtained the medical files, scans and x-rays used to accuse and convict parents of causing the injuries, then engaged internationally recognised specialists in radiology, orthopaedics, pathology, genetics, obstetrics and neurology from England, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Australia and the US to review them.

These experts were asked a simple question: do the medical findings support the conclusions reached by the New Zealand doctors?

In all of the cases, the answer was no.

In the first case a mother, Zita, was sent to prison for two years and seven months after she was convicted of injuring her baby following a diagnosis of non-accidental injury from Starship. Overseas experts the Delve investigations unit engaged concluded her daughter’s injuries were likely the result of severely low vitamin D and a prolonged, traumatic birth.

In a second case a young father is currently serving a six-year prison sentence based on a hip fracture and 19 back rib fractures to his one-year-old son. Three independent international specialists have found the hip fracture is consistent with an accident in the shower the father had described, and that there is no evidence of 19 rib fractures.


In a third case a farming couple from Central Otago lost custody of their newborn twins for two years after Starship’s lead paediatrician at the time, Dr Patrick Kelly, told them there were fractures to one of their eight-week-old babies, which became the turning point for the abuse diagnosis. Again, overseas experts found no evidence of those fractures.

In a fourth case, Reid and her team looked into the case of the pro athlete charged with causing multiple rib fractures to his four week old son, described by Starship as likely from “squeezing”. However the jury heard from international experts that the baby’s fractures were likely due to his severely low vitamin D levels and precipitous (very rapid) birth.

In case five, the South Island parents of a baby born with cerebral palsy after a traumatic and poorly managed birth had to sleep in a caravan on their property while their children remained under 24-hour watch inside the house after hospital doctors diagnosed non-accidental rib fractures in their newborn. The baby underwent at least three instances of CPR, but this was dismissed as the cause. The parents are still unsure if a criminal case is pending.

And in a sixth case, a mother lost custody of her twin boys following a diagnosis of non-accidental injury from Starship when they were eight weeks old . They have been in four foster homes over the past two years. The severely traumatic birth is being investigated by the team as a potential medical misadventure case and the cause of the babies’ injuries.

(You can read about each of these more in depth at the end of this article.)

There are striking similarities across these cases:
They all involve infants (children one year old and younger), most of them very young babies.In almost every case, there is a history of traumatic birth.The parents are all highly engaged and proactive with medical professionals, taking their infants to numerous visits with health professionals before hospital admission.Before taking their infants to hospital, there were no outward signs of anything wrong, such as bruising.In every case, the diagnosis of non-accidental injury came after a paediatric review of x-rays and CT scans.The parents are all confused and bewildered, saying they have no idea what’s wrong with their infants.Severe vitamin D deficiency is a recurring feature in many of the cases.

Another common thread the investigation has identified after reviewing medical files, court transcripts and expert reports was the repeated use of language that appeared to embed assumptions about how injuries occurred.

Across multiple cases, doctors described injuries as being “not from normal handling of a child”, comparable to a “car accident”, or consistent with a baby having been “thrown against a wall” or “squeezed” – emotive descriptions that can influence how a case is understood by police, social workers, lawyers and juries.

And involved in almost all of them is a small group of specialists from Starship’s child protection unit, Te Puaruruhau.

Set up in 2002 to bring together police, Oranga Tamairki and medical staff, it was led by paediatrician Dr Patrick Kelly for 25 years.

Since at least 2010, serious concerns have been raised that Te Puaruruhau had reached conclusions without considering all the evidence, and in many cases families say they’ve been treated like criminals.

(If you take your sick child to hospital and you’re referred to the unit, there is a high chance you will be suspected of abuse – it was explained by a Starship paediatrician in Zita’s court case that approximately a third of their cases fall into an unexplained category, a third are highly concerning or diagnostic of child abuse and a third involve no concern, meaning if you have a child admitted to Starship Hospital with an injury and they are referred to Te Puaruruhau, there is a 66 percent chance your child’s injury could be deemed to be either caused by child abuse or an unknown cause.)

However, the cases investigated by Delve raise the question: If internationally respected medical experts can look at the same scans and medical files and reach fundamentally different conclusions to the New Zealand doctors, what is going on?

Is New Zealand’s child protection system identifying abuse, or has it, in some instances, crossed the line from diagnosing injuries to diagnosing crimes, with the result being children taken from their homes and placed in foster care, and parents being wrongfully accused, and in some cases convicted and imprisoned?

Access to justice

The Delve team’s investigation began after they engaged a group of international specialists to review the case of an Indian immigrant family, featured in the podcast Fractured, who all concluded the medical evidence underpinning the case was flawed.

That finding led the team to a telling observation. In many cases, a number of New Zealand doctors appeared in court, often with little or no challenge to their opinions.

In the criminal trials of the mother featured in Fractured, and the father currently in prison in Auckland, Justin*, neither had a medical expert testify on their behalf.

As Justin’s mother told Reid in an interview, “You’re at the mercy of Starship because they are the so-called experts. The judge in my son’s case said, ‘You either believe the medical experts from Starship with 40 years’ experience, or you don’t’. And the jury were like, well, how do you go against the medical experts from Starship? [My son] didn’t stand a chance. He had no show.”

She said there were no opposing views to the experts from Starship.

“What struck us was the lack of access to justice,” Reid says. “These doctors were appearing in courts around the country and their evidence was often being accepted without any meaningful challenge. We started asking ourselves a simple question: what would happen if that evidence was actually tested in court?”

That test would come with the Dunedin trial of a pro athlete accused of causing rib fractures to his infant son. By the time Delve looked into the case, the father, known as Dan, had been charged and was four months from trial with no medical experts testifying for his defence.

Reid said the only way to determine whether there was a broader problem was to engage independent international specialists to review the same scans, medical records and evidence being relied upon in court.

“By that stage we had already seen multiple cases where overseas experts were reaching very different conclusions. In one case, fractures described as ‘definitely there’ by Starship experts in court, were simply found not to be there at all. We kept coming back to the same question: how can this be?”

Multiple families described a similar experience. Parents said non-accidental injury diagnoses were often made within hours of arriving at hospital, while alternative explanations, including birth trauma and other medical conditions, were not fully explored. When international specialists later reviewed the same evidence, they reached very different conclusions.

The result was a courtroom battle of a kind rarely seen in New Zealand. For three weeks, the opinions of 12 medical witnesses for the Crown – including Starship’s lead radiologist Dr Russell Metcalfe – were challenged by three experts from the US.

The trial exposed what can happen when the medical evidence underpinning allegations of abuse is subjected to the same level of scrutiny as any other evidence before a jury.

Reid says the Dunedin trial raises uncomfortable questions about other cases where families have had no access to independent or alternative medical reviews.

“What does this mean for all the other cases where parents haven’t had access to multiple independent medical experts? Most families are lucky if they can afford one.”

She points to the cost of mounting a defence. International expert reviews are a minimum $10,000 per specialist, placing them beyond the reach of many families already facing legal bills, child protection proceedings and criminal investigations.

“If the Crown can call five or six experts, how are ordinary parents supposed to contend with that?” she said. “What we’ve learned is that if you don’t have credible alternative medical evidence, the court may never hear the other side of the scientific and medical debate, and that, as we have witnessed in our investigations, this can mean a one-way ticket to prison for the accused.”

Reid believes the issue is not simply financial but systemic.

“Too often, lawyers don’t understand how critical that independent evidence is. If the medical evidence goes unchallenged, the outcome can be largely predetermined. That’s why access to independent experts isn’t a luxury in these cases – it’s fundamental to a fair process.”

Investigating these cases also raised another issue: even when parents found specialists in New Zealand who supported them and believed there were potential medical causes for the injuries, they weren’t prepared to speak up about the Starship doctors or go up against them in court.

She points to something one of the international experts, neuropathologist Professor Roland Auer, said in an interview about why such professionals wouldn’t stand up for these families. “They don’t want extra work. They don’t want trouble. Most scientists and doctors have an allergy to court for those reasons. Time, danger, effort, don’t need the money. They’ve got a job and they just don’t like lawyers and journalists.”

Reid says what all of this shows is that the traditional court route doesn’t work if parents can’t get access to experts.

“It appears many lawyers who represent parents in this country are also unaware of what’s happening – even when they use specialists from overseas, they often rely on the same network of doctors, trained within the same system, going to the same conferences and using the same playbook, which treats certain injuries as being highly indicative of abuse.”

This lack of access to justice pushed Reid and her team to seek independent reviews of the cases from outside New Zealand. Those experts have now produced formal reports in five separate cases, almost all on a pro-bono basis.

Reid and her team secured three international experts to give evidence during the Dunedin trial of the pro athlete; facilitated five expert reviews, which are central to the formal application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in the Fractured case; secured multiple experts for the legal team representing young imprisoned father Justin in his Court of Appeal proceedings; and are working with international specialists on the other cases.

This approach has attracted criticism from some quarters, with suggestions that journalists should not be engaging experts or testing medical evidence. Reid rejects that view.

“It shouldn’t be our job to help young parents find international experts, but we’ve done it to show that there is a fundamental flaw in the judicial system when doctors effectively diagnose crimes. In New Zealand, a small crew of doctors end up having an enormous influence. Too often there is no one on the other side to test their conclusions.”

Reid said: “The status quo can’t continue. The consequences are simply too profound for families, for children and for public confidence in our medical, policing and judicial systems.”
Flawed science

So how can New Zealand radiologists be diagnosing fractures that overseas radiologists say don’t exist? Why are potential birth injuries and metabolic bone issues being diagnosed as non-accidental injuries within hours of distressed parents turning up to hospital with their infants? And why are independent obstetrical reviews of these cases not being immediately requested by the paediatricians?

According to a growing number of international scientists, lawyers and medical specialists, the answer lies in the theories underpinning these diagnoses.

Described by international scientist Professor Chris Brook, who appears in Season 2 of Diagnosis of a Crime, as “one of the biggest public health and legal disasters of our era”, the foundation of these diagnoses is a belief that certain injuries are ‘highly indicative’ of abuse.

In practice this means when these paediatric doctors see particular injuries, there is little room for alternative explanations.

One of those injuries is unexplained rib fractures in infants.

For decades, studies have reported that unexplained infant rib fractures are strongly associated with abuse. The consequence is that once rib fractures are identified, the diagnostic process can quickly become focused on proving abuse rather than systematically exploring alternative explanations.

Critics like Brook, who has co-authored studies on the subject, argue this creates a problem known as circular reasoning. He says the paediatric doctors and child abuse specialists who believe certain injuries can be indicative of abuse are following flawed science.

“Everything in science has a level of uncertainty attached to it and they completely bulldoze that. So much of their literature is aimed at the courts, not at a scientific community. It’s aimed at showing that their belief system meets the requirements of the court system.

“They have to show that it’s in published literature. So they turn their belief into a publication. So this is the essence of circular reasoning. They take their belief and they make it look like science, and then they publish a paper that has an abstract, a methodology, and a conclusion. But really, the input belief is just coming out the other end through circular reasoning.”

In simple terms, circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion is built into the evidence used to support that conclusion – cases are classified as abuse because they contain certain findings, such as rib fractures, and those same cases are then used to prove that rib fractures are highly predictive of abuse. The diagnosis helps create the data, and the data is then used to validate the diagnosis.

The debate over rib fractures sits within a much larger international dispute surrounding shaken baby syndrome, now more commonly referred to as abusive head trauma (the subject of the Fractured podcast).

First proposed in the 1970s by British neurosurgeon Dr Arthur Norman Guthkelch and later promoted by paediatric radiologist Dr John Caffey, the theory centred on the idea that a combination of brain swelling, bleeding around the brain and retinal haemorrhages – known as ‘the triad’ – could be diagnostic of violent shaking.

However, Guthkelch later warned that birth trauma, accidental injuries and natural disease processes could also produce the same findings, describing the original theory as a hypothesis rather than an established scientific fact.

In 2014, a two-year review commissioned by the Swedish government concluded that key studies underpinning shaken baby syndrome/abusive head trauma relied on circular reasoning and lacked sufficient scientific reliability.

In the US, the New Jersey Supreme Court recently upheld a ruling preventing prosecutors from presenting certain shaken baby syndrome testimony in upcoming trials, after a lower court likened aspects of the diagnosis to unreliable “junk science”.

And just this month, Florida introduced a new law designed to help prevent the wrongful removal of children from parents when medical conditions such as rickets, vitamin D deficiency or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome can mimic signs of child abuse. The law gives families time to obtain medical evaluations and second opinions before parents can be arrested or children removed.

Investigations by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald in Australia and The New York Times in the United States have raised similar concerns about an over-reliance on contested diagnoses, the lack of challenge to a small circle of expert witnesses and the life-altering consequences when they are wrong.

The six cases under review by Reid and her investigations team sit within a growing body of international reporting and litigation challenging the foundations of certain child abuse diagnoses.

Critics say this raises a bigger issue of the well-documented harm caused by removing infants from loving families.

Lady Tureiti Moxon, chairperson at the National Urban Māori Authority and managing director of Waikato health services provider Te Kōhao Health, says this is a systemic issue.

“We are relying on a system that has obviously got it wrong a number of times. This is not an isolated mistake; it is a pattern of systemic failure. The court has treated expert opinion as unquestionable fact, and that trust has been catastrophically misplaced,” said Moxon.

“Families have been torn apart, tamariki separated from their parents, and whānau have lost years of their lives in prison all based on evidence now in serious doubt. Access to justice should not depend on whether a family can afford their own expert. No family’s future should hinge on a single opinion. You cannot build a just system on a foundation of injustice and this must stop.”

Decades of concerns

Concerns about overreach from Starship’s child protection unit, Te Puaruruhau, have been around for more than a decade.

In a case from 2010, an Auckland district court judge criticised Starship doctors for concluding that a father injured his baby daughter without considering all the evidence.

The judge found the father not guilty and reprimanded the medical staff, sparking a high-level meeting between the Crown and Starship management to discuss the “potentially far-reaching” implications of the verdict and how doctors differentiate between accidental and non-accidental head injuries.

That same year, former health and disability commissioner Robyn Stent, described the specialist care and protection unit of Starship hospital, as “out of control” after her family member brought her three-month-old baby to hospital with an unexplained blister-like bump on his head.

Starship doctors were adamant the haematoma was non-accidental and had no medical explanation, and she was suspected of abusing her baby (it was eventually accepted the haematoma was caused during a difficult caesarean birth).

Stent said at the time people needed to be profiled.

“There is no doubt we have excessive numbers of child deaths as a result of abuse,” Stent said. “But that doesn’t mean you treat every person as a criminal.” She felt the unit was being treated like a police station.

“It’s just appalling.”

Other similar local cases have occurred since then, some of which we have already covered.

Dr Patrick Kelly has been a central figure in the creation of New Zealand’s child abuse diagnosis framework. He helped establish, and then for 25 years, led, Te Puaruruhau until late 2023.

He has been a senior lecturer and taught the undergraduate curriculum on child abuse in Auckland University’s medical school’s department of paediatrics, has been the co-author of the Ministry of Health training package for GPs on the recognition of child abuse, and he remains the convener of an annual training course for paediatricians and others specialists on the assessment of suspected physical abuse in children.

The Delve team has repeatedly gone to Kelly and his employer, Health NZ, over the past three years to ask them to identify the fractures international experts have said don’t exist, and whether there is a systemic issue of misdiagnosing or over-diagnosing non-accidental injury in Te Puaruruhau.

They consistently provide the same response, that “it would not be appropriate for Health New Zealand to comment on a specific case in which our clinicians have provided evidence”. And, “We have the utmost confidence in the expertise, impartiality and integrity of our paediatric radiologists and child protection teams who provide expert evidence.”

You can read more about the Delve team’s ongoing attempts to get answers from Health NZ here.

The six cases

Case 1 – Zita: An Indian immigrant couple brought their eight-week-old baby to hospital with seizures. In less than 24 hours Starship doctors diagnosed the baby’s head injuries and fractures as non-accidental. The mother was convicted and sent to prison for two years and seven months and their daughter was put into four different foster homes. On the mother’s release, both parents faced imminent deportation, which would leave their child in NZ under the care of the state. The Delve investigations team engaged four international specialists to review the scans and medical files, and they found the baby’s severely low vitamin D levels and traumatic birth were not adequately considered as the cause of the baby’s injuries.


Since Melanie Reid and her team got involved, with the help of former race relations and human rights commissioner Joris de Bres, they have made a formal submission to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which has been accepted for review and paves the way for a potential referral to an appeal court. They also approached Associate Minister of Immigration Chris Penk, who intervened, cancelling their imminent deportation order, and more than six years after being uplifted by the state, their daughter was finally returned to their custody.

Case 2 – Justin: What began as a hospital visit for a hip injury became a non-accidental injury case that ended in a six-year prison sentence. The Auckland father took his one-year-old son to hospital after a near-fall in the shower. Although the infant appeared uninjured at the time, his parents became concerned the following day and sought medical help. Doctors initially missed the injury, diagnosing a torn muscle and sending the family home (their usual doctor was away and they saw a locum). Two days later, out of the blue they received a call from their GP practice saying they needed to bring their son to Starship immediately or Oranga Tamariki would be called. They raced across the Harbour Bridge where further imaging revealed a fractured hip requiring surgery and a spica cast.

During the infant’s admission, doctors concluded the child also had 19 rib fractures and diagnosed non-accidental injury. The father was charged and then convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and is currently more than two years into a six-year prison sentence. Four international specialists have subsequently reviewed the same scans and found the so-called rib fractures don’t exist. Other specialists have concluded the hip fracture is consistent with the father’s description of the shower accident.

Case 3 – The Farmers: A Central Otago farming couple’s lives were turned upside down after one of their eight-week-old twin boys was flown to Starship Hospital with seizures and bleeding on the brain. The baby, who wasn’t born until almost an hour and a half after his twin, experienced breathing difficulties shortly after birth and his parents repeatedly raised concerns about his health in the weeks that followed. Initially, doctors in Dunedin considered whether his condition was linked to a birth injury or a rare brain disorder and the parents believed they were finally getting answers.But once at Starship, the focus shifted to the healthy twin, who was taken to hospital in Dunedin to see if he could provide any clues as to what was wrong with his twin brother. A full body x-ray was performed and the mother says she was told by Dr Patrick Kelly at Starship that whether they were formally accused of causing the second twin’s head injury all depended on what showed up in the x-ray of the first twin. The turning point came when doctors concluded twin one had fractures to his knees and a possible hip fracture. The parents lost custody of both babies and spent more than two years battling police, Oranga Tamariki and the courts, a fight they say cost them nearly $300,000 and ultimately their farm business. When the Delve team obtained the medical records and imaging and engaged independent international specialists to review the case, those experts concluded there was no evidence of the fractures in the knees or hip of twin one, the very fractures that had become the deciding factor in the diagnosis of non-accidental injury and the removal of the children.

Case 4 – Pro athlete: A professional athlete endured almost two years of police investigations, child protection scrutiny and ultimately a three-week criminal jury trial after being accused of causing multiple rib fractures to his four-week-old baby. The infant had been born following a rapid delivery and was later found to have a severe vitamin D deficiency. When the baby was taken to hospital, doctors concluded the injuries were non-accidental and police launched a criminal investigation. The father and his wife, a nurse, maintained there must be medical explanations that had not been adequately explored.

As part of its investigation, the Delve team engaged international experts in paediatric radiology, orthopaedic surgery and obstetrics to review the medical evidence. Their conclusions differed significantly from those of the New Zealand doctors, with experts challenging the fracture findings and arguing that the baby’s birth history, severe vitamin D deficiency and other possible medical explanations had not been adequately considered. At the pro athlete’s trial, the international experts also told the jury that two of the fractures occurred after the baby’s hospital admission, while he was under 24-hour watch. The case ultimately became the focus of the second season of Diagnosis of a Crime and provided a rare opportunity for the evidence underpinning such allegations to be rigorously tested in court.


Case 5 – Jo*: In a small South Island town, the parents of a baby who has cerebral palsy due to a traumatic, poorly managed birth were placed under intensive child protection supervision after doctors identified rib fractures and diagnosed them as non-accidental.

Not long after his birth, the baby had sustained a femur fracture, resulting from his father tripping and falling onto the infant’s leg. His parents immediately took him to the local hospital, which, because of the baby’s fragile physical state, had him flown to the larger public hospital in Christchurch. Doctors there found the baby’s femur fracture was consistent with the accident described, but when an x-ray also found rib fractures of various ages they concluded these were likely caused by non-accidental injury.

The infant had suffered significant birth trauma and has required multiple rounds of CPR (a known cause of rib fractures in infants), yet Oranga Tamariki relied primarily on the opinion of a Christchurch paediatrician and failed to consult the extensive network of health professionals caring for the child. The family says the state intervention has caused significant harm to their baby, and they are currently still under investigation by police.


Case 6 – Hunter*: A Waikato mother who endured a highly traumatic birth with twin boys. Her waters broke at 34 weeks and the hospital sent her home. At 36 weeks she returned but after labouring for 15 hours she wouldn’t dilate past 5cm and was sent for an emergency c-section. She felt the whole procedure. It was then discovered doctors had left in some of the cervical stitches from a previous procedure so she was unable to birth naturally.

The mother lost 2.3 litres of blood and had emergency surgery. The babies remained in hospital for three weeks. At eight weeks old, the mother brought them to hospital with suspected seizures. They were flown to Starship, where they were told their head injuries – one to the left side of the head, the other to the right side – were non-accidental. The babies were uplifted by Oranga Tamariki and have been in four different non-kin foster homes over the past two years. The mother is allowed a supervised visit with her sons once every three weeks.

Since Reid and her team began their inquiry, more than 20 families have contacted them with similar stories, with more getting in touch every week.

“This isn’t about people who abuse their kids – it’s about people who don’t. And the podcasts have shown, step by step, what can happen to innocent families,” says Reid. “I understand there needs to be a process to assess infant injuries, but as we all learned in the Dunedin trial, suspicion is not evidence.”

*Not their real names

Listen to both seasons of Fractured and both seasons of Diagnosis of a Crime on our podcast channel Delve. Since 2023, Delve has produced more than 130 episodes across four award-winning investigative podcast series. With almost 8 million downloads, Delve sits in the top 1 percent most downloaded podcasts in the world. Diagnosis of a Crime won Best Podcast at the 2026 Media Awards and Best True Crime Podcast at the 2026 NZ Radio and Podcast Awards. Fractured was also a finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast at both the 2025 and 2026 NZ Radio and Podcast Awards. Made with the help of NZ On Air.

The entire story can be read at: 
https://newsroom.co.nz/2026/07/06/what-is-going-on-at-starships-child-protection-unit/

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

Tre Clay: Solana County, California: (Abusive head trauma); Prosecution's attempt to establish (AHT) comes under attack in infant's death, the Davis Vanguard (Publisher David Greenwald) reports, noting that: "A forensic pathologist who participated in the prosecution’s original neuropathology review of the death of 2½-month-old Elijah Clay testified Friday that the infant’s medical findings are extraordinarily complex and cannot, by themselves, establish abusive head trauma, as the preliminary hearing against Tre Clay continued before Judge Ellis."

BACKGROUND: SBS/AHT: Shaken Baby Syndrome; Abusive Head Trauma: Ground-breaking New Jersey case:  (State V Nieve: November 21, 2025;)  From post of this Blog at the link below: 

QUOTE OF THE DAY: New Jersey Supreme Court:  "[T]he evidence presented at the Frye hearing—including the testimony by the State’s single expert witness—showed that there was no test supporting a finding that humans can produce the physical force necessary to cause the symptoms associated with SBS/AHT in a child. There is evidence of general acceptance by many in the medical community, but the State must also establish general acceptance in the biomechanical community, and it has failed to do so." New Jersey Supreme Court: 

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SECOND QUOTE OF THE DAY:  New Jersey Supreme Court: "It is therefore evident that the foundation of SBS/AHT lies in biomechanical science and engineering. A scientific community is either relevant or not for purposes of determining admissibility of scientific evidence at trial—degrees of relevance are not weighed. As in Olenowski II, there can certainly be more than one relevant scientific community for purposes of Frye. Here, the relevant scientific communities for purposes of determining the reliability of SBS/AHT expert testimony are both the medical/ pediatric community and the biomechanical engineering community."

https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/606119094459307627

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The hearing follows the defense’s continuing effort to challenge the prosecution’s theory through medical evidence.  A recent report by neurologist Dr. Roland Auer concludes that Elijah Clay’s death involved multiple underlying medical conditions, including prematurity, infection and other physiological abnormalities, and argues those conditions were overlooked in favor of an abusive head trauma diagnosis."

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COMMENTARY:  Prosecutions own neuropathology reviewer testifies medical findings are too complex to confirm abuse in Tre Clay hearing," the Davis Vanguard (Publisher David Greenwald) reports on June 29, 2026. (David Greenwald is the founder, editor, and executive director of the Davis Vanguard. He founded the Vanguard in 2006. David Greenwald moved to Davis in 1996 to attend Graduate School at UC Davis in Political Science. He lives in South Davis with his wife Cecilia Escamilla Greenwald and three children.)

GIST:  "A forensic pathologist who participated in the prosecution’s original neuropathology review of the death of 2½-month-old Elijah Clay testified Friday that the infant’s medical findings are extraordinarily complex and cannot, by themselves, establish abusive head trauma, as the preliminary hearing against Tre Clay continued before Judge Ellis.

Tre Clay appeared in court represented by Deputy Public Defender Jeannette Garcia. Deputy District Attorney Elaine Kuo represented the prosecution.

The defense called Dr. Evan Matshes, chief forensic pathologist and medical director for NAG Forensic, who participated in the original neuropathology review conducted at the request of the Solano County Coroner’s Office. 

Judge Ellis accepted Matshes as an expert in pathology and neuropathology after hearing testimony regarding his education, board certifications and experience.

The case stems from the January 2021 death of Elijah Clay. 

Prosecutors allege the infant died from abusive head trauma, while the defense has challenged that conclusion through multiple expert opinions, including a recent report by neurologist Dr. Roland Auer arguing that Elijah suffered from numerous underlying medical conditions rather than fatal abuse.

Matshes testified that NAG Forensic received Elijah Clay’s brain, eye, cervical spine and spinal cord specimens from the Solano County Coroner’s Office in March 2021.

The examinations were conducted by forensic neuropathologist Dr. Vivian Snyder and underwent an extensive peer-review process because of the complexity of the case. 

Matshes testified that he personally reviewed photographs and microscopic slides as one of several reviewers.

Summarizing the findings from that review, Matshes testified, “In short, that Elijah’s brain was very abnormal, that there was bleeding present, that was old and new, that there was brain pathology that was old and difficult to explain, that there was infection around his brain, the significance of which wasn’t known, that his spine was uninjured and that his eyes were uninjured.”

Garcia questioned Matshes about published recommendations he co-authored regarding infant autopsies.

Asked about the most important principles, Matshes testified, “At a very high level to approach unexpected infant death with an open mind, to be thorough and fact-facing, to document what you see and what you don’t see, and to make those materials available for review.”

Garcia also asked about the ophthalmology findings. Matshes testified there was no evidence of retinal hemorrhages, retinoschisis or macular folds, but cautioned that he does not regard either the presence or absence of those findings as determinative of abuse.

“I’ve written and taught heavily on this subject and consistently testify to my teachings, which is that I do not use the eye hemorrhages to diagnose abuse, nor do I use their absence to say abuse did not happen,” Matshes testified. “So from my school of thought, this is a meaningless finding.”

He also testified that the cervical spine examination showed no injuries.

“The examination that was performed on the cervical spine was thorough and complete by Dr. Snyder. It showed that the spine was not injured, which means that if one was looking for evidence of whiplash such as might occur with shaken or some forms of severe impact, the neck was not injured by such a mechanism,” Matshes testified.

When Garcia asked whether the pathology findings supported a diagnosis of abusive head trauma, Matshes said the neuropathology evidence alone was insufficient to answer that question.

“I don’t have enough information to make that conclusion because that’s well beyond the mandate I was given as a peer reviewer for the neuropathology specimens,” he testified. “We would make the conclusion of abusive head trauma or not abusive head trauma based on much more information.”

Matshes nevertheless emphasized the significance of the spinal findings, stating, “The spine in my school of thought, as I understand pediatric forensic pathology, the normalcy of that spine is of tremendous significance in my practice.”

He further testified that Elijah Clay’s brain pathology was unlike most cases he has encountered.

“And through our group, we see several hundred alleged abusive head trauma cases per year, sometimes 500 or 600 or more,” Matshes testified. “Elijah’s case stands out as an outlier in terms of the underlying complexity of his brain disease. This is a very complex neuropathology.”

Responding to questions from Judge Ellis, Matshes explained that the brain findings could have multiple explanations.

“There are features present that on one hand could be interpreted as physical injury and on the other may entirely be natural disease,” he testified. He added that “all of those possibilities remain on the table because they can’t be resolved by the brain exam.”

Matshes also cautioned against assuming bleeding necessarily indicates trauma.

“We are frequently lulled into a sense of complacency by the presence of blood around the brain because, as humans, we associate blood with trauma, but blood inside the head of a human is also the result sometimes of natural disease,” he testified. “Up to half of babies will be born with subdural hemorrhages just from the act of birth.”

Asked by Judge Ellis about alternative explanations for the pathology, Matshes testified that meningitis and bleeding disorders remained among the possibilities. He also noted that current practice would include genetic testing for bleeding disorders that may produce similar findings in infants.

Garcia asked whether the neuropathology report complicated a straightforward trauma conclusion. Although Matshes noted his group had not been asked to determine the cause of death, he testified, “I would suggest that if someone was thinking this was straightforward trauma, the neuropathology report does not confirm that.”

On cross-examination, Kuo asked Matshes whether he agreed that rapid acceleration and deceleration, commonly referred to as shaking, can cause abusive head trauma and death in infants.

“Agreed strongly,” Matshes testified.

He also reaffirmed that he had not been asked to determine the cause of death in Elijah Clay’s case and that additional information beyond the neuropathology findings would be necessary before offering an opinion on whether abusive head trauma occurred.

Friday’s testimony was notable because the defense called a physician who participated in the prosecution’s original neuropathology review rather than a retained defense expert. 

While Matshes did not offer an opinion on the ultimate cause of death, he repeatedly testified that the neuropathology findings alone could not resolve whether Elijah’s injuries resulted from trauma or underlying disease and described the case as one of the most medically complex infant brain cases he has reviewed.

The hearing follows the defense’s continuing effort to challenge the prosecution’s theory through medical evidence. 

A recent report by neurologist Dr. Roland Auer concludes that Elijah Clay’s death involved multiple underlying medical conditions, including prematurity, infection and other physiological abnormalities, and argues those conditions were overlooked in favor of an abusive head trauma diagnosis."

The entire story can be read at:

https://share.google/JGNYvzT7gJcAP5Tnk

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;

Neonatal Nurse: Lucy Letby: Helen Rumbelow asks the question of the day in her 'Times' story on celebrated UK forensic anthropologist Sue Black's new book 'An Expert witness: Forensic Science on Trial: "Did Lucy Letby have a fair trial?, noting that: "In her analysis the British court system can still be too reliant on expert witnesses arrogantly peddling pseudoscience or lawyers mysteriously failing to seek the advice of the right discipline. She is damning about the trial of the former nurse Lucy Letby. Given its “vague wisps of evidence”, she wonders if the Crown Prosecution Service “should ever have taken the case to court”. She suggests the judge “could have considered dismissing it on the basis of how thin the evidence was”. Lucy Letby witness ‘should have told jury about other explanations’."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "She is further astonished that statisticians were never brought to court by the defence to explain the probability of deaths in an overworked ward of extremely ill babies. Many credible scientists, she writes, question the initial premise of the charges on this analysis. “Why the defence chose the strategy they did is almost unfathomable,” she writes. “The jury did not hear alternatives that would perhaps have better equipped them to make up their minds based on balanced information.”

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STORY: "The macabre world of Sue Black, justice warrior in scrubs," by Helen Rumbelow, published by The Times, on July 10, 2026.  (Helen Rumbelow has been writing for The Times since 1997, starting in the newsroom as health correspondent, then moving to Westminster as political correspondent. She spent time as a commissioning editor on the Comment desk, and has also worked at The Washington Post as a Laurence Stern Fellow.)

SUB-HEADING:  "Did Lucy Letby have a fair trial? In An Expert Witness, the writer and academic is on a mission to improve the standard of forensic science in criminal trials,

GIST: "Let us start with the emerging field of penis identification. Sometimes I feel ashamed of the unwholesome interest I have in Sue Black’s work, but mostly the shame is overwhelmed by my awe for the difference a magnificent human being can make, furthering science for the cause of truth, decency and justice.

Black is one of the world’s most esteemed forensic anthropologists, made a dame for her services to victims and their families in the wake of crimes, conflicts and natural disasters ranging from the Balkan wars to the tsunami in Thailand. Out of gore, she brings nobility.

At 65 she has left her Scottish research post and is a member of the House of Lords and the president of St John’s College, Oxford. To the public she is best known for her books All That Remains and Written in Bone, bestsellers recounting her career. In this third book, An Expert Witness, she writes that when reporters entered the sumptuous palace in Damascus of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad after he fled in 2024, they found a copy of All That Remains on his shelf.

Was Assad training his sights on her? After all, a decade previously Black had been flown to the Middle East to give her expert opinion on a leaked cache of images showing 11,000 men allegedly killed in Assad detention camps. Or was Assad, like so many of us Black fans, Val McDermid, the Scottish crime writer, among the most famous, drawn to the macabre? “I’m not sure,” Black writes, “how I feel about being the bedtime reading of a dictator.” I’m not sure how I feel about being in a book group with Assad.
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But it is Black’s fierce moral mission that makes sense of everything she does. In All That Remains she speculates that this passion for justice came from the “dark and lonely childhood place” of being abused as a girl. This tremendous feeling for the vulnerable flashes through An Expert Witness, which is subtitled Forensic Science on Trial and is part memoir, part history of the fallibility of forensic techniques, like graphology and lie detectors, that have been discarded and the blunders she has seen in 35 years of giving evidence in British and international criminal courtrooms.

In her analysis the British court system can still be too reliant on expert witnesses arrogantly peddling pseudoscience or lawyers mysteriously failing to seek the advice of the right discipline. She is damning about the trial of the former nurse Lucy Letby. Given its “vague wisps of evidence”, she wonders if the Crown Prosecution Service “should ever have taken the case to court”. She suggests the judge “could have considered dismissing it on the basis of how thin the evidence was”. Lucy Letby witness ‘should have told jury about other explanations’

She is further astonished that statisticians were never brought to court by the defence to explain the probability of deaths in an overworked ward of extremely ill babies. Many credible scientists, she writes, question the initial premise of the charges on this analysis. “Why the defence chose the strategy they did is almost unfathomable,” she writes. “The jury did not hear alternatives that would perhaps have better equipped them to make up their minds based on balanced information.”

Black has spent her career trying to rectify this lack of rigour in her indomitable manner, inventing whole new research bases if necessary. This led her to sitting outside a court for hours with a man for whom she was a defence witness after spending considerable time examining photos of his penis.

\He had been charged with sending an indecent image, which he denied. His solicitor sent Black photos of his client’s penis because Black was the pioneer in penis identification research. She proved, for instance, by logging images from a database that, when erect, only 4 per cent of penises deviate to the right (compared with a quarter to the left). This defendant was lucky: the penis in the indecent image had a rare “double dorsal” vein as opposed to the normal single upper-side vein of the defendant. Case closed and an innocent young man walked free, mouthing thank you to Black.

This kind of anecdote seems cheerful enough until you understand why Black had to establish the penis research base: the rise of indecent images of children. In these images, criminals often only show their hands or penis — identify the penis and you have the criminal. In 2022 more than 70,000 cases of sexual abuse against children were reported to the police, “eight cases of abuse every hour”, she writes.Sue Black: I’ve seen pure evil up close, but it’s fine by me if you can’t resist true crime

Black cites as her hero a young girl who went to the police to tell them that her father was abusing her at night. This 2006 case was a “turning point” for Black. In the 19th century there was an epidemic of poisonings that led a scientist called James Marsh to perfect a test for arsenic. Likewise, in the 21st century, Black says, new science was needed by police. Showing “singular bravery”, the girl in this case made a secret video of her abuser that showed only his hands, like so many child sexual abuse images.

Black’s sense of injustice fuelled what would become a lifelong research project into whether vein patterns on hands were robust enough to be used as evidence. Much later, in 2018, she would be part of establishing the largest databases of hand photos (many volunteered as part of citizen science) in the world, using AI to “get to a probability of a million to one” that a suspect and offender are the same person based solely on the look of their hands.

Finally, a breakthrough for victims, and the forces of good. This research has, Black says, secured hundreds of years of prison time for abusers, including life sentences for some of Britain’s most prolific paedophiles.

Most of the first half of this book is Black narrating the history of forensics, in which, thanks to popular fiction from Sherlock Holmes onwards, the public is a little too trusting. She cheered when in the 1980s DNA testing was accidentally discovered by the British scientist Alec Jeffreys, a game-changer that put good science at the heart of the criminal justice system. Much of what came before was hocus-pocus by comparison.

Yet that system is still flawed. The first half of this book is cogently argued, but not classic Black, making it a less compelling read than her first. The book comes to life when Black is at her most outraged. We have the case of a mother whose baby had died in the 1970s. The baby’s coffin felt featherlight and together with other clues this made her suspicious that doctors had stolen her son’s corpse for their research ambitions.

For decades that mother campaigned to expose the practice of doctors retaining baby parts without consent. Forty years on she won the right to exhume her baby’s coffin. Black was brought in, and at first light in the cemetery, indeed found no signs of a body, only an empty blanket neatly rolled up with a crucifix inside. The fact that a fragile blanket was preserved but no teeth nor bones made Black’s expert report pretty conclusive.

Yet the police assembled a team of forensic experts citing all kinds of questionable “science” (the scare quotes are Black’s) to conclude that Black was wrong and a baby had been buried. The police dropped the case. Some years on the mother, by that stage terminally ill in hospital, was visited by NHS officials, who presented her with some slide samples of her son’s tissues, in a supermarket plastic bag.

The case of the girl who captured the hand video? The jury found her father not guilty despite Black showing that the vein pattern on his hands was a match for the video. It was a verdict “so outrageous and so unfair it made me want to scream”. The prosecutor said the jury probably didn’t believe the girl because she didn’t cry giving evidence. “This,” Black writes, “is not justice.” Black fervently wants this woman to make contact with her. Black would let her know that it was her courage that inspired Black to wield new science to save countless souls. This is quite the legacy.

An Expert Witness: Forensic Science on Trial by Sue Black (Doubleday £22 pp400). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members.

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/an-expert-witness-forensic-science-on-trial-sue-black-review-v9gs77d2n?gea_v2=true#

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;