Michael Morrah interviews Sam Benton.
Video / Ben Dickens
A formal complaint has been laid with the New Zealand Law Society following revelations in this week’s landmark Abuse in Care report that the president of the legal organisation advised a religious group it could destroy the records of all the children it cared for.
According to the Royal Commissionof Inquiry abuse in care final report, records were destroyed because a senior staff member at Presbyterian Support Otago (PSO) decided they were “too much of a risk”.
Between 2017 and 2018, the former chief executive of PSO, Gillian Bremner, instructed a staff member to destroy all records belonging to children and young people who had stayed in its residential homes.
The exact date of the destruction is unknown, but the group’s current CEO, Jo O’Neill, told the Herald it was between September 2017 and July 2018.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse in care was established on February 1, 2018.
The commission’s final report, made public on Wednesday, found 200,000 people were abused in state and faith-based care. It detailed depraved sexual and physical assaults on children and labelled what happened a “national disgrace”.
O’Neill did not answer questions from the Herald about whether the destruction of PSO’s records took place to protect the reputation of the organisation or circumvent the work of the commission.
Details of what led up to the destruction are revealed in the commission’s final report.
The report states: “Following this review (of records), and legal advice from an adviser, the senior decision maker instructed that all personal individual children’s records held should be destroyed (apart from the register of names and dates) because the records were ‘too much of a risk’.”
Around the time the decision was made, the church was dealing with a request from a survivor for copies of their records.
The report reveals the former CEO sought advice from lawyer Frazer Barton, who was a PSO board member at the time, about the wholesale destruction of all records.
According to the commission’s report, Barton, who is now the president of the New Zealand Law Society, told Bremner she was legally obliged to provide the documents requested by the survivor, but that all other documents could be destroyed.
Frazer Barton is president of the New Zealand Law Society.
According to information in the commission’s report, Benton told Bremner she could destroy the documents, “but at an appropriate milestone or anniversary”.
Barton told the Herald the advice he gave Bremner was “informal advice”.
“Any suggestion I advised the then-CEO to destroy the documents in 2017/2018 is incorrect. As the report makes clear, I was asked for informal advice by the then-CEO while I was a board member, and it was in this capacity I gave the advice,” he said.
“I said Presbyterian Support Otago had to provide a survivor’s records to their legal representative and that the documents could only be destroyed later ‘at an appropriate milestone or anniversary’.”
The Herald can reveal Sam Benton, a partner at Cooper Legal, made a complaint with the law society Thursday morning.
“I was particularly perturbed to see the involvement of a legal adviser in requesting this,” he told the Herald.
“After reviewing that this morning, I’ve made a formal complaint to the law society about Frazer Barton, who provided that advice.”
Sam Benton, a partner at Cooper Legal.
Benton, who’s helped multiple abuse survivors of the Presbyterian church, believed the documents were deliberately destroyed to protect the group’s reputation.
“I’m without a doubt that that’s exactly what happened,” he said.
A spokesperson for the law society said they could not comment on complaints.
“In his personal capacity, our current president Frazer Barton has held governance roles on the board of Presbyterian Support Otago,” the spokesperson said.
The society’s spokesperson said the law society acknowledged the release of the commission’s report, and the “appalling abuse and neglect suffered by survivors”.
Benton said he believed there were grounds for police to investigate.
Assistant Commissioner Investigations, Paul Basham, told the Herald police would not speak about individual cases.
“Survivors can be assured we will treat each investigation confidentially and with the care and attention it deserves,” he said.
Basham said police were assessing the commission’s findings “to establish what actions might be required”.
Presbyterian Support Otago CEO, Jo O’Neill, told the Herald she would not make the same decision to destroy children’s records.
“The decision to destroy some records was made by a former CEO and the reasons for doing so are unclear, although misguided. PSO informed the commission that the records were destroyed, however, this has not affected how we address claims,” she said.
Attempts to contact Bremner were unsuccessful. It’s believed she’s currently in Botswana where she runs a tour company.
David Hansen, 72, was in the care of Presbyterian Support Central as a child staying at Berhampore children’s home in Wellington in the late 1950s.
He said he was sexually assaulted, “bashed”, and bullied by carers.
“I must have been 6 or 7 years old. It has affected me for the rest of my life. I’ve never wanted to go near sex since and I never married. It’s haunted me my entire life.
He took a case against the Presbyterian church, but said it cost much more than he ever received in compensation.
He said he was paid a “measly” $12,000. He said the church apologised for what happened, but he described this gesture as a “joke”.
‘The people running the place were criminals, in my view, and we were treated as second-class citizens.”
He told the Herald he’s not surprised the South Island chapter of the church group destroyed records.
“I would say that they destroyed them because it would have shown them in a bad light. They were covering up for themselves.”
Massey University emeritus professor, Peter Lineham, is "shocked and disturbed" the Presbyterian Support Otago records were destroyed.
Massey University historian and religious expert, Professor Peter Lineham, said he was “profoundly shocked and disturbed” by the decision to destroy critically important information.
“This could have only come from a culture of deliberate determination to prevent the survivors’ claims. This to my mind is a profound injustice to the victims at Presbyterian Support Otago and calls for prosecutions.”
He said it was equally damning that a lawyer had advised it was acceptable to destroy documents.
Michael Morrah is a senior investigative reporter/team leader at the Herald. He won the best coverage of a major news event at the 2024 Voyager NZ Media Awards and has twice been named reporter of the year. He has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years and joined the Herald in July 2024.
