Sometimes, in New Zealand’s public places, one gets a whiff of annoying fundamentalist street preachers. When I was in my twenties, there was a particularly stupid fake American ex-surfie called Ray Comfort who used to whinge about abortion and homosexuality in Christchurch’s Cathedral Square.

While I think these people are rabid rabble rousers, I think Norway went too far in May this year, when it arrested two street preachers, Larry Keefer (Tampa, Florida) and Petar Keseljevic (indigenous Norwegian), who were talking to folks on the sidelines of Norway’s constitutional day celebrations in Oslo. The two fundamentalists were found guilty of not obeying the police, who had apparently told both gentlemen to move on, and they had been arrested for not obeying that order, related to public safety.

Keefer and Keseljevic are concerned that this contravenes Sections 9 (religious freedom) and 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which Norway was a signatory to.

(Keseljevic and other “Open Air Preachers” turned up outside Denver’s Democratic National Convention this week, protesting against virtually all of the liberal values that Democrat Presidential nominee Barak Obama endorses).

Recommended:

Peter J Smith: “Norway Trial Court finds Missionaries Guilty for Spreading Gospel” Catholic Exchange: 18.07.08: http://www.catholicexchange.com/2008/07/18/113196/

Iris Robinson is a (fundamentalist) Democratic Unionist Party MP for the Northern Irish electorate of Strangford. Elected in 2001, she has become somewhat of a bete noire for LGBT Britons, especially those in Northern Ireland.

She describes herself as “born again” , attends the Metropolitan Tabernacle Belfast (Elim, Pentecostal) and argues that the government “must” support fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible. She has been a strong supporter of British involvement in the Iraqi War, but has a thirty-three percent overall parliamentary attendance rate, in addition to her antigay pontifications during the course of this year.

She believes that like “murderers”, gay people can be converted to fundamentalism to help “change” our lives, and has described homosexuality as “worse” than paedophilia in another outburst.  It should be noted that Peter Miller, the Belfast Mater psychiatrist in question, later resigned from his advisory position later this year, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists have criticised her earlier anti-gay statements. Her diatribes have earnt her a subsequent police investigation for hate crimes, but thus far, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has refused to reprimand her.

Welcome to Little Britain, everyone…

It’s been some time since I covered the ongoing struggles of those brave young women at “Mercy Survivors” in Sydney, who are battling against a questionable Pentecostal ‘medical and social service provider’ entitled “Mercy Ministries,” which is also active in New Zealand.

This time, I thought I’d discuss the experiences of one young woman who experienced eating disorders before she entered the tender embrace of these miscreants. It’s the usual story- isolation from friends and family, either cursory or non-existent independent consultation with featured ‘medical practitioners’ affiliated to MMA, exorcism of alleged ‘demons’ from one’s body, and ‘counselling’ from bible college students without qualifications in counselling or psychotherapy.

“Meg Smith” (not her real name) welcomed the chance for ‘free treatment’ of her anxiety attacks and panic disorder problems. Unfortunately, “free” meant signing over her Centrelink (NZ: WINZ benefit) payments to MMA, and then discovered that the counsellors, therapists, doctors, psychologists and social workers either weren’t there, or could not be independently consulted. She said that her only ‘treatment’ consisted of bible readings and an ‘exorcism.’ 

MMA Glenhaven house occupants weren’t allowed to form friendships within the house, were discouraged from external contacts, and their lives consisted of a seven o’clock reveille, ‘praise’ and exercise session, and fruit or yoghurt snacks, followed by a Joyce Meyer bible study session, homework, letter writing, more cleaning and more bible study.

Understandably, without proper professional treatment, Meg started to self-harm. This led to her ‘exorcism’ as advised by her ‘counsellor’ -who turned out not to have any formal counselling or psychotherapeutic skills.

As noted in my earlier “Restoring the Foundations” blog, Meg was then asked to deal with her ‘demons’ of pride, unforgiveness and anger, and told that she was ‘only’ self-harming to ‘get attention’ - this, from unqualified MMA personnel who weren’t adequately qualified to assess the seriousness of self-harm attempts, or provide a professional diagnosis!

Meg didn’t get any better, and when her panic attacks resumed, she was told that ’she’d let the ‘demons’ back in’, or didn’t ‘want’ to be ‘healed.’  Moreover, as with other young women within the MMA house, she was discouraged from going to mainstream, qualified professional counsellors or psychotherapists.

Fortunately, she went to see a proper psychologist after removal from the programme, who told her not to go back to it. Happily, Meg is better now, no thanks to her fundamentalist ‘carers’ at MMA, who left her suicidal, self-harming and experiencing hallucinations after being told she was ‘demonic.’

It should be noted that Gloria Jeans Coffees still maintains support for the controversial ‘healing’ (sic) ministry, which continues to operate without any critical governmental scrutiny or regulation, despite stories such as Meg’s harrowing account.

One hopes that nothing similar is happening to the occupants of Mercy Ministries New Zealand’s premises…

Recommended:

http://www.mercysurvivors.com

Mercy Survivors

Tim Brunero: “How to Cure Anorexia with Exorcisms”: LiveNews: 07.08.08:

http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/07/18/How_to_cure_anorexia_with_exorcisms_101

Elizabeth Pisani: The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS: New York: WW Norton: 2008.

New Zealanders can pride ourselves on taking a sober, serious stance toward HIV/AIDS prevention over the last quarter-century, but what about elsewhere in the world?

Pisani’s book is especially interesting because she spent some time working alongside waria (transgender) sex workers in urban Jakarta. Unlike their rural sisters, who play religious and ceremonial roles in the countryside, urban waria have to deal with earning a living, and many turn to sex work to support themselves. Sex work? But isn’t Indonesia the world’s largest Muslim-majority country? Yes, but it shares the country with Hindu, Christian and Buddhist minorities, as well as animists.

Moreover, as Pisani sagely observes, it’s usually a better idea to sit down and talk, providing a qualitative basis for any quantitative (number crunching) research one later does, so one can have some guidelines about how gender, gender identity, class, economic development and urbanisation, ethnic differences, religious conservatism and the presence or absence of public health services affects the well-being or otherwise of one’s respondents.

In Jakarta, waria sex workers view themselves as women, and dress accordingly, although many have other livelihoods than sex work. In Jakarta’s sex industry, they coexist with men who sell sex to other men but do not identify as gay, self-identified Indonesian gay men, and middle-class IV drug users (in the latter case, much to the despair of their families- Indonesia is perilously close to South East Asia’s opiate and methamphetamine drug black markets).

As with western societies and evangelical Christianity, Indonesia occassionally experiences its own episodes of Muslim devotionalism, piety and moralism. Recently, this led to the demolition of a red-light district in Jakarta, making it difficult to provide continuous services to waria sex workers in the district. However, brothel managers are co-operative, even if some are annoyed at the absence of regular funding for condom distribution, STI and HIV testing and healthcare for either female or waria sex workers.

As for gay sexual identities, they appear to be spreading eastward, along with urbanisation, information technology and industrial development. These result in gay community formation in Indonesia, China and other East Asian societies, as well as avenues for HIV/AIDS and STI transmission- and prevention.

Africa is a different story, although one must bear in mind Cindy Patton’s caution twenty years ago that different African societies have different histories, and not all are under malignant fundamentalist Christian or Muslim social conservative rule. As with East Asia, urbanisation and economic development have had their consequences- where one’s husband is away, some women may decide to emulate them, and have multiple heterosexual sexual partners. In some societies, late teenage women have relationships with older ’sugar daddies’ in their forties, and end up having unprotected sex with them.

Moreover, fundamentalist US Christians have a greater chance of exporting their abstinence-based junk science misinformation to these societies, instead of reliable health promotion, and concrete condom provision. In addition, the Vatican also preaches male sexual irresponsibility, denying the efficacy of condom use, while promoting a sexual culture of stigma, discrimination and denial. However, Brazil has gone its own way on caring for the poor and oppressed, given that it was the birthplace of liberation theology last century.

Pisani also deals with the insidious ‘coercive sex trafficker’ myth amongst opponents of decriminalisation of adult sex work. Rather than penalise Southern sex workers for earning several times more than factory workers, why not get tough with International Labour Organisation industrial relations regulations and foster unionisation amongst female factory workers?

But no, sex workers are “benighted” or “immoral” women (and men) who must be ’saved’ from ’sexual slavery.’ When these women are ‘rescued’, they aren’t even taught meaningful skills that would enable them to escape from rural deprivation and poverty, which they probably fled in the first place. Recidivism is a hallmark of these ‘rescue’ programmes.

When it comes to dirty needles and IV drug user transmission of HIV/AIDS, it is surprising to learn that China’s Guangxi province, Bangladesh, Brazil and Iran (!) all have needle-exchange programmes, whereas the United States has refused to fund federal needle exchange programmes since 1988. Unfortunately, the spread of cocaine as an injectable drug is complicating the picture. Whereas shooting up heroin is regular, predictable and can be planned for, coke highs are of shorter duration, and abusers can go on unplanned binges, leading to needle exchange shortages, increased risk of sharing dirty syringe needles, and consequent HIV/AIDS exposure. In addition, when it comes to detox, point of service methadone access programmes work to wean abusers off dangerous drug use, whether in Balinese prisons, China, Iran, Kyrgizistan, Germany and Canada- but not the United States, given the absence of continuous and sustained needle exchange or other health promotion, risk reduction or harm minimisation services.

However, Pisani concludes with an encouraging look at China. In the late nineties, Chinese administrative pragmatism led to the emergence of United Nations AIDS Programme consultation and nonpunitive preventative focuses amongst IV drug users, emergent gay communities and sex workers- which gives one cause for hope.

And in a mixed bag this morning, there are events aplenty in Canada, as federal Tory Prime Minister Stephen Harper prepares for a general election which his party may not even win, after only a single term of office.

It is uncertain what this will mean for Onsite, the recovery and detoxification facility that is part of the controversial Vancouver Insite safe injecting facility for IV drug users in Vancouver’s impoverished Downtown Eastside. Giving the lie to Harper administration rhetoric about attention to drug abstinence and recovery programmes, the Toronto Globe and Mail notes that in British Columbia, and Canada as a whole, such programmes are desperately underfunded. Onsite itself is operating at full capacity.

And happily, the Harper administration has scrapped the “Unborn Victims Protection Bill,” which would have made embryos and fetuses ‘victims’ of violent crime in ‘their own right’- and opened the door for malicious anti-abortionist harrassment and prosecution of pregnant women with substance abuse problems, instead of persuading them into programmes to assist them through substance abuse detox and recovery, pregnancy and any post-childbirth needs.

Meanwhile, across the ditch, the Queensland Catholic hierarchy has hit out at St Marys Catholic Church in Brisbane. Both Queensland Pride and the Courier Mail carried the story that this liberal Catholic church and its three hundred parishioners and priest were threatened by its closure. The church doesn’t tow the party line and blesses same-sex relationships, and even had a statuette of the Buddha present until a conservative parishioner vandalised it. Apart from the current pope, whose praiseworthy diligence on this issue should be acknowledged, why is it that the Catholic hierarchy beneath him has such a perverse sense of priorities? Rather than enforce ridiculous dogma against acknowledgement of Catholic lesbian and gay relationships, it’d be nice to have some clarity and sense of proportion and gravity when it comes to clergy paedophilia, rather than conceal and protect paedophile priests.

However, it would be amiss of me to argue that sexual hypocrisy is limited to Roman Catholicism alone. There is currently an amusing case involving a fundamentalist minister ‘addicted’ to erotic media, also in Australia.

In Adelaide, Michael Guggliamucci faked terminal cancer elaborately, conning his family with emails from non-existent medical practitioners and has had his credentials as an Australian Christian Churches itinerant minister revoked. Apparently, his ‘addiction’ made Guggliamucci lose his hair and develop eating problems. It took eleven days before the Pentecostal Edge Church acknowledged the falsehood involved in Guggliamucci’s feigned ‘cancer’ case, and he’s currently in hiding, seeking psychiatric assistance for his ‘addiction’ problem. He’s said he will co-operate with the police. He’s also in trouble for a “Christian music” “hit” entitled Healer, whose proceeds will be donated to charity. 

Meanwhile, all’s quiet on the New Zealand front. For now…

Recommended:

Ian Clacher: “Vatican Threat to Gay-Friendly Church” Queensland Pride: 25.08.08: http://www.qlp.e-p.net.com.au/news/vatican-threat-to-gay-friendly-church.2179.html

Brodie Fenlon: “Tories Drop Unborn Victim Bill” Globe and Mail: 25.08.08.

Anna Paperny: “Detox Centre Above Insite Can’t Meet Demand” Globe and Mail: 25.08.08: http://www.globeandmail.com

Kim Wheatley: “Pastor Tells of Porn Addiction” News Advertiser: 26.08.08: http://www.news.com.au

On Saturday, Ottawa lesbians engaged in their annual Dyke March, at the same time that a group of fundamentalist kids were engaging in a predictable attention-grabbing stunt designed to attract attention to the anti-abortion movement.

Unusually for fundamentalists, they’ll be taping their mouths shut, allegedly to impersonate embryos or fetuses, which will occur without meal breaks. “The Whine” (oops- sorry, “The Cry”) is meant to show fundamentalist youth disapproval of (deep breath) sex, kinky sex, family breakdown and suicide, as well as abortion, and it’s all the ‘fault’ of feminism, the pro-choice and sexual liberationist movements.

There was an irreverent response to all this pontification from one Dyke March organiser, who argued that what the fundamentalist youth were doing was pointless, even if the Harper administration was trying to turn the clock back (which The Cry organisers predictably applauded). The fundamentalist extravaganza was canned for trying to manipulate residual shame and vulnerability. There’s been no word about any confrontation between the two sides.

 Recommended:

M.J. Deschamps: “Fundamentalist Rally planned for day of Dyke March” Xtra Ottawa: 22.08.08: http://www.xtra.ca

While the Maxim Institute has announced that it intends to resurrect its nzvotes website to provide information for centre-right voters about the forthcoming election, its parties and candidates, the organisation continues to steadily diverge from the New Zealand Christian Right.

Case in point- Steve Thomas’ new paper, Governing for the Good: What Does It Mean?  While there is a chapter on conservative Catholic definitions of what constitutes the “common good”, predominantly from the United States, Thomas’ discussion paper is particularly indebted to the Business Roundtable and Centre for Independent Studies for its underlying premise- that increased central government spending is bad, as well as increased levels of government taxation to pay for central government provided social services. As one might guess, it tends toward that old New Right nostrum that ‘civil society’ is a wholly independent set of non-governmental social networks and community associations, which should spend its time providing social services for its members than rely on central government welfare services.

This is carefully ringfenced off from any critical consideration about civil society as contributors to active citizenship and democratic participation, and provides a somewhat romanticised view of charitable organisations before the rise of the modern welfare state in the thirties. Notably too, it keeps well away from traditional Christian Right obsessions like women’s reproductive freedom and LGBT rights.

It’s not difficult to see why- diminished central government expenditure means no money for so-called Christian Right ‘abstinence programmes’, intrusive government regulation of abortion services, and more delegated funding to organisations like the Family Planning Association and AIDS Foundation, on the basis that these primary health NGOs are saving central government downstream funds through providing preventative services that forestall later costs from expenditure on pharmaceuticals, hospital bed occupancy, staff wages, wear and tear on medical equipment, and so on. If reduced taxation is the fount of all virtue, then primary health organisations are particularly virtuous, it would seem. Granted, Thomas’ chapter tries to make a case for religious involvement in abandoned central government social services, but there are no concrete case studies.

As with its contacts with the Mackinac Centre for Public Policy and Acton Institute, this policy paper provides more clear evidence that the Maxim Institute is now more a creature of the New Right, than oriented toward mobilising social conservatives.

Recommended:

Steve Thomas: “Governing for the Good: What Does It Really Mean?”: http://www.maxim.org.nz/index.cfm/links/taxreport1

While perusing Cleis Press’ excellent online catalogue, I was struck by three fascinating titles about bygone dykes.

March Hastings’ Three Women (1958) is about a lesbian love triangle. Paula marries Phil at eighteen to escape from her ghastly New York tenement life with an alcoholic dad, but falls in love with Byrne, his artist aunt, who lives in Greenwich Village, and is already involved with another woman.

Della Martin’s Twilight Girl (nd) shouldn’t be confused with Paula Christian’s classic lesbian novel of the same name. Lorraine (Lon) is a fifties ‘baby butch’, with a thing about South Pacific, except her version is populated exclusively by women.She falls in love with her English teacher (not gym teacher?), but meets Violet, who introduces her to the lesbian world of fifties Los Angeles.

 ”Contaminated passions” writhe at the 28 Per Cent Club, where swaggering butches and gorgeous femmes compete for each others attentions. Amongst them is Mavis, a gifted black jazz pianist-but also the girlfriend of spoilt brat Sassy Gregg.

Carol Caine’s World of Women deals with Kat, who presides over a ’strange jungle of flesh’ with only women allowed inside. She’s distinctly polygynous- Susan wants commitment, Marg is a tough as nails butch, Gerda is a bisexual swinger alongside her husband Fitz, and then there are the one-night stands.

For any bookshops who want to order these keepsakes of the lesbian past, here are the details:

Cleis Press website: http://www.cleispress.com 

March Hastings: Three Women: San Francisco: Cleis Press: ISBN 9781573442459

Della Martin: Twilight Girl: San Francisco: Cleis Press: ISBN 978157344235

Carol Caine: World of Women: San Francisco: Cleis Press: ISBN 9781573442312

Focus on the Family New Zealand is the local satellite of the predatory US Christian Right transnational, Focus on the Family. What does it have to say about LGBT issues?

One might be forgiven for assuming not much, given that its New Zealand franchise tends to be more obsessed with a forthcoming local Nelson-based anti-abortion conference in October, as well as displaying inevitable umbrage against Auckland’s forthcoming “Boobs on Bikes” parade down Queen Street.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find that it’s there, in the pages of Boundless, a US FOF publication for adolescents and young adults. In the first one I viewed, the unfortunately named “John Thomas” (…) dealt with a young woman whose otherwise orthodox fundamentalist boyfriend is not a gay virgin, and has recurrent same-sex desires, which he labels ‘demonic,’ and hates himself for having. Thomas plugs FOF’s “Love Wins Out” and the associated “Exodus” exgay movement, and recommends that boyfriend finds a male “mentor”, while the couple confesses all to an older straight couple.

Randy Thomas ‘used’ to be a gay man fifteen years ago, but turned fundamentalist for unexplained reasons. He realised that hey, he wasn’t an “abomination,” it was gay sex. Notice that Thomas doesn’t seem to give all that much away.

Mike Ensley is in an Exodus “Student Ministry”, which must be novel to New Zealand readers, given that our own fundamentalist exgay movement considers primarily of men over fifty. Anyway, Ensley tells us that it can be “difficult” to suppress one’s gayness, especially if one is single. However, he argues that straights can be ’sexually broken’ too, and guilt-tripped about having sex before marriage, extramarital affairs, abortions and other ‘transgressions.’ He also ‘answers’ questions about what happens if one gets married, but isn’t attracted to one’s wife. He opines much about ’struggles’, ‘temptations’ and advises fellow captives of the exgay movement to isolate themselves from the Internet, former gay friends and unhealthy relationships.

Which are? Apparently, they’re anything affirmative to do with same-sex relationships. Just so we get the message, conservative Catholic Josef Budzisewski lays down the (twelfth century Thomist scholastic) “natural law” dogma which cites junk science about physical, ‘emotional’ and ’spiritual’ damage from gay sex, then blithely advises intersexed people to have ‘corrective’ surgery, and finally resorts to the old chestnut that gay sex is ‘unnnatural’ ’sodomy’, while ‘good’ heterosexual sex should be used for procreation and heterosexual marital intimacy.

Uh huh. Lie to yourself, guilt trip yourself, isolate yourself from others, ruin some straight woman’s life through marrying her, and do it because you dare not face whom you really are. Boundless? Shameless would be more like it.

Not Recommended:

http://www.family.org.nz

Focus on the Family New Zealand

http://www.boundless.org

Boundless (US FOF)

From: http://www.paroleboard.govt.nz/media-and-publications/decisions/capill—graham-john—240608.html

                                              CAPILL - Graham John - 24/06/08

                                                          Parole hearing

                                Under Section 21(1) of the Parole Act 2002

Graham John Capill

Hearing: 24 June 2008 At (Withheld) Prison
Members of the Board:
Judge J Macdonald
Ms S Gill
Mr R Wilson
Counsel: (Withheld)

DECISION OF THE BOARD

Mr Graham Capill, you are serving a sentence of nine years’ imprisonment for sexual offending against (details of victims automatically suppressed). That sentence commenced in July 2005. You will become eligible for parole on 28 June 2008. Your statutory release date is not until 27 June 2014. These represent your first convictions. I would record at the outset that you are supported at this hearing by (names withheld). You are represented by (Counsel’s Name Withheld) who, in his usual careful way, has provided the Board with various material, including a Psychologist’s Report from (Psychologist’s Name Withheld). He has provided us this morning with a memorandum of his submissions and he has succinctly and ably put your position to the Board.

If we look at the law, as (Counsel’s Name Withheld) may well have told you, and you probably know yourself, we can only release you on parole if we are satisfied on reasonable grounds that you would not pose an undue risk to the safety of the community. We do that having regard to the support and supervision available to you in the community and the desirability of having you reintegrate into the community as a law abiding citizen. I have already referred to the support you have, and you have excellent support obviously, and we have taken that into account.

We also must, of course, take into account and give due weight to the victims’ views. As explained to you we met with one of your victims, (Name Withheld), this morning. We have a letter from her and you have seen that. We also have a letter from (name withheld). They are concerned that you might still pose an undue risk to the safety of the community. (Name Withheld) has a specific concern that you might pose an undue risk to (names withheld). The other matter that is stressed is that they would like you to undertake a programme, and preferably that is the programme that is available to you in Prison, the Kia Marama Programme for child sex offenders.

As far as your Prison conduct is concerned that has been exemplary. There have been no misconducts. Amongst the papers we have you are described as being polite and compliant and you have obviously spent your time well in Prison.

I mentioned before the Kia Marama Programme and that is something that is available to you but it appears that it is unlikely to be available to you until some time in the future. (Counsel’s Name Withheld) has dwelt on that to some extent. It appears that it will not be available to you until July 2010, at the earliest. He suggests that this merely reflects the application of the two thirds rule where the Corrections Department will not permit you to commence such a programme, unless completion of it would coincide with about two thirds of your sentence. From the Board’s perspective that is really a matter for the Prison.

The Psychologist’s report we have from Psychological Services strongly recommends that you undertake the Kia Marama Programme. The report from (Psychologist’s Name Withheld) supports the view that you need to undertake some programme, and you yourself likewise accept that, that you need to undertake a programme. As far as the Kia Marama Programme is concerned there is this substantial delay before it would be made available to you. There is also a concern on your part about privacy issues and you have discussed that with us. (Counsel’s Name Withheld) has outlined some of the previous privacy breaches as you have claimed them to have been while in Prison. We accept that that may well be a legitimate concern on your part.

Recognising, however, the difficulty with undertaking the Kia Marama Programme, and particularly the delay aspect, you raised the possibility of attending the STOP Programme. (Counsel’s Name Withheld) has suggested that the Board should support your release so you can be assessed for that programme. He even suggests that if it was found that you were unsuitable for the programme, that parole might be revoked and you would come back into Prison. That was perhaps a novel suggestion, but either way, he is suggesting the STOP Programme would meet your needs.

Strictly speaking from the Board’s perspective, there is no formal proposal for you to be released and be part of the STOP Programme. That would first require an assessment, and obviously it would also need some further report from a Psychologist providing an opinion as to whether or not that programme would meet your particular needs. You are, of course, serving a lengthy prison sentence for very serious offending with three victims involved.

We have taken all matters into account. The present position is that you have not completed any programmes in prison thus far which could be said to have reduced your risk.  Good behaviour on its own is insufficient to meet the statutory test. Therefore the Board’s view is that at this point, you do pose an undue risk to the safety of the community, and that would remain so until such time as you complete some treatment programme of the type that Kia Marama provides. There is no other release proposal for the Board to consider.

Parole is declined. It is always open to you to come up with some alternative proposal, which perhaps it involves the STOP Programme, but that is a matter for you. 

I hope you understand the decision. That is the decision we have made.

_________________________   
Judge J Macdonald
Panel Convenor
Review

• You may apply for a review of the Board’s decision under section 67(1).  The only grounds under which you may make an application for review are that the Board, in making its decision:

1. Failed to comply with procedures in the Parole Act 2002; or
2. Made an error of law; or
3. Failed to comply with Board policy resulting in unfairness to the offender; or
4. Based its decision on erroneous or irrelevant information that was material to the decision reached; or
5. Acted without jurisdiction.

To apply for a review you must write to the Board within 28 days of its decision giving reasons why you believe one or more of the above grounds apply in your case.

• Reviews are considered on the papers only; there is no hearing in respect of your Review Application.

New Zealand Parole Board >Media & Publications >Decisions >CAPILL - Graham John - 24/06/08