FALSE ALLEGATIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 121, 24 May 1932, Page 5

FALSE ALLEGATIONS.

DIVORCE CO-RESPONDENT. PRETTY GIRL'S ORDEAI. LAW IN NEED OF REFORM. (Prom Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, May 20. 1 The Paul divorce suit, which has J dragged on for weeks, in which Mrs. Graee Paul (formerly Lowe) petitioned against John Raymond Paul, wool buyer, on the ground of misconduct with Margot Rodger and a woman unknown, - after arousing a. large amount of inter est among that considerable number of , people who not only like to read all the details of such causes in the papers, but attend at Court when they can, has "fizzled out" at last without doing much harm to anybody, and the sensationmongers are looking round for another "cause celebre." The judge's decision, however, serves the purpose of concentrating publicattention once more on the "intervener,'" as she is called in the Courts here— • the "platinum blonde," Miss Margot Rodger, who was dragged into the ease as co-respondent. Mr. Justice Owen, in referring to her, states that "there was nothing whatever got from lier in crossexamination or in evidence to indicate that she is a person of immoral character." The judge telieved that Mrs. Paul was qiiite honest and that she bore witness only to what she believed to be true. But she was evidently misled by the private detective, whom she had employed and who apparently felt like many of his kind that it was _up him" to discover something to justify his existence. But as to Paul and Miss Rodger, the Court held that there was nothing in their relations but what "mi«ht have happened in any man's life or in the life of a- girl he might meet socially." Miss Rodger therefore left the Court "without a stain on her character." and she has received much sympathy for th'j ordeal through which she has been compelled to pass. A very pretty g' r] — according to one newspaper, one of the three prettiest women who have ever appeared in the divorce Court in Sydney her inclusion in this ease naturally made her "the cynosure of neighbouring eyes," and she seems to have felt her position acutely. When the judge declared that so far as she was concerned there was no evidence "to suggest immoral or even loose conduct," Miss Rodger burst into tears, and after it was all over she expressed herself at some length in an interview. There is much pathos and a great deal of truth in her lamentation tliat when a girl is dragged into a divorce suit, no matter how innocent she may be, every effort is made by one side or the other to blacken her character, and brand her for life —and because these things are privileged "nothing can be done about it." There ought to be, as Miss Rodger has plaintively said, "some penalty for making an unfounded attack such as this"; and this is certainly one of the features in which modern divorce law urgently requires remedying* "Why should one woman be able to ruin the life of another like this on the witness of men paid to get evidence?" Miss Rodger has had nearly 12 months to reflect" on this question and the impossibility of answering it, and one can j hardly wonder that she resents it all , most bitterly. .