GIRL'S PETITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 283, 30 November 1933, Page 5

GIRL'S PETITION.

ILLEGALLY GAOLED. £1050 COMPENSATION SOUGHT CHILDREN'S COURT RASE. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. Having been released from Mount Eden prison early this month 011 a writ of habeas corpus, a 19-year-old girl, Annie Lillian Matheson, petitioned the House yesterday for £1050 compensation for wrongful imprisonment and asked that her name be expunged from the criminal records of New Zealand. In her petition—a lengthy document —she described how she had been wrongfully imprisoned on two occasions and had been twice convicted by the Children's Court at Auckland in her absence and without being given an opportunity to seek le<ial assistance or call evidence in rebuttal of the charges. The petition relates that, in 1931, tlie petitioner, then aged 10, was arrested at Auckland and charged in the Police Court at Auckland with being an idle .and disorderly person in that she had insufficient lawful means of support. She was remanded to appear in the Children's Court, although she did not consent "to the remand and although the period of the remand was longer than permitted by law. She was taken to the Salvation Army home at Parnell. Sentence of Three Years. Miss Matheson asserts that she applied for permission to consult a solicitor, but was refused and was forbidden to write to anybody. She wrote two letters to her mother, but these did not reach her mother. She then left the home of her own accord, and on the following Saturday she was convicted and discharged by Mr. E. C. Cutten, S.M., in the Children's Court on a charge of being idle and disorderly, although she was not present at the proceedings. On the same day, without the knowledge of Miss Matheson, an information was laid under the Child Welfare Act on the grounds that she was a delinquent child. No summonses were issued either to Mis,-; Matheson or her parents and the charge was heard in the absence of the girl, who had no opportunity of establishing a defence. The magistrate, Mr. Cutten, sentenced the girl to a term of three years in the Bortal institution at Wellington. The petition alleges that the Court had no jurisdiction to send her to the Borstal and that she was wrongfully detained in the Borstal, having been arrested and lodged there without reasons being given.

Taken to Mount Eden Gaol. After being in tlie Borstal for IS months, the petition continues, Miss Matheson was released on probation for a further two and a half years, thus increasing her sentence by a year without the intervention of any court. On her release, the girl lived with her parents, but in consequence of a report that she was seen in Queen Street at midnight, her probationary license waa cancelled by the Minister of Justice wthout giving her an opportunity of refuting the charge against her or calling evidence to show that her presence there was justifiable and innocent. A policeman called at her parents' residence, told her to say good-bye to her parents, and lodged her in Mount Eden prison without her having been brought before any court. Eight days later she was released by order of the Supreme Court on a writ of habeas corpus, on the grounds that the magistrate had no jurisdiction to sentence her to three years at the Borstal, that he had exceeded his powers in remanding her for more than eight days without her consent. that the proceedings at the Children's Court were based on a document purporting to be an information for an indictable offence instead of a complaint, that the Children's Court had no jurisdiction to hear the charge when it did, and that Miss Matheson was sentenced in her absence without notice to herself or her parents, and had no opportunity of calling any evidence in rebuttal.

The petitioner claims that as the result of being wrongfully imprisoned in Loth the Borstal and Mount Eden prison, she was compelled to associate with women of ill repute ancl with women convicted of many of the worst crimes known to English law, and as a result her future life will be jeopardised by these acquaintances when those women leave gaol.