SUPREME COURT Social Security Officer Guilty On All Counts

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32032, 5 July 1969, Page 21

SUPREME COURT Social Security Officer Guilty On All Counts

After a week-long trial, Clifford Jack Fordham, aged 45, an officer in the Social Security Department at Christchurch, was found guilty by a jury in the Supreme Court last evening on all 27 counts of forgery he had faced. Mr Justice Wilson remanded Fordham (Mr R. S. D. Twyneham) for sentence on July 15. Fordham was held to have falsely renewed two deserted wives’ benefits which had been cancelled —one in the name of a Mrs G. M. J. Hardman, and another in the name of a Mrs D. M. Brooker (now Whitley)—and by forged documents to have appointed bogus agents to collect the benefit order books from post offices and to cash the warrants. Nineteen of the 27 charges on which Fordham was found guilty concerned the forgery of warrants —13 for $BB, two for $92, and four for s 49— and the other eight the forgery of forms and authorisations connected with them. His Honour occupied two hours summing up the case. The jury retired at 3.8 p.m. and returned with its verdict of guilty on all counts at 7 p.m. Crown’s Submissions

For the Crown, Mr N. W. Williamson had submitted to the jury that in spite of the accused’s denials of forgery, the evidence against him was overwhelming. The jury could dismiss as "a red herring,” Mr Williamson submitted, the accused’s story that somebody else in ■the Social Security DepartIpent must have been responsible for the forgeries, and tfter the accused’s arrest had attempted to intimidate him. The Crown, Mr Williamson said, had to prove three essential matters—false documents, the accused’s knowledge that they were false, and his intent to deceive. The accused had said he Was not capable of committing the offences, that he had not forged the forms and documents, but someone else in the Social Security Department must have done so. “Inconceivable”

“The Crown says that that explanation is inconceivable,” Mr Williamson said. “The accused was the only person who combined all the requirements of the forger.” The accused, as deserted wives’ officer in the Social Security Department, was the only person who combined knowledge of the department’s system, the opportunity to make entries on district cards, the opportunity to Team new developments in beneficiaries’ affairs, the op-

portunity to learn their children’s names (the forger having used these), the-op-portunity to control the issue of forms, the opportunity to recall files, and the only person who could rest assured that any minute or inquiry regarding deserted wives’ benefits would be handled by him.

Furthermore, said Mr Williamson, the accused was the only person who could have had knowledge to stop cashing forged benefits after January 6, when police inquiries began. As to the positive identification of the accused's handwriting in various forged signatures, this evidence had not really been challenged, Mr Williamson submitted. Defence Submissions

Mr Twyneham, for the accused, submitted to the jury that on the evidence there were too many conflicts and “unexplained mysteries” for it to convict Fordham. The accused had strongly denied the forgeries—but it was not for the defence to show who committed them. “Laities and gentlemen, I am not a Perry Mason,” Mr Twyneham said. But the evidence was dear that it was easy for persons in the Social Security Depart-

ment to have had access to the accused’s desk.

Mr Twyneham, in traversing details of the evidence, spoke of “weaknesses in the system” of the Social Security Department, and of "rather funny things” regarding departmental action about various forms.

“Would the colloquial term ‘duck-shoving’ be appropriate?” Mr Twyneham asked. "Extraordinary Coincidence”

Of the accused’s evidence Of a visit, five days after his arrest on February 20, from a stranger, and suggestion of intimidation by somebody in the Social Security Department Mr Twyneham said: “Is it a red herring? Is it a coincidence? What is behind it? The coincidence of the date, five days after the accused's arrest, is extraordinary—and that was why it was brought before the court.” Mr Twyneham asked the jury to consider what he termed "one important piece of evidence”—that of Miss C. E. Jeffries, a Sydenham Post Office clerk, who on November 26 bad spoken with a man who called to uplift an order book for a deserted wife’s benefit in the name of Hardman. Although Miss Jeffries had had plenty of opportunity to see the accused at court hearings, she had not positively identified him as that man. Miss Jeffries’s description of the man: “About 40, dark hair, medium build” would fit thousands—"but not, I submit, the accused,” Mr Twyneham said. Other factors pointing to the accused’s innocence, said Mr Twyneham, were his ready co-operation with the police, and the complete absence of anything incriminating in a search without warning, of bis satchel and his home. Imprisonment For Sodomy Nine months imprisonment was imposed on Ralph Dalkeith Hansen, aged 32, a driver (Mr J. E. Ryan), when he was sentenced by Mr Justice Macarthur in the Supreme Court yesterday on three charges of sodomy and one of indecent assault on a boy. The case had been referred from Invercargill. Hansen was sentenced to nine months imprisonment on each charge, all terms concurrent.