Lee Churches and Lyn Duncan commit another criminal offence

Lee Churches, one of the senior staff at Carenne Special School facing a criminal charge in the Bathurst Local Court in relation to a whistleblower and Lyn Duncan, former principal of Carenne have committed a criminal offence, this time with a possible 10 to 14 year gaol sentence.

A well-known Carenne whistleblower Brian Carter lodged a Freedom of Information application in May after reading leaked emails about himself on this blog. Documents provided under that application would have been used in criminal proceedings against Lee Churches. Mr Carter today was told that the documents do not exist.

Carenne Gate understands that the process is for the department's FOI unit to request the documents from staff who hold them, in this case Lee Churches and Lyn Duncan.

Carenne Gate has consulted with a criminal law expert who advised that while the suppression of documents under the Freedom of Information Act itself was not illegal, it is illegal to tamper with evidence and making a false official instrument to pervert the course of justice. The lawyer claimed that Miss Churches and Mrs Duncan would have signed a document stating no documents existed under the request. Such a document would have been an "official instrument" made by a "public officer".

It shows that despite being in serious trouble already, Lee Churches continues to break the law to protect herself and the Carenne KLAN.

Lee Churches implicated in FOI suppression at Carenne

It has been reported by "nedkelly" and "hatho" that Lyn Duncan was not the only person at Carenne involved in suppressing information requested under state Freedom of Information laws and that Lee Churches was heavily involved in the cover-up.

Last night, nedkelly posted the following comment on this blog -

4.6.09 Lee sends the following email to a long list of people: "Oh my god - I cannot believe the hide of the man!!!!Does he really think we could work with him after all
those complaints against staff and with a law suit pending -AS IF"

Following this, both nedkelly and hatho sent further information about Ms Churches, Mr Auld and education director Peter Harvey being involved in the cover-up. They claim Churches was the first to raise the possibility of people obtaining documents from Carenne under Freedom of Information after it was discussed at a staff meeting early on into 2009. Following this it is claimed that Lee Churches, Lyn Duncan, Peter Harvey and Michael Auld devised a plan to use pseudonyms and vague references to people who may be the subject of FOI requests. If Churches found out staff were using people's real names in documents she would remind them that it could be obtained under FOI and not to to it again.

nedkelly claims -

Michael told us all that if we used psuedonyms in emails that the person wouldn't be able to do a Freedom of Information request because the department would just search for that person's name on their end. If they can't search the name they can't get the person's information.

hatho claims -

Lyn got the blame for it all but Lee was really key to the FOI cover-up. Peter Harvey and Michael Auld came up with the whole idea of using initials and vague references to avoid FOI laws. Michael was concerned that complaints made could be released to journalists under FOI.

Lee was the standover man. If her or Lyn found out someone hadn't been using the names then Lee would go and harass them.

Lee was the one who refused to comply with FOI requests and didn't release documents where she had made a number of defamatory statements and documents where she had even gone so far as to threaten Mr Carter. Jake Rosenberg had made a complaint about this to Peter Harvey which I confirmed was true but nothing came of it.

For some reason unknown, staff at Carenne Special School continue to break the rules and keep getting away with it.