Joy Cowley's fiction:

This is the story of how a government social worker and a corrupt, incompetent police officer took a young child away from a loving home and a loving parent, and placed her in the care of people who went on to seriously abuse her.  It's also a personal story, but I ask readers to focus on the main issue here, the actions of the social welfare staff, the police, the lawyers.  Parents do their best, but these people receive taxpayer's money to assist families, not destroy them, and in this case (and others) corrupt police and social workers have pursued a vindictive personal agenda which has resulted in the destruction of a family.  I'm writing this because so much has been written by Joy Cowley and her son James, and by corrupt and incompetent social workers and police officers, that the truth has become distorted.  This is just an attempt to balance history by telling the other side of the story.  Joy Cowley is a famous children's author, who carefully maintains the image of a dear old granny, loved by all, a kind Christian.  She's recently announced that she's writing a 'memoir'.  The purpose of this post is only to counteract the works of fiction she's written about me.

Joy left her own children, and her husband, when her son James, the father of my daughter, was four. She married Malcolm Mason, a wonderful man, who sadly passed away in about 1994, whereupon Joy began a relationship with Terry Coles, an ex lawyer, and the local (Khandallah) Catholic priest with almost indecent haste.  Before Malcolm Mason died he asked Joy's son James to admit paternity of Lily and pay child support, because he knew that James was denying paternity in order to avoid paying child support, in spite of the fact that he was earning $1200 a day as a freelance film cameraman (in the early 1980's).

James was always going on about his wicked stepmother and how his mother's abandonment of him as a baby was the cause of his own low self esteem and problems with alcohol and drugs, etc (his didn't stop him abandoning his own daughter though).

In 1995 Joy Cowley wrote the following letter to my daughter at Woodford House, the boarding school she attended during the week.  I was contacted by the school regarding this letter and the distress it caused Lily and the fact that staff believed it to be inappropriate - as did I.  Around this time I received a phone call from the school nurse, ringing to request that I come to the school for a meeting to discuss a change in Lily's behaviour, when I asked if she could elaborate, the nurse told me that Lily was crying hysterically in her room, following a phone call from her father.

If these documents appear fuzzy, click on them and each image should then become clear.


This is a letter written to the school at the time of Lily's enrolment, confirming that James had no involvement in Lily's life.

When I met with the nurse, the Principal, Lily's Boarding House Mistress and Form Teacher, they informed me of their concern at the effect of the letters sent to Lily at the school recently, and a sudden influx of letters and phone calls from her father and soon-to-be step mother regarding their upcoming wedding.

The letter above is an example of the content of these letters.  In it Joy tells Lily, aged 13, that her father has always paid child support, doesn't owe any child support to IRD and goes on about how he fell on hard times when there was a recession in the film industry.

The staff described how Lily, who was formerly a top student, was exhibiting negative behavioural changes, vandalism, theft, lying, and was often upset following these communications from James, Joy and Maria.  We discussed the content of the letter, and the fact that James had never ever paid any child support at all, and that after I had refrained from discussing this with Lily for 13 years because I'd considered it none of her business, letters like this were now causing problems in our relationship, Lily was arguing with me and calling me a liar.

I'd always had a good relationship with Joy, and was shocked to read what she'd written.  I checked with IRD and discovered that he actually owed me over $25,000, I've never seen any of that.  The letter from James to the FGC in 1996 makes it perfectly clear that he'd never paid any.

Evidence shows that the school staff told James he was forbidden to phone Lily at the school because of the disruption it was causing in the boarding house.  Joy wrote to me about Lily going to spend Christmas at her place in the Marlborough Sounds, as usual.  Joy wrote about how insecure James wife Maria was, the reason I wasn't invited.  I told Joy that Lily and I would be spending this Christmas together.  I'd always gone along with Joy's plans in the past, and arranged for Lily to travel to the Marlborough Sounds to spend time with her father, Maria, Joy, and the rest of their family, but I was concerned at the level of emotional manipulation and dishonesty evident in the letters and the effect of this on my relationship with Lily, and the effect of it on Lily's emotional well being.  James and Joy immediately began demanding their "access rights", and James began phoning social worker Deborah Houston and police officer Mark Napier, both of whom had removed Lily in 1992 and placed her with James, until he was found to be leaving her at home alone, aged 10, for days on end.  The correspondence above indicates a certain mental instability.  It's fictional and delusional, manipulative and dishonest.  He rang unqualified CYPS social worker Debbie Houston and started raving on about two bodies being found at the bottom of a cliff.  He was rightly told that it was a civil matter, that there was no evidence of any abuse and he should get a lawyer.

Evidence shows that James then rang police, stating that he had custody - he didn't have any rights at all, not access, guardianship, or anything else, and had taken very little interest in his daughter for 13 years.  Evidence shows that Sgt Napier saw an opportunity to get back at me for the telling off he'd got from the Judge 4 years earlier after he'd listened to the lies told by James Cowley and Deborah Houston.  Police told James if he came to Hastings they'd help him get his daughter but it wouldn't be easy, according to one of James's affidavits.

This is part of a letter written by Joy in 1991, promising me $20,000 to give me "a little independence" and perhaps the deposit for a house.  The earlier letter describes how Cowley and her new husband, ex priest, ex lawyer, Terry Cole, were building a flash new house to add to their estate in Fish Bay which already had a lovely old farm house which Joy gifted to James (as well as $20,000), after suing her publishers for $100,000.  She knew that James had never ever paid any child support, and promised to give me $20,000 if I didn't pursue the child support issue because she said James's mental health was "fragile".  I was working up to 3 jobs at a time trying to support myself and Lily and save for the deposit on a house.  I received a small amount of assistance from what was then the Department of Social Welfare, but from the time Lily was born I always worked doing whatever I could to earn a living rather than ask for a benefit.

This is from a letter written in 1990, describing how busy James is, working as a freelance camera operator in the film industry.



Here's another letter about how busy James and Maria are, working in the film industry, and how they've taken the opportunity to have a little holiday in Melbourne and Bali, written in 1993.

Another one from 1993.  James and Maria certainly seem to be having a great life.  They are looking for a section in the Sounds, and their own yacht, as well as the home they owned on the beach front at Seatoun.

These letters are in direct contradiction to the letters to Lily at school in 1995.  I was growing tired of James not paying child support and began talking about legal proceedings. I had realised by 1992 that Joy was manipulative and controlling, and that she had promised me the $20,000 to deter me from following up the child support issue, but really had no intention of helping me with the deposit for a house.  Joy and her new husband had built two new houses on the farm in the Marlborough Sounds, where she'd gone to live with Terry Coles after Malcolm Mason died, making three beautiful and spacious houses on her growing estate.

My daughter and I on the other hand were living in shearers quarters and whatever we could afford to rent, and struggling financially.

Joy sent me the letter at left in December 1992.  She had earlier written to me to say that "many people in the family think you are still in love with James" and other rubbish.  I spelled out to her that I despised James, and wouldn't be interested in a relationship with him because he was a selfish liar and a cheat, who drank too much alcohol and took too many drugs, was violent (he apparently has a conviction for assault with a knife in a restaurant), who never paid child support or wanted to spend time with his daughter, and generally not a nice person.

She wrote back in total agreement, and added that in her opinion he shouldn't have unsupervised access to Lily because of his mental instability.  Click on this letter to enlarge it, the dark part reads: "Greg was here last week.  I showed him the letter that James wrote (the one I haven't shown to you).  Greg described it as "disgusting" and "pathetic".  What it all suggests is this: that James is in a very bad way at present, and if he did turn up here any time he spent with Lily would be carefully supervised, I promised you that.  I agree with you that Lily certainly doesn't need her father's instability."

She is wrong about Maria, and a copy of Maria's letters to Lily will be posted soon to prove this.  In 1995 Joy wrote me a letter in which she refers to Maria's insecurity regarding me, and the fact that Maria would sulk and refuse to come out of her room if I was at Joy's at the same time as her, and other dramatic and emotionally manipulative behaviour, and Joy's feelings regarding Maria's behaviour.


This is the letter sent to me by Joy Cowley in 1993, after Joy decided to enrol Lily in Woodford House School in Havelock North, confirming that James was not involved in Lily's life, and the headmistresses affidavit confirms that.

Joy had tried unsuccessfully to make me move back to Wellington, withholding the promised house deposit and sending me numerous manipulative letters waffling on about how I was still in love with James, etc, and trying to control every aspect of our lives.

Finally she announced that she was going to buy a house in Hawkes Bay and let us live in it, instead of giving me the money towards the deposit.  She did so in 1994 or 95, but instead of the beautiful house in Valley Road with the big red barn, and lovely gardens and outbuildings, that Lily and I wanted, she decided on a bleak, windswept bare ridge, exposed to the southerlies and westerlies, with nothing growing on it except grass and thistles.  Both properties had a few acres, but Joy was adamant in her decision about where we would live and that was that.  She had a little kitset house built on it and graciously allowed us to live in it.  I spent a considerable amount of money and time developing the section, planting pine trees and a complete garden, shrubs, banks of groundcovers, trees, etc.  The driveway was steep and unsealed, and the winds howled around the little house, shaking it to the foundations.  There was no shed to put firewood or tools in, no porch to hang your raincoat and take off your gumboots.  We were very grateful, and set about working hard making it the best we could.  I worked at the Wool Board and ENZA, picking apples, pruning grapevines, doing other people's housework and gardening, as well as waitressing and doing private catering in the evenings, to support Lily and I, and develop the property.

James Cowley and Maria Saunders enjoyed a very lavish lifestyle in the golden days of the film industry, earning obscene amounts of money, and free travel to exotic locations around the world, with all accommodation and expenses, food and alcohol, etc, paid on top of the obscene amounts of actual income.  I have several letters from James describing this lifestyle in detail, they will be on this site soon.

James and Maria bought a house on the beach front at Seatoun, in Maria's name for tax purposes, then decided to marry, at which point Joy Cowley gifted them a complete farm with beautiful old farmhouse, on the beachfront in the Marlborough Sounds.

James NEVER paid child support until AFTER he took Lily by force, by lying to the police.  He lied to anyone who came looking for him at 37 Marine Parade Seatoun, saying nobody of that name lived at the address, the incompetent social welfare department couldn't be bothered even checking!

Here is a letter from IRD dated only days after he took Lily by conspiring with a corrupt CYPS "social worker" - Deborah Houston, whose qualifications were "Nil" accorrding to the Area Manager, by stating "I have custody, Lily lives with me and is being held against her will" - all total and utter lies!  - He wasn't even on her birth certificate!  He didn't even have access or guardianship rights let alone custody!  His own mother said he shouldn't have unsupervised access because of his mental instability and manipulative tendencies.

This is where he inherited those tendencies from by the look of it:

At left is the police report which documents the lies told to police by James Cowley - "I have custody, Lillie lives with me, and is being held against her will"- indeed.  Remember the letter about him not having unsupervised access?  He wasn't even on her birth certiificate - he'd never even sent her a birthday card, and couldn't even spell her name.

Unqualified CYPS social worker Deborah Houston and Sgt Mark Napier got a telling off for listening to these lies once before (in 1992, four years earlier to the very day) and sending Lily off to live with her father because Deborah Houston deemed it the best thing to do, after YPS records show that someone reported seeing a bruise on Lily's arm two weeks earlier, but hadn't thought anything about it at the time, but suddenly made an issue out of it coincidentally at the same time as an issue had arisen regarding my election to the Board of Trustees.

Lily wrote a letter describing how her father had left her home alone, days after this placement by Houston and Napier - an offence in itself - she was ten years old!

Above is the CYPS notes documenting the abuse by Richard and Lorraine, the CYPS approved Open Home Foundation "caregivers" that my daughter was abused by in 1996.  Nothing was done about this whatsoever by either CYPS or Police.  So who's the child abuser again?

Above are the vague ramblings of Debbie Houston and James Cowley - this is like some witch hunt!
James had no legal status regarding Lily whatsoever - he wasn't even on her birth certificate!  He certainly wasn't in any position to authorise paedophile doctor John Sheardown's "examination".  I was, and I was only about ten feet away at the time, but I was completely and utterly ignored.

Two more pages above demonstrate what a monster Deborah Houston is.  "There are to be no phone calls unless authorised by me" blah blah - this is a "social worker" whose qualifications are "Nil" according to the CYPS Area Manager, it is later revealed.

Then we get down to the real reason for Lily's removal.  She wanted to be like the other girls at Woodford House.  The page numbered 44/55, dated the 11th April, the second to last paragraph describes how apparently some of the other girls at Woodford had been a real problem,calling out names at me when they went past.  This is an orchestrated litany of lies made up by Deborah Houston, Joy Cowley, James Cowley et al. But wait - there's more:

Here's the letter James Cowley wrote to the family meeting he couldn't even be bothered going to (after he insisted it be held in Wellington and everyone else in the family be forced to travel there).

Lily was ten years old and he couldn't spell her name, and had obviously never paid child support.

In spite of this pitiful letter, and the results of the FGC, James Cowley got away with never paying child support, lying to everyone, including our daughter, about that fact, sending our daughter to live with a pair of recidivist paedophiles (Open Home Foundation "caregivers" Richard and Lorraine), and then sending her flatting nine days after this abuse was reported , to teach her a lesson for "not pulling her weight around the house."

This is the latest arrogant response from Laitisha Kovaleski, who gets paid - well overpaid - for making a career of telling people like me to shut up and go away with this rubbish she writes.

This is information about me.  The child support and "maintenance" as it was called before the government restructured the Social Welfare Department and created WINZ, IRD and the myriad of little organisations we have now, was payable to me as our daughter's caregiver, it is information about me which I am entitled.

Tax payers are funding many so-called public servants like arrogant women Laetisha Kovaleski and Tara Sewell to hide information from people instead of providing it.  They should be sacked.  I'm sick of being a beneficiary because arrogant, incompetent, lazy and corrupt public servants working for the same incompetent and corrupt government department who failed to collect the child support in the first place deny me the information about it, while freely giving information about me to anyone who will listen - like the South End School!  There is a considerable amount of information I am entitled to under this request as Ms Kovaleski knows perfectly well.  She mentions the letter about the $17,263.70, but only because I specifically mentioned it, there is a considerable amount of information about James Cowley's assessments and payments - or rather lack of them!  Look at her arrogant title - Official Information Editor indeed!  Joy Cowley paid our daughter $30,000 to say she was abused.  The evidence speaks for itself and shows that the  allegation by Wendy Taylor is about bruising she allegedly saw TWO WEEKS BEFORE reporting it, that she only reported it because of the attempt to get me off the Board of Trustees - if the bruises were anything to be worried about she would have done something at the time!  Then there's the evidence about James ringing the police and CYPS incessantly with stories about "two bodies will be found at the bottom of the cliff" blah blah - only demonstrating the mental instability spoken of in his mother's letter!  What a crock of rubbish from a pack of selfish greedy liars!

There are updates regarding these matters at this link, and more evidence is being uploaded to these sites regularly, as resources allow.  I encourage others to consider engaging in a little transparency if they feel strongly about an injustice - if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide according to the government - and I wasn't an abusive parent and I have nothing to hide.