Re: Beyond the Darklands program to be screened on TVNZ Tuesday February 2010.

The FACTUAL team wish to clarify the situation surrounding the Documentary Beyond The Darklands with respect to its screening on Mark Lundy. FACTUAL were first approached late 2009 to assist with involvement in this programme. The producer was advised at this time of a pending petition with regard the case and asked to withhold their screening to which they advised they had secured funding and it was going ahead with or without our support. The Screentime producers then approached the courts for assistance and access to court documents. This appeal was denied by Justice McKenzie who commented “The likelihood of an application is, on my assessment, sufficiently high that the release of material would pose a significant risk to a fair retrial, which if one were ordered, should be avoided.”

FACTUAL believe that Screentime have proceeded on the basis of unbalanced, inaccurate, and incomplete data, against the direct advice of the judiciary. We believe the blatant disregard they hold for fair judicial process is astounding and disrespectful.

It should also be noted that the presenter, who has never met with Mark Lundy, although a clinical psychologist, provides no evidence of being a Doctor of Psychiatric Medicine, or experience in this field. It appears his degree is as a Zoologist with a Master of Philosophy and a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology. He admits himself that he found working in this area “inane” and “not for him”.

In contrast the FACTUAL team have an opinion from an eminent MD of Forensic Psychiatric Medicine who has treated over 40,000 psychiatric patients and is a court accepted expert psychiatric witness with experience of over 1000 criminal and civil cases. He states “It is my professional opinion that there is nothing so far which leads me to believe anything other than that Mark Lundy did not kill his wife and daughter, that he does not fit a profile of a killer of this type and that indeed he displayed all the normal signs and symptoms of grief, depression, severe shock, and post traumatic stress disorder one would expect to see in a normal loving and grieving husband and father.”

It should be noted that the FACTUAL team, nor Mark Lundy’s lawyers, took any legal action to stop this screening. They merely made pleas for common sense to prevail, which TVNZ and the producers of Screentime seem to severely lack. It is hoped that in pure ignorance of the true facts that they do not put themselves in breach of court imposed limitations, or offer an opinion that may be considered slanderous or detrimental to the impending continuation of judicial process.
 

The FACTUAL Team