Joy Cowley - Under The Emperors New Clothes:

This is a letter to me from Joy Cowley, OBE, in 1987, the paternal grandmother of my daughter.  Joy writes lovely children's stories, and she also writes lots of prayers, which is the bit that really annoys people who know the real Joy Cowley.  Joy wanted me to move back to Wellington from Hawkes' Bay where we moved after her son evicted us from our flat in Wellington.  She spoke firstly about her own big new house,which she was building in the Marlborough Sounds with the money she got from suing her publishers (Doubleday?), and then about how she "could help you towards a deposit for your own home."

Joy knew perfectly well that her son James was not paying child support, she knew that he had never done so, and that he had been unsupportive in every way of his daughter and I, and actually went out of his way to make life more difficult for me if it suited him.  He left as soon as he found out he was going to be a father, and went to live in Auckland, returning to Wellington to evict me from the flat which he still held the lease on, because he and his mates had decided I would be better off in a unit in Johnsonville or Nappy Valley or somewhere and the lovely old house in Northland was much better suited to his friend Mark Robins and his mates.  I took my daughter and went to live in Hawkes Bay where I worked hard as a domestic servant and manual labourer, researcher, teacher aide, and a number of other things to bring up my daughter and give her a happy and healthy life and a nice warm, cosy, clean home, etc.  James never paid child support, Joy wrote a lot of empty promises and outright lies.

Joy used to write to me and tell me how she was suing her publishers for $100,000 which she said she would divide between me and her four children, who were brought up by their father and his second wife, after Joy's ambition as a writer took precedence over her desire to be a wife and mother.  Joy left her own children when James was four and married Malcolm Mason, a wonderful man, who sadly passed away in about 1994.

Joy wrote to me in December 1986.  The letter reads: "James and Maria (Saunders, ex wife of Warratah Barry) have a house in Seatoun and are both working on films.  James will be filming in January when the family come here for holiday (sic), but Maria will join us.  We plan to have a 3 day fishing trip in the outer Sounds.  May the light of Christ's coming this Christmas , fill you with peace."  Which proves ironic later on.

This is part of a letter written 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 later gifted to her son (as well as the $20,000) who never paid child support - right before Joy had me evicted from her house where my daughter and I had been living!

This is from a letter written in 1990, which is hand signed at the bottom of this page, very relevant later on is the description of how busy her son 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.

This one, and the previous one were both written in 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.

Meanwhile, 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.

This is a letter sent to me by Joy Cowley in 1993, after Joy decided to enrol Lily in Woodford House School in Havelock North.

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, 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 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 garden, shrubs, banks of groundcovers, etc.  Joy gave me some money towards electric fencing.  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, and by lying to the police.

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 letter clearly states that he owes me over $17,000 at the time of her removal.  This is one of the issues that Lily and I were arguing over, because Joy had written several letters to Lily at Woodford House which had caused distress to both her and I, and caused the staff to request a meeting with me to discuss the disruptive effect of letters like this on Lily and the other girls in the boarding house:

The school Nurse rang me one night to discuss the fact that Lily was crying and upset following a phone call from her father, and she told me that this had happened before.  A meeting was arranged with the Nurse, the Boarding House Manager, the Principal, Lily's form teacher, and me.  The school confirmed that communication with Lily had been recently initiated by James and Maria, who had decided to marry and wanted Lily to be Maria's bridesmaid, and that this communication regularly upset Lily and her friends and caused concern to the staff and disruption in the Boarding House and classroom.  Her form teacher and Boarding House mistress both listed several recent incidents of bad behaviour, including stealing, which were out of character for Lily, who had previously been a good girl who had earned excellent school reports and knew not to steal. They noted that this behaviour coincided with the inappropriate communication from James, Maria and Joy.

The school staff were in favour of ceasing to allow James to ring Lily at School.  I agreed (Lily had phone cards and could ring him whenever she wanted).  The staff also wanted to withhold Lily's mail from James and Maria, but as this had been one of the allegations made in the letter from Maria (that I had previously withheld mail to Lily from James - he never wrote her any!) I rejected this suggestion, and asked that the school inform me when mail had been received and encourage Lily to discuss the letters with the school staff and myself.  Lily was a weekly boarder and came home at weekends.  The affidavit of the Headmistress confirms that we often had one of Lily's friends, such as one of the other boarders whose parents lived further away and couldn't therefore get time out of the boarding house as often as Lily, and that these girls always enjoyed their visits and never had any complaints about me, and that I enjoyed an excellent relationship with all the staff at the school.

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."