George Gwaze.

The following was sent by a correspondent.
The conflicting way in which the Prosecution has sought to use evidence is alarming but for a true measure of this tragedy - note the comments of George's wife and daughter.....


Have a read of this its the upcoming Gwaze murder retrial
The ones the JRBG constantly harp on about as a parallel to the Bain trial
supporting in their twisted belief a retrial of David.
Cops are pushing a barrow uphill with this one too.

Crown looks to appeal after Gwaze verdict
by Donna Chisholm - Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 25 May 2008


PROSECUTORS IN the George Gwaze murder trial are trying to challenge
his acquittal in a rare legal move.

Christchurch prosecutor Chris Lange says he has asked the
solicitor-general to consider an appeal after the Crown failed to have
the trial aborted in its final days.

The challenge stems from a dramatic development late in the trial when
lawyers became aware of the "bombshell" comments of South African
paediatric surgeon Heinz Rode that there were similarities between
10-year-old Charlene Makaza's symptoms and those of children who died
of Aids there.

Police were told of Rode's views after a Crown witness met Rode at a
conference in Hong Kong and discussed the case. Rode told Christchurch
paediatrician Spencer Beasley that some HIV children in South Africa
died rapidly and had anal tears and diarrhoea the symptoms New Zealand
experts said were unrelated to HIV when they argued Charlene was
sexually attacked and suffocated.

The development caused a flurry of behind-the-scenes debate the week
before the end of the trial which cleared Gwaze of murder and sex
charges. Jurors deliberated less than five hours.

Lange objected to the fact Rode's evidence was to be admitted as
"hearsay" through a police statement but the judge refused to abort
the trial or delay it several weeks so Rode could be called as a
witness or prepare in-depth evidence. He said the jury had to hear the
crux of Rode's comments or Gwaze couldn't receive a fair trial.

Gwaze's lawyer, Jonathan Eaton, said the Crown's move was very unusual
but "nothing would surprise me".

Gwaze's family is considering laying a complaint with police alleging
racial discrimination during the investigation. It is also trying to
regain custody of Charlene's 13-year-old sister, Charmaine, who is
forbidden to live with her adopted parents Gwaze and his wife Sifiso
after Child Youth and Family removed her from their care during the
investigation.

Gwaze's daughter Maggie told the Sunday Star-Times the investigation
was botched. "We have never been people who play the race card but
there comes a point when you ask what the hell is going on. We believe
if we had been a different skin colour we would have been treated
differently.

"We still have people saying `he got away with it, this is a
technicality because police didn't do a good job'. People still think
Charlene was raped and murdered."

In a special Focus section investigation today, the Sunday Star-Times
examines the evidence that put the Zimbabwean vet in the dock and
speaks to the defence advisers who helped to win his acquittal.

They believe that once Christchurch doctors began to suspect a sexual
assault, they lost sight of other possible explanations.

Maggie, 27, said the family which had been upper middleclass at home
in Zimbabwe was actually worse off in New Zealand, living in a small
roughcast bungalow in the working-class Christchurch suburb of Papanui
after leaving their mansion-like home in Harare three years ago. "It
is torture," she said. "We feel so alone."

She said one policeman even asked her if it was a culture shock to
come to New Zealand to see cars and buildings.

Sifiso, who works nights as a rest-home caregiver, says she hasn't
been allowed to mourn the child she regarded as her baby daughter.

"It is bad enough to lose a child, but this ... "

Maggie said Sifiso was frightened of looking after old people now "in
case they die and she gets the blame".

Asked why the family did not get Charlene treated for HIV, Maggie said
children regularly died in Zimbabwe despite being aggressively
treated.

On a website taken down in March on the orders of the
solicitor-general, Maggie said "children die of the disease every day
in Zim and I've never heard of a big deal being made of it like they
did Charlene's death. Knowing Charlene's health status (her death)
wasn't difficult to accept".


What is the problem with the police in the South Island and especially
in Christchurch.
Another trial where the media has been misled in an attempt to
prejudice the outcome and colour public opinion before the trial.
Facts don't seem to matter, good investigation seems to be lacking and
trial by trickery and media sem to be the norm.
Bain, Ellis, Watson and now Makaza. Who knows whoever else that hasn't
come to light.
Its past time that the Law Society or the Attorney General or whoever
took a good hard look at them. - comment by correspondent

Charlene Makaza went into hospital as a victim of HIV. By the time she
died 18 hours later, doctors had decided she was a victim of murder.

Their testimony in the High Court at Christchurch over the past month
that the 10-year-old Zimbabwean girl had suffered atrocious genital
injuries and been suffocated in a sexual assault could have seen an
innocent man jailed for life.

Wednesday's acquittal of Charlene's uncle, vet George Gwaze, 56, on
murder and sex charges would have surprised many. But that is because
the public has been misinformed about Charlene's case since she died
on January 7 last year.

This is what police told the media in the days following the death:

* Charlene did not die by accident or natural causes.

* There was no evidence she was sick or ill.

* Charlene had been suffocated.

* Charlene was found in her bed having difficulty breathing.

* Her family washed her bedding and clothing after she was the victim
of a "horrific" sexual assault.

* Police had been briefed on African beliefs about sex, including the
myth that sex with a virgin could cure Aids.

By the time the Crown revealed at a depositions hearing in July that
George Gwaze's semen had been found on Charlene's underwear, the court
of public opinion had found a new hate figure.

But this is what really happened and this, in the first days after her
death, is what we were NOT told.

Charlene was indeed found in her bed at 6am having difficulty
breathing. But she was deeply unconscious and awash in her own
diarrhoea. It was like porridge, chalky, white and watery. There was
so much of it that it had plastered to her legs, the white skirt and
pink undies she had worn to bed and drenched her bedding. When her
aunt, Gwaze's wife Sifiso, changed her into new clothes before rushing
her to an emergency GP clinic, the faeces continued to pour out and
soaked those clothes as well. In the end Sifiso wrapped her in a
towel.

By the time Charlene got to a 24-hour accident and medical clinic, she
had a temperature topping 40C, a racing pulse over 180, and no
recordable blood pressure.

She had lost so much fluid from her blood because of the diarrhoea
that she was in what was known as hypovolemic shock. There wasn't
enough blood to pump to her brain, causing the oxygen deprivation that
was later attributed to suffocation.

Charlene was regularly unwell. She had 20 days off school the year before.

The evening before her collapse an elder at her church noticed she was
hot to the touch and was having difficulty with her breathing.

Charlene had contracted HIV at birth from her mother Senzeni who died
of HIV-related tuberculosis when Charlene was nearly two. Senzeni's
husband Edgar also died of Aids in 2000.

Charlene's "horrific" anal injuries amounted to a series of tiny
lateral tears and such fissures have been reported in HIV-Aids
patients.

Charlene's older sister Charmaine, 12, had chicken pox a virus that
could prove devastating to a child whose immunity was as compromised
as Charlene's.

The semen on Charlene's underwear always looked bad for George Gwaze.
When the defence raised the suggestion of innocent transfer through
the wash, it was easy to see how the first reaction could have been
"Yeah, right".

But defence counsel Jonathan Eaton's DNA adviser, Arie Geursen the
scientist whose work helped to free wrongly convicted David Dougherty
in 1996 was in no doubt, given the other facts of the case, that
innocent transfer was the most likely explanation.

The morning Charlene was found near death in her bed, Sifiso had
returned home from hospital after being told Charlene was likely to be
transferred to Auckland's Starship Children's Hospital. Sifiso rinsed
all Charlene's soiled sheets and clothes and threw them in the washing
machine. It was from here that police recovered the underwear on which
Gwaze's semen was found.

But that morning there was none of George or Sifiso's underwear, which
could have been the source of such contamination, in the same wash. So
how could semen be transferred? Sifiso's habit was to wash underwear
her own and Charlene's, in a hand basin together, or throw them in the
machine if there was a full wash.

For Geursen, the contamination theory came down to scientific facts,
and the lack of any other evidence of a sexual assault. Gwaze's DNA
was not found anywhere else on Charlene, nor Charlene's on him.

The average male produces around 130,000,000 sperm heads in each
ejaculation. A peer-reviewed international study has found that cotton
underwear retains 43% of the DNA after it's been through each wash.
"So you have to do quite a few washes to reduce DNA below the
detectability of the tests," he says. That means the contamination
could well have occurred in an earlier handwash.

The total DNA sample from Charlene's underpants was the size of about
one hundred thousandths of a single grain of sugar. Had Gwaze been
convicted, says Geursen, it would have been "a terrible travesty of
justice. It would have been science and medicine gone astray".

So how did things go so badly wrong for George Gwaze?

GP and forensic physician Felicity Goodyear-Smith, the medical adviser
for the defence, believes that once sexual abuse had been raised,
other possible explanations were never considered.

And because Charlene's care was handed over between shifts, those on
duty later lost sight of her first symptoms. "They were
well-intentioned but totally wrong. The fact that she was admitted
with sepsis and hypovolemic shock was lost in the retelling.

"Once you get a particular line of thought, like this is sexual abuse,
it colours thinking," she said. "And these were very senior people
saying it was abuse. If it IS sexual abuse that doesn't matter, but
suddenly the possibility that it might not be isn't on the table any
more so everything is focused on looking for evidence of it and this
is really what this case typifies."

Goodyear-Smith says at first, she too thought the odds were stacked
against Gwaze.

"It looked very damning, and very difficult. But when I went through
it bit by bit and produced a timeline it all fell into place and then
it became incredibly compelling that there was actually no crime. Even
though there may be strange coincidences, there are explanations for
all of it."

On her timeline, the turning point in medical opinion as to the cause
of Charlene's death came at around 1pm when a rectal probe was
inserted to take a more accurate temperature. Nurses alerted
consultants to what they thought was a "meaty open wound" in her anus,
or a rectal tear. A paediatric consultant put the size of the wound at
around 7cm while a nurse described it as "a wound you would never
forget".

Quickly, attention switched to a possible sexual assault and the
infection being caused by the anal injury. By the time Charlene took
her last breath 12 hours later, with Sifiso holding her hand and the
rest of her family looking on, police were stationed outside.

And when pathologist Martin Sage reported the results of his autopsy
the following day that Charlene had likely been suffocated and her
genital injuries were consistent with forcible penetration the
prosecution had its murder victim.

But when the jury delivered its not guilty verdicts on Wednesday
afternoon, the Gwaze case became a judicial rarity a murder trial
without a murder. There was a victim, but no crime.

There were no gaping genital wounds, either, says Goodyear-Smith. She
believes what the doctors and nurses were actually seeing was a
swollen and distended anal canal caused probably by a combination of
the severe diarrhoea, Charlene's HIV-Aids status, and the fact she was
being pumped with litres of fluids to increase her blood pressure.
"There was no 7cm laceration. There were lots of tiny fissures but
there wasn't a big tear. But that's what they thought they saw and
they went `gasp'."

Sage's autopsy report made no mention of a 7cm tear, referring only to
cracks in the anal tissue, the largest of which was 5mm. But he
thought these could not be explained by natural causes.

What the doctors were in fact looking at was a very rare HIV-related
death in an untreated child. Charlene, who arrived in Christchurch
with Sifiso and Charmaine in October 2005, had never had an HIV test.

Though tests in Zimbabwe showed her immunity was lowered and HIV was
suspected, she didn't have an Aids-defining condition that would have
triggered treatment. And because she came here on a student visa, she
didn't have an HIV test.

The family probably knew Charlene was infected, but chose to treat
problems as they occurred, pointing to Zimbabwean children dying with
Aids despite aggressive treatment.

Goodyear-Smith says she approached HIV experts and pathologists to
help but found it difficult to get experts willing to testify. "It is
very difficult because if you do come out for the defence against your
colleagues you may end up as a pariah."

Goodyear-Smith has tracked Charlene's 18 hours in hospital, almost by
the minute. Every test, every scan, every examination.

"Their attempts to save Charlene's life were heroic," she says. "They
did everything right. The only thing wrong was the diagnosis."

MEDICAL TIMELINE

JANUARY 6, 2007:

6am: Charlene found in bed, covered with diarrhoea, unconscious, no
recordable blood pressure.

6.45: Arrives at GP clinic. Meningitis or encephalitis suspected. IV
drip. Immediate transfer to Christchurch Hospital.

7.15-10am: Airway tubes and catheter inserted, antibiotics started, IV
lines introduce saline. Blood tests taken. Blood pressure rises to
130/60. X-rays and vaginal swab taken, nasogastric tube inserted.
Charlene has seizure; blood pressure drops to 65/20. Registrar records
diarrhoea. Meningococcal septicaemia or brain abscess suspected.
Charlene in deep coma, peripherally shut down. Starship hospital
consulted. X-rays show fluid on lungs. Vaginal discharge and redness.

10.30: Transfer to ICU. Results of first CT scan show encephalitis or
oxygen deprivation. Preliminary diagnosis viral or bacterial
infection.

12.30: George and Sifiso go home to pack bag and clean up. Do washing.

1pm: Nurses trying to insert rectal thermometer find what they believe
is large, open anal wound. Consultants called, digital photos taken.
Consultant surgeon called in. Doctor calls Sifiso at home, asked about
past medical history and what she found on bed and clothing.

2pm: Rectal exam with proctoscope shows no evidence of rectal
penetration. Doctors discuss whether Charlene was suffocated during
sexual assault. Starship team arrives but decision taken that Charlene
is dying and will not be transferred.

2.45: Tests taken in morning find HIV-positive. Social worker told to
notify CYF and police.

3pm-4.15: Sex abuse doctor called in. Hospital staff advise Gwazes of
anal injury.

6-8pm: Gwazes told Charlene is brain dead. Sex-abuse doctor calls
pathologist. Police liaise with pathologist.

8-9pm: Another rectal exam with proctoscope reveals anal canal
bruising, no evidence of perforation but pinprick haemorrhaging.
Haemorrhage on hymen.

10-11pm: Third proctoscopy; swabs taken. Two police officers in ICU.
Doctors show Sifiso injury to rectum. Family told Charlene is dying.

JANUARY 7

1.05am: Charlene certified dead.

10am-3.30: Autopsy carried out.

JANUARY 8

6-7pm: News and radio reports quote police saying pathologist has
reported Charlene was suffocated