User Reviews

Bearing Witness is a controversial episode because it deals with the blood anti-transfusion beliefs of a religious body that will certainly cause a lot of controversy amongst members of that religious body.

I'm enjoying catching up on Kavanagh QC as I first watched it when it debuted in the late 90s and it's good to catch up with the remaining episodes a quarter-of-a-century later believe it or not. This episode, Bearing Witness, refers to Kavanagh's private prosecution in the episode The Ties That Bind.

Anyway, the cross-examination at the end of Kavanagh was a bit like a soapbox speech that didn't seem to gel well.

Two cases that would had been taken straight from the news headlines of the era. One character is very much inspired by protestor Swampy.

Barristers clerk Tom asks Kavanagh to represent a former girlfriend Susannah Emmott who is now a devout Jehovah's Witness.

Her teenage son is ill, needs a blood transfusion and the hospital has applied for the son to being made a ward of court.

Kavanagh argues that the mother's religious beliefs should trump the urgent medical needs of the child. It is not a point that Kavanagh is comfortable about making.

The case takes a turn when a newspaper funds a private prosecution against the mother for manslaughter.

Meanwhile Jeremy Aldermarten QC is representing an environmental activist against a proposed bypass. When Jeremy is detained by a security guard for trespassing. The case becomes personal as he tries to embarrass the security guard at court.

It was all very facile. I felt the blood transfusion story went off the rails a when Kavanagh was called to the witness box in the manslaughter trial. You think it is the first time he has ever been to court. Also if the father of the child cared so much, he would have shown up earlier.

It was hard to fathom why the environmentalist had cause to complain against Jeremy. He was a plonker who even absconded from court.

Sorry, QC Kavanagh, but you (and the scriptwriters) really flubbed this one. Whoever wrote this episode certainly doesn't understand how the psyche works.

A mother's twisted point of view rooted in a fanatical, extremist, anti-life ideology born of human intellectual error, but wrongly attributed to God, leads to the death of her 13 year old son as he is so completely psychologically bonded with her that he has no mind of his own and refuses a blood transfusion to save his life in order to validate that twisted religious dogma. The writers thus end up making Kavanagh a zealous advocate for those with a death wish. I was appalled by the script's misguided message.

The father of the boy was the only one who spoke the truth: the mother (his ex-wife) and her religious cult twisted the young boy's mind. However, the scriptwriters clearly want the viewer to view the father, instead of the mother and Kavanah (her advocate), as a nut case. The import of this story is justification of unconscious suicide on the part of a 13 year old boy due to a psychological bonding issue with his mother and her twisted, anti-life fanaticism AND gives this mother a pass for, in effect, causing the death of her son (even if it is unconsciously done). Not guilty? WRONG. Guilty of psychological unconsciousness. Appalling.