AN EXPERT WHO “HAD NO REGARD TO THE PRACTICE DIRECTION” AND “WHO WAS PREPARED MATERIALLY TO MISLEAD THE COURT”

Expert psychological/psychiatric evidence was called on behalf of the parties: Dr Jacqueline Blyth (consultant psychologist) on behalf of the Claimants and Professor Andrew Maden (consultant psychiatrist) on behalf of the Defendant.

Dr Blyth produced four reports: a report dated 29 April 2022 in respect of the First, Second, Third and Fourth Claimants; a further report dated 13 July 2022; a third report dated 1 March 2024 and a fourth report dated 3 March 2024. In addition, she participated in an agreed joint report with Professor Maden, dated 26 April 2024. Regrettably, the reports and evidence of Dr Blyth fell well below the standard to be expected of a competent expert witness, both as to form and as to substance.

When first called to give evidence, Dr Blyth identified her reports in the trial bundles and her signatures on each of the reports and, in each case, she confirmed that the contents were true to the best of her knowledge and belief. When initially cross-examined by Ms Crowther KC on behalf of the Defendant, Dr Blyth confirmed not only that she had previously provided reports in civil cases pursuant to CPR Part 35 but that she was familiar with Part 35, with the Practice Direction to Part 35 and with the “Guidance for Experts in Civil Claims” issued in 2014 and also appended to Part 35. Ms Crowther reminded Dr Blyth of paragraph 3.2 of the Practice Direction to Part 35 that requires all expert reports to contain a specific statement in which the expert indicates that they are aware of their duties under Part 35 and have complied with them. She was then asked:

“So why do none of your reports contain that statement?”

Her answer was:

“I’m not sure. I normally put that in.”

The sad fact is that Dr Blyth’s reports were not compliant with Part 35 and the Practice Direction in that regard. They only included a Statement of Truth.

Part 35.10 CPR was also pointed out. This provides:

“At the end of an expert’s report there must be a statement that the expert understands and has complied with their duty to the court.”

Dr Blyth also accepted that she had not included any such statement at the end of any of her reports. When I asked Dr Blyth why her reports did not include such a statement she replied:

“It is an error. I left it out. I made an error.”

She was then taken to the Practice Direction, 35PD.3 which provides at paragraph 9:

“A report must contain a statement that the expert understands their duty to the court and has complied with that duty and is aware of the requirements of Part 35, this practice direction and the guidance for the instruction of experts in civil claims 2014.”

Asked whether either of those statements, which are obligatory in expert reports, were contained in any of her reports, she accepted that they were not. She had no explanation simply stating:

“It’s just an error.”

Next, Ms Crowther took Dr Blyth to paragraph 55 of the Guidance which refers to a mandatory statement in an expert report of the substance of all material and instructions providing:

“It should not be incomplete or otherwise tend to mislead, the imperative is transparency. The term “instructions” includes all materials that solicitors send to experts, these should be listed with dates in the report or an appendix.”

Ms Crowther pointed out that there was no list of documents in Dr Blyth’s report of April 2022, nor was there an appendix. Asked why she had not complied with that obligation, she responded:

“I don’t know. I normally do that as well.”

She stated that she was aware of the obligation, that she normally lists the documents, that she normally has an appendix with the documents but she was unaware why the report did not include such a list. Ms Crowther then referred Dr Blyth to paragraph 62 of the Guidance which provides that “A summary of conclusions is mandatory”: again, there was no such summary.

Unfortunately, when it came to the substance of the report, matters got worse for Dr Blyth. She accepted that there were factual issues and she was aware that there was a dispute as to whether the Defendant could have sexually abused the Claimants in the room at the back of the Temple when, on the Defendant’s case, the room was visible from the Temple and there was no privacy. In relation to that, Dr Blyth said in her report:

“All four Claimants described how a member of RK’s staff would stand guard outside the room at the back of the Temple when he was abusing them. Although RK says that no such room exists, it is of course not difficult to imagine that as soon as he had been arrested RK arranged for the room to be disassembled, just as it appears that there is no longer any YouTube evidence of his talks in the Temple in the UK or in India.”

Dr Blyth conceded that this passage was not based on any clinical evaluation or on any evidence but was purely something that she had supposed. I asked the question:

“Why did you put that into your report? Because on one view it could be thought that you were arguing the case for the Claimants by saying that.”

Dr Blyth answered:

“That’s true My Lord. I think after … I shouldn’t have put that in. I think after hearing what these women had said and maybe it had been suggested to me that that’s what had happened, I put that in. I should not have put that in, My Lord.”

Thus, Dr Blyth was accepting that, in relation to that passage at least, she had been partisan and lost sight of her role as an expert and her duty to the court. She agreed that had she been instructed by Mr Kalia, the Defendant, in this matter, she would not have included that passage in her report.

Dr Blyth was then taken to paragraph 13 of the Guidance which provides:

“Experts should take into account all material facts before them. The report should set out those facts and any literature or material on which they have relied informing their opinions. They should indicate if an opinion is provisional or qualified or whether they consider further information is required or any other reason they are not satisfied that opinion can be expressed finally without qualification.”

Dr Blyth confirmed that she believed she had cited all the literature that she relied on in support of her report. However she was then taken to a passage in her first report where she stated:

“I spent over 16 hours with these clients. This was preceded and followed by in-depth research into the subject of mind control, psychological trauma and helplessness, rape trauma syndrome, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, scepticism concerning the voracity of women’s claims of sexual abuse and the tendency to categorise them as unreliable witnesses and the current discourse of belief that pertains in society today, especially in terms of the possibility of abuse occurring in religious organisations.”

She was asked whether her research included looking at an article by Dr Amanda Lucia of the Department of Religious Studies, University of California-Riverside to which she replied:

“I don’t recall.”

It was pointed out that this article was not included in her literature list and she replied:

“Well it would only be included in my literature list if I had referred to it in my report.”

She confirmed that it is not referred to in her report and that is why it is not in the list. Dr Blyth was then taken to the passage of her report where she said this:

“5.2.3

According to the literature, the consolidated religious power of the guru can be relatively easily transferred into political, juridical or commerce power. For example, there is several examples of gurus demonstrating a significant impact on the contemporary social sphere, such as Baba, Ram, Dev, a guru and capitalist mogul of Ayurvedic products and Yogi Adityanath, the Peethadhishwar of the Gorakhnath Math and the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. The guru’s ability to produce domaining effect through charismatic leadership in multiple fields is inextricably connected to the public’s belief in his (or her) innate spiritual power.

Devotees who elevate the guru do so because they believe that the guru is energetically powerful and is a conduit for divine power. There is also a sense that the guru transmits energy that can reach out to other living things and that attracts people to him or her to a special kind of relation or magnetism.

To gain access to the guru (and his or her wisdom, knowledge, insight and power), devotees manoeuvre to be close to him. One consensus among devotees in guru communities is that it is good, that it is to say spiritually beneficial, a blessing, and even a mark of divine favour to be invited to be close to the guru.

This is expressed through social and institutional structures; the personal behaviours, habits and desires of devotees and the communally sanctified social pressures to conform to this communally shared conviction. The acceptance of these behaviours depend on the idea that the guru’s presence and in particular the guru’s touch is powerful and even magical or miraculous.

The guru is believed to have the power to insight spiritual evolution, whether through the slow process of sculpting (achieved through continual exposure) or an instantaneous transformation (achieved through immediate physical contact). In general, private audiences, special attention and increased proximity to the guru are viewed within the community to mark the devotee who is granted such opportunities as special.”

As Ms Crowther pointed out to Dr Blyth, all these paragraphs of her report are plagiarised from the article by Dr Lucia, lifted straight out of that article and passed off in Dr Blyth’s report as if they represent her opinion to the court. This is done without any acknowledgement of the source of these passages and without Dr Lucia’s article being referred to in the list of materials relied on. When Ms Crowther asked:

“Did that research include going online to look at an article written by Dr Amanda Lucia?”

Dr Blyth replied:

“I don’t recall.”

In my judgment, this answer must have been untruthful, given the way in which extensive passages had simply been copied by Dr Blyth from Dr Lucia’s article and passed off by Dr Blyth in her report as her own. Questioned about this by Ms Crowther, and in particular why she was presenting Dr Lucia’s work as if it were her own, she said:

“I have done that but I am presenting them as if they were my own because I am of the same opinion as her.”

However she accepted that she had not changed the words although, in places, she had added her own words to make it look as if the section represented her own opinion when in fact the majority of the section was simply lifted from the article of Dr Lucia. It is difficult to imagine a more blatant breach not just of the provisions of Part 35, the Practice Direction and the Guidance but, more fundamentally, an expert’s obligation to the court because these passages were, in effect, a deception practised on the court by Dr Blyth in pretending that these passages were her own words, representing her own opinions, rather than the repetition – regurgitation if you like – of the views and opinions of Dr Lucia. Indeed, at one point, Ms Crowther demonstrated that Dr Blyth could not even pretend that she was quoting Dr Lucia’s words because they represented her own views. Thus, at paragraph 5.2.11, Dr Blyth wrote:

“Deliberate rejections of proximity are unthinkable within such communities, for example: leaving a position near the guru for one more distant without reason; discarding any of the guru’s possessions received as gifts; or rejecting the guru’s prasad.” (Emphasis added)

Ms Crowther asked Dr Blyth:

“What is prasad, Dr Blyth?”

There was a long pause and then she replied:

“I don’t recall what that means. I was told lots of things during these interviews which I wrote down.”

This was a further attempt to deceive the court. Those words were copied straight out of Dr Lucia’s article, they were not something that Dr Blyth was told by the Claimants which she wrote down. When I asked the question:

“Is it your evidence that where you wrote ‘rejecting the guru’s prasad’ that was based upon what you were told by one of the Claimants?”

Dr Blyth replied:

“I can’t recall, My Lord.”

In my judgment, Dr Blyth knew perfectly well that she wrote those words because she lifted them from Dr Lucia’s article, not because they were spoken to her by any of the Claimants.

In her joint statement with Professor Maden, the following was recorded:

“In the course of our discussions it emerged that in this and the three related cases Dr Blyth took a full life history from each of the Claimants. She did not include it in her reports and has not commented on any inconsistencies between the life history and other sources of information.”

In answer to questions from Ms Crowther, Dr Blyth accepted that she had taken a full history from each of the four Claimants upon whom she was reporting but had not included it or any part of it because “I didn’t think that was of any relevance whatsoever”. However, when discussing the case of the Third Claimant, Dr Blyth referred to responses she had received from an “SCL-R-90” questionnaire supporting somatoform symptoms, obsessive rumination, anxiety, hostility, hyper-vigilance plus paranoia and psychosis and then said:

“In the course of our discussions, it emerged that Dr Blyth also took a full life history from all four Claimants, and she did not include it in her reports but believes it supports her findings using the SCL-R-90.” (Emphasis added)

Clearly if part of the life history which Dr Blyth took supported her findings using the SCL-R-90 questionnaire, she could not have considered, as she said in her evidence, that she didn’t think the life history was of any relevance whatsoever.

Further, in cross-examination, Ms Crowther referred to part of Dr Blyth’s report where she referred to a condition which she called “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (also known as Spiritual Abuse) which is not included in DSM5, ICD 11 or any other classification of diseases. Ms Crowther asked whether Dr Blyth was giving the opinion that the Claimants were suffering from Religious Trauma Syndrome to which she replied:

“No it’s just me stating that’s what some Professionals believe. I went on to talk about Complex Trauma.”

However, I then pointed out to Dr Blyth that, at paragraph 5.1.55 of her report, she had said:

“The damage that [Religious Trauma Syndrome] or spiritual abuse has caused these Claimants has been vast and even debilitating.”

She then acknowledged that her previous reply to Ms Crowther’s question had been wrong and she was saying that the Claimants had been damaged by Religious Trauma Syndrome or spiritual abuse. When asked why she had previously denied that she said:

“Sorry, I can’t remember this report.”

I asked whether she had read the report before she came to give evidence to which she replied:

“I’m sorry I’ve had problems with my computer this last week and problems with my printer.”

I asked:

“So the answer is no?”

She answered:

“No.”

I then asked:

“So you have come to court and attested to the truth of these reports which you rely on without having reminded yourself of their contents?”

To which she replied:

“That’s correct”.

She acknowledged that this was not acceptable as an expert.

Then, in answer to questions from Ms Crowther KC, Dr Blyth accepted that the origin of “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (“RTS”) was an article by a Dr Marlene Winell headed “Religious Trauma Syndrome: It’s time to recognise it”. Although, on this occasion, Dr Blyth did reference the article, she referenced a 2014 article when it seems clear that the article was in fact dated May 2011 but I accept that Dr Blyth may simply have stated the date, 2014, in error. Again, there was extensive quotation from Dr Winell’s article. She had identified key dysfunctions in RTS as being cognitive, affective, functional and social/cultural and Dr Blyth said in her report that in the case of each of these four Claimants, religious trauma had affected all levels of being including cognitive impairment, affective/emotional impairment, functional impairment and social/cultural impairment. What Dr Blyth did not acknowledge in her report was that Dr Winell has a business running weekend retreats and an ongoing recovery group online called “Release and Reclaim” for people recovering from RTS, therefore having a vested interest in identifying RTS as a bona fide symptom (even though not recognised in any of the standard classifications) and capable of treatment. She agreed she is not aware of any other academic writer who recognises RTS.

In her article, Dr Winell stated that the symptoms of Religious Trauma Syndrome:

“compares most easily with PTSD, which results from experiencing or being confronted with death or serious injury and causing feelings of terror, helplessness or horror. This can be a single event or chronic abuse of some kind. …

Like PTSD, the impact is long-lasting, with intrusive thoughts, negative emotional states, impaired social functioning and other problems.”

However, in her report, Dr Blyth stated that RTS had been compared to Complex PTSD which is, of course, different to PTSD. Again, that was untrue: RTS had been compared by Dr Winell to PTSD but not to Complex PTSD.

Unfortunately, there were other instances of inaccuracy or at worst, misleading passages in Dr Blyth’s report. For example, she had said, in relation to the First Claimant,

“Mr Kalia would complain if she gained weight. Ms Samrai told me she would often starve herself which led to serious medical problems. There is evidence of this in her medical records as she was repeatedly referred to dieticians by her GP for sudden and severe weight loss.”

In fact, there is no evidence in Ms Samrai’s medical records that she was repeatedly referred to dieticians by her GP for sudden and severe weight loss. Dr Blyth asserted that she had reviewed Ms Samrai’s medical records and that it was in the medical records but when asked to look through those records and point out where there was repeated referral to dieticians by the GP for sudden and severe weight loss, she accepted that it was not there. I consider that this statement in Dr Blyth’s report was a pseudo-endorsement of Ms Samrai’s account by reference to medical records which did not exist.

In consequence of the above, in my judgement no reliance whatever can be placed on the reports and opinions of Dr Blyth. She demonstrated herself to be an expert who had little or no regard to the provisions of Part 35, the Practice Direction and the Guidance in preparing her reports and who was prepared materially to mislead the court by passing off the views of another person as her own by lifting large passages from that person’s article and setting them out in her report as if they represented her own views without acknowledgement or reference to the originating source. In the circumstances, I consider that I have no choice but to reject Dr Blyth’s evidence in its entirety.

By contrast, I considered Professor Maden to be a careful, considered and truthful witness and in every respect I prefer his views to those of Dr Blyth where they differ and accept his opinions as expressed in his reports and evidence without hesitation. He produced reports on each of the first four Claimants as well as contributing to the joint reports with Dr Blyth.