Melanie Reid launches scorching new investigation

Hot on the heels of her award-winning podcast The Boy in the Water comes Melanie Reid’s latest investigation.
Fractured has launched on Newsroom’s new podcast channel, DELVE, the home of investigative podcasts.
For more than a year Newsroom’s investigations editor and her team have been conducting an extensive inquiry into a complex case involving a potential miscarriage of justice, multiple government departments and a medical diagnosis that could have ramifications globally. 
In the course of this new extensive investigation, Reid and her team secured the high-resolution 3D CT scans, x-rays, birth records and fetal heart-monitoring tracings of the child at the centre of this case.
Next they went on a worldwide search for top-end medical specialists. 
“This was a lengthy and extensive search that took months. International medical experts cost tens of thousands of dollars so there were a lot of hurdles for us to overcome. But we wanted the top people in their fields with no agendas, who were not subject to circular reasoning or institutional bias,” says Reid.
The Fractured investigation approached experts in genetics, neurosurgery, obstetrics, neuropathology and radiology from Canada, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United States.
“We of course did not know when we got the medical files reviewed if they would come back for or against the mother at the centre of this case,” says Bonnie Sumner, who works alongside Reid.
Fractured will be asking whether this case is just the tip of the iceberg of a medical phenomenon which has unwittingly led to injustice around the globe, and one that has potentially landed this family in the midst of a New Zealand horror story. 
Reid says the actions of the authorities in this case have been astonishing and at times infuriating.
“I’ve covered many stories over the years, but the indifference, delays and in some cases stupidity of the government agencies is on a whole different level. I’ve come to call it the rolling files – the files roll from one institution to the next, and the family ends up buried deep beneath a government avalanche of impossibility.”
The line-up includes our child welfare agency, Oranga Tamariki, Immigration New Zealand, Corrections, Immigration, the courts along with Starship’s Children’s Hospital unit Te Puaruruhau.
Fractured launches today as part of DELVE, the home of Newsroom’s in-depth podcasts, including all three seasons of The Boy in the Water.
The Boy in the Water won best podcast and best investigation at this year’s Voyager Media Awards and has garnered more than three million downloads since season one was published last year.
Listeners can subscribe to the premium service, DELVE+, to get early and ad free access to each episode as it is released, with episodes released to non-subscribers a week later.
The first two episodes of Fractured have been released to everyone today.
If you would like to support our work, you can sign up to our new podcast channel DELVE+ through Apple Podcasts here and for Android and Spotify listeners here.