Thorp considered they raised serious concerns that should be investigated further. He wrote that the interview transcripts revealed that on more than one occasion, one child claimed to have seen serious abuse committed against another child, but the second child denied anything happened. Thorp said there was no evidence that the interviewers or the police or did any cross checking before presenting abuse allegations to the jury. He was also concerned that the more bizarre allegations made by children were not put before the jury, arguing that "the jury had to see that the children were capable of outrageous and fanciful allegation". Thorp stated that the central concerns were "the claims of defective interviewing techniques ... the risk of contamination of the children's evidence... (and) the exclusion of evidence necessary to a proper assessment of the children's reliability". He added that if the opinions of Barry Parsonson, Stephen Ceci and Justice Wood were found to have substantial support, it would "be difficult to argue against the existence of a serious doubt about the safety of the Petitioner's convictions." Eichelbaum inquiry in 2000 In March 2000, Phil Goff, then Minister of Justice, established a ministerial inquiry into the conduct of the interviews, headed by Sir Thomas Eichelbaum. This was undertaken in response to Justice Thorp's report and ongoing concerns over the reliability of the children's evidence. In a later submission, Ministry officials stated that the Ministerial Inquiry was "intended to address specific areas of concern that might not have been seen to have been fully resolved by the Court of Appeal." The terms of reference required Eichelbaum to examine the relevant documents and seek written submissions from those who were involved in the case but not to interview anyone. He was also required to appoint two international experts to provide written reviews of the interviewing techniques that had been used to seek information from the children. He appointed Graham Davies of the University of Leicester and Louise Sas, from London, Ontario, Canada. In his evaluation, Graham Davies wrote he would not "pronounce on the reliability of individual children's accounts." Michael Corballis, psychologist at Auckland University, subsequently questioned the credentials of both these experts asking of Sas, "Can she really be considered an expert?" Released in March 2001, Eichelbaum's inquiry concluded that the interviews were of good quality overall, and that though excessive questioning by some parents could have led to some