pointing out that the children being subjected to a high level of suggestive questions (for example, 46 abuse-related questions in the case of Child 1) before making their first allegations against Ellis. Ellis' counsel Sue Gray claimed the evidence of psychiatrist Karen Zelas about clusters of behaviour that she claimed were consistent with child sexual abuse were scientifically unsound, and she also spoke to the sexual knowledge of the complainants, which was not permitted. In the final submissions from the Crown on 13 October 2021, Crown counsel John Billington claimed the jury verdicts were safe. Although the Crown conceded the interviewing of the children would be done differently today, they claimed the interviews were best practice of the time and demonstrated most of the elements of good evidential interviewing. The way evidence was obtained from the children was not "so egregious, so ill-informed that it starts to get into the category of blood tests versus DNA". Hayne's data showing the number of suggestive questions children were asked before their formal interviews were "a nonsense". He said the parents were not the hysterical types contended by the defence and the sometimes bizarre accounts of the children could have been due to the natural tendency of children to exaggerate. A Crown expert had said fantastical claims could be "part and parcel" of being an abused child. Billington further claimed the jury was able to discriminate between contamination and lack of it in the children's accounts, and their verdicts reflected this. On 14 October 2021, the judges discussed a letter with counsel regarding the letter written by Crown expert Karen Zelas in August 1992 to the police, which was not available at the trial. Zelas' letter raised serious concerns about the potential contamination of accounts given by a child in his evidential interviews because of intense questioning from his parents and siblings, leading to cancellation of a scheduled interview with the child. But Zelas did not mention this when she gave evidence regarding the veracity of the child's accounts. The defence said the omission of this piece of evidence about the letter misled the jury and helped to render its verdicts unsafe. The judges called the letter a real "gotcha" and "cross-examination gold". Crown counsel John Billington argued that Zelas had given admissible evidence and if she had been cross-examined on the letter, she might have endorsed the interviews that took place prior