Polygraph test reportedly clears co-author of Lost Boys of Bird Island

The sole surviving co-author of the controversial book The Lost Boys of Bird Island says she has taken a lie detector test to prove her belief that the contents of the book are true.

The book, which was released in August 2018, gave details of an alleged paedophilia ring that operated during the apartheid era and named high-profile National Party ministers including John Wiley, Magnus Malan, an unnamed minister and controversial Port Elizabeth businessman Dave Allen.

The operation reportedly involved the rape and molesting of young coloured boys at Bird Island off the coast of Port Elizabeth in the 1980s.

In a press statement, Chris Steyn said she was given the polygraph test by the president of the American Polygraph Association Raymond Nelson, who is an esteemed polygraph forensic pathologist.

“It is the expert opinion of Mr Nelson that I was truthful when answering questions about whether I falsified any of the allegations or information sources in the book,” Steyn said in a press statement.

Steyn said the among the questions she was asked was whether she had fabricated any of the reported information sources, falsified any of the allegations of people written about in the book, or written on aspects on which she did not have an actual human source.

To all these questions she said she had answered ‘no’ with the report saying that there were “no significant reactions [which are] indicative of deception".

Steyn had penned the book alongside apartheid-era police officer Mark Minnie, who died in an apparent suicide just days after the book was released in August 2018.

In conclusion, Nelson’s report read: “Based on consideration of these analyses of the observed test data, it is the expert opinion of this writer that Ms Steyn was truthful when answering NO to the above referenced questions about whether she falsified any of the allegations or information sources in her 2018 book Lost Boys of Bird Island."