Ms Patterson rejects claim factory resets were done to hide incriminating evidence
By Joseph Dunstan
The questioning then turns to Phone B, the phone which Ms Patterson handed over to police during the August 5 search, a week after the lunch.
"I suggest you did that because you knew there was no data on this phone," Dr Rogers says.
"No, I did it because they asked for my phone and I gave it to them," Ms Patterson says.
Dr Rogers takes Ms Patterson to records of three factory resets made on Phone B.
Ms Patterson has previously given the following reasons to the court for the three factory resets she is being asked about:
August 2, 2023: "To get [my son's] information off it, so I could set it up for me … he'd used it up until early May, when he'd taken it on school camp … he slipped and fell in some mud while they were bushwalking and the phone had got pretty coated in mud and, you know, the charging port and what-not were a bit muddy." Erin says she'd tried a few methods to clean it over time, but it stayed there drying out during that time. She says she figured out it was capable of being used on August 2. "So I put it on charge and at some point factory reset it."
August 5, 2023: Erin says this factory reset occurred because "I had put all my apps on it, including my Google account, which included my Google photos, and I knew that there were photos in there of mushrooms and the dehydrator and I just panicked and didn't want them [the detectives searching the house] to see them."
August 6, 2023: Erin says she carried out this factory reset because "at some point, after the search of my house and the interview and the detectives had brought me home, I remember thinking 'I wonder if I can log into my Google account and see where all my devices are. So I did that, and I could see my phone, and [my children's devices], and it was really stupid, but I thought, 'I wonder if they've been silly enough to leave it connected to the internet', so I hit factory reset to see what happened and it did."
But Dr Rogers suggests to Ms Patterson she carried out those resets for another reason.
"I suggest that you did three factory resets of this phone, Phone B ... to conceal the true contents of Phone B ... so you could then pass off Phone B as your usual mobile phone, without police realising," Dr Rogers says.
Ms Patterson agrees she carried out the three resets, but disagrees that she did for the reasons Dr Rogers asserts.
Dr Rogers goes on to assert that it was "all about hiding the contents of your usual mobile phone, Phone A", which she asserts Ms Patterson had "deliberately concealed" because she knew the data on that device would "incriminate" her.
Ms Patterson rejects the assertion.

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