The Christchurch Civic Creche Case
	News Reports Index
	1994 Index
	The Press August 8 1994 Child retracts allegations against Ellis Sex claims false, court told A child on whose evidence a Christchurch jury found creche worker Peter Ellis guilty on three charges has retracted her allegations, the Court of Appeal was told yesterday. Ellis's lawyer, Graham Panckhurst, QC, told Appeal Court judges Sir Robin Cooke, Sir Maurice Casey, and Justice Gault that the complainant, now aged 11, had told her mother last week the allegations she made against Ellis were false. The girl had been interviewed twice since recanting and had remained adamant about her withdrawal. The matter had obviously bothered her for some time and she had told the interviewer she had been waiting for the right time to tell her parents, he said. The fallout of complainants from the case should now be seen to be alarming. Of 118 children interviewed in the case, only six remained in support of the allegations, he said. The court was sitting for the final day of .an appeal by Ellis against his conviction on 16 charges that he sexually abused children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre between 1986 and 1991. Three convictions were based on allegations made by the girl and related to indecent touching and forced contact with his penis. The court reserved its decision, which is not expected for several months. Mr Panckhurst said Ellis was not appealing against his jail sentence of 10 years. As a creche worker, he had wanted no argument suggesting offending of the type alleged did not warrant a sentence of that scale. Counsel said the retraction had been spontaneous and subject to a degree of probing and testing that was absent from the Social Welfare Department interviews with the creche children. Despite the considerable support she had received after making the allegations, the girl was still prepared to take a stand fully aware of the consequences. "Her courage in coming forward in all the circumstances is poignant and compelling," Mr Panckhurst said. "Her action cannot be lightly discounted." The child had played an important role in the trial because she was the oldest complainant and Ellis was shown to have had more opportunity to offend against her than other children. Crown counsel had described her as compelling and believable and she was the first child to give evidence. Brent Stanaway, for the Crown, said the girl's retraction lacked credibility and reliability. The lawyer who had interviewed her twice over the past week had neither accepted nor rejected the retraction. It was made after an upsetting telephone call from a school friend and she had heard her mother refer to her as a liar. She was worried children at school" did not like her and had been unable to give an explanation why she had lied or why she had recanted. She hardly recalled the disclosure interviews, Mr Stanaway said. Pressures from anxiety and divided loyalties could lead a genuine victim to retract allegations. If the court quashed the convictions he would not seek a retrial, he said. Robert Harrison, also for Ellis, said the retraction supported his contention that Social Welfare interviewers had exerted unfair pressures on the children. All the children's allegations had occurred after parental questioning which ranged from being blatantly leading and to less extreme probing. Yet the interviewers had never tested the possibility that ideas had been put into children's heads by their parents when the issue was raised by the children themselves. It was clear that interviews had been conducted with a view to getting children to repeat what they had told their parents.. The child who recently retracted her story had told her mother it started as a "wee story" and that she had given her interviewer the answers she thought her mother wanted. Anatomically correct dolls had been used by the interviewers to provide the details children were unable to provide before disclosure interviews, he said. Chris Lange, for the Crown, said it was easy to pick holes in the interviews in a courtroom. Leading questions were sometimes needed to draw out reticent children and interviewers had returned to a neutral stance once that occurred. The dolls were useful tools in helping children to visualise what had happened, Mr Lange said. In a general reply to Crown submissions, Mr Panckhurst said the Crown had urged the jury to look at the central' details of the allegations to judge their reliability. When those details were examined it was clear the allegations were unlikely, incredible and impossible.