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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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Russ Francis: ………Christchurch
Creche children were conducted? Prof. Ceci: In
my opinion having read the material that was sent, those interviews were what
I would call typical of interviews done five, six, seven years ago. they're
not .. interviews that scientists would have designed to maximise accuracy
and to minimise inaccuracy, nor are they the worst interviews I've ever seen
but rather interviews that were traditional to the late eighties early
nineties. Russ Francis: But
I gather from that you do have some concerns about the way they were
conducted? Prof. Ceci: Yes
they were not conducted in accordance with the currently understood
scientific principles. Russ Francis: But
what in particular did they not do correctly? Prof. Ceci: Well
there were many things that the interviewers didn't do, perhaps I can step
back though and say that as a researcher reading these trial transcripts and
interview protocol one is struck with the possibility that problems may have
existed in these interviews that pre-dated or preceded the interviews themselves.
There
apparently was quite a lot of conversation among the parents of the children
in the creche, the parents with their own children over long periods of time
before the very first electronically preserved interview took place and as a
researcher we understand just how that kind of conversation and communication
with the children concede reliability problems that later show up in the
official interviews. Ah I'd
say that because no matter how good an interviewer is, if you have that kind
of previous activity it may present insurmountable problems. But to get to
your question there were a number of strategies and techniques that were not
used by these interviewers and I'll just give you a few examples. One of
the most important tactics that an interviewer ought to use when you're
interviewing pre-school-age children, and in particular three and four year
old children which were the subject of this particular trial, is what we call
proof by disproof... Proof by
disproof is just a fancy way of saying that while you're going about
interviewing children and trying to get them to confirm your hunch about what
happened you must also in the course of the very same interview try to
falsify your hunch. This can
be done by a sensitive interviewer without conveying scepticism to the
child's story. If the interviewer thinks that Peter touched the child's
bottom, fine you can try to elicit confirmatory statements from the child in
that regard but at the very same time one ought to also ask the child well
what about the police officer - Did he touch your bottom? What about your
mum, What about your dad? and so on.... It's
necessary to see what kind of reliability problems the child presents in the
course of the interview and that wasn't done at all in any of the interviews
unfortunately, but that was rather characteristic for its time. Russ Francis: But
it does call into question the conclusions which ??? from the interviews? Prof. Ceci: Ah
I'm afraid so, I mean as researchers we can design studies that mimic many of
the very conditions that were used by these interviewers and we can show that
you... it is possible to bring children to give incorrect statements when you
use some of these techniques. Russ Francis: Some
of the critics of this case have charged that the people doing the
interviewing approached the children from the viewpoint that the children had
been abused. From your reading of the transcripts is there evidence to
support that? Prof. Ceci: Well
there certainly wasn't any effort to falsify the hunches throughout the
interviews. Often there was repetition of questions. It was almost as though
the interviewers were surprised that the child said that's all that Mr Ellis
did to them and therefore they would repeat the same question over and over
again. There
wasn't an effort to try to talk the child out of it by saying things such as
ah... "Children have said some very silly things to us, so it's very
very important that you tell us only what exactly happened". There
wasn't this effort to rein the children back into reality when they roamed
into these fabulous claims ... which sometimes they did. They were conveniently ignored by the
interviewers. Whether
or not the interviewers' minds were made up prior to the interviews I can't
say but what I can say as an outsider reading them that there was no serious
attempt to test an alternative hypothesis to the State's claim that Mr Peter
Ellis molested these children. Russ Francis: Professor
Ceci you just referred to repeating questions, could you give an example of
that and what sort of effect that can have? Prof. Ceci: Certainly.
We know from scientific studies that the one age group more than any other
that you have to be extremely careful about repeating questions within and
across interviews is three and four year old children. If you
say to them "tell me how Russ touched your bum?" and the child says
"he didn't" and then five minutes later you say "now I'm going
to ask you again, tell me how Russ touched your bum?" …... Children of
that age are more likely than older children and more likely than adults to
interpret the repetition to mean that the first answer they gave was
incorrect, so they're more likely to change their answer. You get
that regardless of the ground truth of the manner so its a worry and
interviewers really have to be quite careful when they do that. One finds
an awful lot of question repetition in these interviews...again that...
that's quite characteristic for its time, its not a hallmark of an awful
interview ah.... a vigilante interview. I don't think these interviewers were
vigilantes. Certainly their statements in the press struck me as the
statements of very reasonable professionals. It's just that what we know in
the most scientifically adequate way dictates against using these techniques. Russ Francis: Would
you say.... call what... the way the questions were phrased a way of coercing
the children into making statements? Prof. Ceci: Well
I wouldn't say coercing in a sen... you know I didn't see videotapes of the
interviews and perhaps I would feel differently had I seen that but ah... my
analysis ??? wholly on a written transcription so therefore the demeanour,
the affect, the gesturing, all that is omitted from the material I was sent,
but just looking at the sanitised written transcription they didn't seem
terribly coercive. They also didn't seem ah... how shall I put it... very
interested in alternative scenarios? Russ Francis: Based
on your reading of the transcripts what do you think the chances are that
Ellis did abuse the children for something like five years without any...
anyone even noticing, without a complaint? Prof. Ceci: You
know these claims and I have... I've seen
hundreds of claims that are very similar to this one, ah... often have an
amalgam or a blending of credible and highly incredible claims and sorting
the wheat from the chaff becomes extremely difficult. Some of the things the
children said I would be exceedingly sceptical that they ever occurred and
I think, in fact, the prosecution was exceedingly sceptical because they
chose in many cases not to pursue some of the children's more bizarre claims.
It, in my experience, is exceedingly unlikely that you
can coerce a group of children this age into silence for prolonged periods of
time when the following were allegedly involved... anal insertion; forcing
children to walk over precarious ladders perched high above buildings;
defecating and urinating on children in bathtubs, in beds and the like. These
are events which cause almost instant revulsion in children, night tremors, unwillingness to
go to school, fear of the perpetrator and ah.... despite claims to the
contrary, scientifically its now been established quite convincingly in my
view that it is ah... very very unlikely that you could persuade children to
be silent about that for long periods and also to exert external
manifestations of affection for the perpetrator which many of these children
did. So on that level I'm extremely sceptical, I don't think
the bizarre stuff happened. Does that mean nothing happened? Well I simply
don't know. No-one else knows either except ah... God and Mr Peter Ellis. Russ Francis: The
parents at the Christchurch creche were very close to each other and there
was a strong network. I've given that ???? network do you think that the
close questioning of the parents ?? their children, do you think its possible
that there was some contamination there of the ? Prof. Ceci: Yes,
in reading the materials one is struck by the fact that the parents are
understandably were extremely moved by the possibility that their children
may have been molested. They talked with each other and they conveyed to
their children often information that was passed on to them from other
children. Not only
as a scientist but as a parent I can understand that reaction. Were my
daughter involved in a scenario such as this creches I too would have strong
impulse to pursue my daughter persistently over long periods of time saying
to her well are you sure don't remember? So and So's mom told me that she
said you were there when it happened and so on. While
that's a perfectly understandable human impulse scientifically we know that
this.... is really the seeds for getting children to later assent to things
that may not have happened and I think, if you'd like I can describe how that
can be done? Russ Francis: Can
you do that? Prof. Ceci: Yeah....
yeah. If you bring mums into the
laboratory with their children and you say to your research assistant take
the child into the adjoining room, and you say to mum look we're very
interested in how much your child can remember about events and we're showing
your child a video, and we turn the VCR on and show the mum and say your
child's watching this video next door and when she's done we're going to
bring her in here and we want you to interview her and see how much she can
remember from this video. Now we do
this scientifically so on one condition the mum's watching the same video the
child's watching whereas in another condition unbeknownst to the mum the
child's watching a totally different video. But you see here you have the
ingredients where the parent thinks she knows what the child's experience was
but she was wrong. Now what
happens in that situation? Well what happens typically is the parent starts
interviewing the child and the child provides a limited verbal recall and
what they do provide sometimes doesn't coincide with what the parent believes
to have occurred so the parent starts becoming more and more suggestive,
providing more and more structured ??? and close ended questions and you
start to see three and four and five year olds assenting, they start nodding,
they're giving one word answers. When the
mum comes back and re-interviews the child a second time the assents become
sentences and the third or fourth time they get further embellished and you
begin to get paragraph level narratives about events that the child never
experienced but the mum thought that they did. That's
why it's exceedingly important for the interviewer to also try to falsify
their beliefs. Russ Francis: The
judge and jury did believe some of the things that the children said and
actually found Ellis guilty of those but they dismissed some of the more
bizarre charges. Is it... is it preferable... is it acceptable to make
distinctions between claims like that or if some are rejected should all be
rejected? Prof. Ceci: No
I think ah the realities of child sexual abuse and the realities ???????? are
such that you often will find the child where you can have a documented case
of sexual abuse, and there are unfortunately thousands of these in my country
and I suppose there are many hundreds in your own, where you have documented
cases where there's probative medical evidence, where the defendant himself
has plead guilty, where there may have even been an eye witness who had
corroborated the child's claims. Even in those cases you will often find a
blending of fabulous as well as plausible claims. So the fact that there are
fabulous claims doesn't on its face require one to say that nothing the child
said can be accurate. Having said that it is a very serious matter to ignore
the incredible stuff and chalk that up to a vulnerable child striving for
self-empowerment, for regaining control over their alleged victimisation....
yes he... he said that he karate chopped the defendant and tied him in chains
and ran away and so on and we of course know that didn't happen but we think
these other things did. You see while, in documented cases you can get
fabulous and plausible intermingled, in false cases you also can. Russ Francis: Is
it possible for the ???? for an expert to tell if something a child says is
fact or fantasy? Prof. Ceci: Read
my lips....no it is not. One of the things
that bothers me more than anything else is the cadre of instant experts who
make their way into North American courts and I suppose also into New
Zealand, Australian, other Commonwealth country courts that profess with a
great deal of certainty to judge and jury that they have a Pinnochio test -
that they can tell when a child's statements are accurate or inaccurate.
There is
no Pinnochio test, were there one I would bottle it and try to make a lot of
money. I've spent my life doing ??? analysis of very young children's
statements and there is no diagnostic set of criteria, there's no set of
affective emotional reactions, there's no linguistic analysis, there are no
memory demands, there's nothing that has
ever been established in a scientifically adequate way that can discriminate
between accurate and inaccurate statements when the child has been repeatedly
interviewed over long periods of time. Russ Francis: Well
given that is it safe to convict someone on the uncorroborated evidence of
children? Prof. Ceci: Well
you have a complicated situation in that sexual abuse is almost always a
private act; there are only two people involved; there's almost never
probative medical evidence; there's almost never a third party eyewitness to
be asked, so it's always "He said, She said." Fact finders are
always faced with this very private act believing one person, disbelieving
another. If you say that you're going to require corroboration for sexual
abuse you're essentially saying you'll never have convictions. Russ Francis: From
what you've looked at ???? New Zealand, how does New Zealand practice compare
with the best international methods of interviewing young children? Prof. Ceci: Ah
this creche case in Christchurch could have been in any North American cities
that I'm familiar with, the very same constellation of factors that one would
find in New York, Los Angeles, London, Sydney, were also evident in this
case. Russ Francis: So
it's not unusual? Prof. Ceci: Not
at all. Russ Francis: How
common are false convictions do you believe? Prof. Ceci: Well
no-one knows. We... we know that in my country there are approximately a half
million cases of alleged sexual abuse of minors each year... major state
maltreatment hotline.... and of these approximately 40% are called indicated
or substantiated and that means simply that an initial interview provides
information that's consistent with the claim that sexual abuse, and only a
small percentage of those actually get filed with the police departments and
wind their way to full trial. Of those
if you said that 90% or 95% resulted in true carriages of justice that would
still leave 5 or 10% that will not. To be quoting these numbers you're
dealing with it could result in some real sad miscarriages of justice but the
actual numbers are anyone's guess. There's been studies that have said seven
percent, some studies have said fifteen percent of sexual abuse claims are
invalid... and I take no position on the actual percentage, we need far
better data I think. Russ Francis: Professor
Ceci you've studied hundreds of similar cases to the Christchurch creche
case. From what you've read of this case would you send your child to a
creche where Peter Ellis worked? Prof. Ceci: Well
it's difficult to get a sense of the man from the written materials only and
not having any audio-visual input. One gets the sense that he engaged in some
behaviours that were at the very least unfortunate, for example
rough-housing, locking children in the bathrooms until they pounded on the
door to be released, um these aren't the kind of behaviours that perhaps one
would prefer to have their child exposed to. On the other hand you get the
sense that he was a very vibrant vivacious person that was able to get on the
children's own level and quite a few children seemed to have a great deal of
affection for him. But I'm really hesitant to say much more without really
knowing something more about the person. Russ Francis: And
what about... do you believe Peter Ellis should be in jail? Prof. Ceci: Oh
dear I have no thoughts on that at all. Russ Francis: Do
you have any other comments about the Christchurch Creche case? Prof. Ceci: Ah I mean I could just elaborate. I suppose
on some things but I don't have any burning new points.... Russ Francis: I
think we've covered just about everything. You talked a little bit before
about .. Pause Russ Francis: Can
you tell us about some of the consequences of allegedly false allegations of
sexual abuse in the United States? Prof. Ceci: The
two most awful things that can happen are a) you are abused as a child and
no-one believes you, and the other thing is to be accused of abusing a child
and to be innocent. Because when the latter happens it's also exceedingly
difficult to prove your innocence, people have a tendency to believe... you
just simply weren't found guilty, there wasn't enough evidence for them to
get you this time. Lives are
shattered, homes are mortgaged to pay for the legal bills, neighbours
ostracise you, there's always the sinking suspicion that you did it but the
state simply couldn't prove it. And there
have been in my country a whole string of cases that have been overturned on
appeal, some as high as the Supreme Court, that most of us... most of us who
are experts in this area feel were miscarriages of justice. Quite
recently the supreme court in New Jersey overturned a conviction of a woman
named Margaret Kelly Michaels and forty five of us were scientists that
worked on this problem signed an amicus brief, a friend of the court brief,
where we analysed the children's testimony and the interviews in that case,
and forty five of us put our names to this document saying that we felt very
strongly that the conditions to foster unreliabilities were present in these
interviews. Only three out of forty eight chose not to sign that. So you'll
never get a hundred percent where passions run high but where you're able to
get ninety plus percent of experts I think that's fairly telling. Russ Francis: I
want to ask you about the pattern. You
were saying before that, I just want to ask you about the pattern. Does the Christchurch creche case fit a
pattern, is there a particular way that these allegations evolve? Prof. Ceci: Ah
this case has the same constellation of ingredients that ninety plus percent
of mass allegation creche cases have. What do I
mean by that? Well there's always a trigger that starts it and the trigger is
a single allegation. It may come in spontaneous discussion, the child might
be bathing or having a conversation before naptime with a mum and make a statement
saying "so and so touches my bottom" or "so and so puts a
stick in my bottom or puts a pin in my penis or has a black penis". But
a single statement gets made. That
causes the parent to have some worry, mull it over, maybe they talk to a
paediatrician, maybe they call social services, maybe they re-interview their
child, they talk to parents of other children, before you know it the other
parents start talking to their children. They say "well so and so
already told his mum that this person did this naughty thing and he said he
did it to you as well, don't you remember?" And
there's this air of accusation that starts after the initial trigger where
parents now are starting to paint the person as a bad person, he defecates on
kids, he urinates on kids, he karate chops and hurts kids etc etc etc. Before
you know it there are confirmatory biases, by that I mean there's no attempt
to test an alternative hunch but simply let's get the goods on this person.
At that point parents begin talking to each other. That information that gets
swapped gets translated to the children. They start saying "well so and
so told her mum already and don't you remember that, don't you want to help
them keep so and so in jail so he doesn't hurt any other children?" All these
cases including the Christchurch Creche case have these kinds of features to
them. The allegations grow over time. They start with one or two criminal
charges and they often end up with dozens, even hundreds of complaints by the
time all the interviews are done. They all
include an amalgam of highly plausible events and highly implausible events.
And I could go on but there is a real script that these cases follow. Russ Francis: So
the Christchurch case is certainly not unusual? Prof. Ceci: No
it's very typical.. |
