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Sunday
Star Times
November 23, 1997
Ellis target of new claims of sex abuse
by Barry Clarke
Fresh allegations of sex abuse have been made against convicted paedophile
Peter Ellis, just days before a bid will be made to have him freed from his
10-year jail sentence.
The police will decide this week whether they will pursue the new allegations
made last Thursday by a woman who says her two children were sexually and physically
abused during a two-year relationship she had with Ellis in the late 1980s.
Her children were interviewed by detectives during the sex abuse
investigation at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre in the early 1990s.
They were then aged five and seven. On that occasion they did not disclose
anything.
However, since a deluge of publicity about the creche case last week, the
children, now aged 11 and 14, had spoken of alleged incidents involving
Ellis, said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
Ellis's lawyer, Judith Ablett-Kerr, QC, is to petition Governor-General Sir
Michael Hardie Boys on Friday for a pardon. She and a group of Ellis
supporters believe he was wrongly convicted.
The pardon application comes hard on the heels of a TV3 20/20 programme last
Sunday, which claimed Crown prosecutor Brent Stanaway did not divulge to the
trial judge that the jury foreman had been his marriage celebrant; that
another juror was linked through her partner to one of the complainants in the
case; and that a detective involved in the case, Colin Eade, was suffering
from stress and had relationships with two mothers of creche children, and a
specialist used by the prosecution to interview children.
However, one of the mothers told the Sunday Star-Times she was outraged that
it had been inferred Mr Eade had acted unprofessionally.
"I had a relationship with Colin Eade three years after the trial had
ended. During the inquiry and trial I found him to be completely professional
in his manner and conduct," she said.
Mrs Ablett-Kerr will also raise questions about the case itself, focusing on
the way the allegations of sex abuse at the creche were initiated -- by a
sexual abuse counsellor; how parental networking after the allegation was
made might have contaminated the testimony of the children; the evidence on
which four women creche workers were charged and later cleared of any abuse
against children; the methods used at the time to interview children, and the
lack of corroborating evidence.
The Court of Appeal rejected an appeal by Ellis against conviction and
sentence in 1994, and in June 1995 the Government also rejected a call for an
inquiry into the case.
Detective Sergeant Jan Edge, head of the Christchurch child abuse unit, would not
comment on the new sex abuse allegations against Ellis. The children's mother
said she was "quite determined" to proceed with the complaints, but
would be guided by what the police said at a meeting this week.
Police had told her she would have to consider whether her children could
withstand tough cross-examination of their evidence by a defence lawyer if
the case went to court.
The police have initiated their own investigation into the claims made about
Mr Eade on 20/20 to determine if he had acted unprofessionally. He left the
police several months after Ellis was jailed in 1993 and is currently
studying to be a broadcasting journalist.
The mother of the two children making the new allegations about Ellis hopes
he will not be pardoned.
"I know TV is making him out to be a nice guy but he isn't. We got
together at a time when I was down, but I now really wish I hadn't," she
said.
Legal experts say there would be nothing to stop police investigating and
charging Ellis if they had enough evidence. The allegations would have to be
looked at in their own light.
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