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The
Evening Post
November 24, 1997
Echoes of Salem witch trials in Ellis case
by Warwick Roger
In Salem, a town of about 40,000 souls on the shore of Massachusetts Bay, in
a building that was once a church, you can find today the Salem Witch Museum.
It's packed with exhibits to do with the "witch trials" which took
place in the town in 1692, the most gruesome of which depicts an accused man
being pressed.
As his trial proceeded, more and more rocks were placed on the unfortunate's
chest until he either confessed, in which case he was put to death by
hanging, or died a slow death as his chest collapsed.
The Salem
witch trials came about after a group of young girls were seen to go into
convulsions and accused the Rev Samuel Parris' West Indian slave, Tituba, and
others of bewitching them. The girls attracted great attention and, notes the
Encyclopaedia Americana, "in self-protection extended their
accusations".
Salem citizens,
along with most other Americans and Europeans at that time, believed in
witchcraft and were only too happy to accept the girls' fantasies and hastily
set up a special court for which the rules of British justice (Massachusetts was a
British colony) were suspended. No one dared question any of this for fear of
themselves being accused of witchcraft. Consequently more than 100 people,
men and women, were arrested on suspicion of being involved with witchcraft.
Many were imprisoned and 19 were hanged. One man was pressed to death for
refusing to plead to the charges brought against him.
The madness finally abated when the Massachusetts
governor, Sir Williams Phips, decided to exclude "spectral
evidence" from consideration in future trials, thus removing the basis
of the accusations.
Twenty years later, the Massachusetts
legislature annulled the convictions and made reparations to the heirs of
those who had been executed.
Three hundred years pass and a wave of hysteria sweeps over Christchurch, a city of some 300,000 souls
standing on the edge of New
Zealand's Canterbury Plains. For years
there have been stories in the newspapers and in the electronic media
asserting that one in four New
Zealand girls will be sexually abused
before they are 18. Stories, always unsubstantiated, about ritual abuse,
pornography rings and satanic cults also appear in the media. A small group
of politically active lesbians begins to wield great influence in what also
becomes known as the sex-abuse industry. A publicly-funded organisation
called the Accident Compensation Commission hands out payments of up to
$10,000 to victims of sexual abuse.
The High Court building stands on the banks of the river Avon in Christchurch
and it was there, in 1993, in this climate of hysteria and after bizarre
claims to a policeman by children who attended a city council-run creche, and
by a parent who later turned out to also have been psychologically disturbed,
that a young gay man, a former worker at the creche, was put on trial for
child sexual abuse. Earlier, charges against five of his co-workers have been
dismissed.
He is eventually found guilty by a jury of nine women and three men. The
foreman of the jury was a minister who had officiated at the wedding of the
lawyer conducting the Crown's case. One of the members of the jury was in a
lesbian relationship with a woman who shared an office with the mother of one
of the child complainants.
The young man is sentenced to 10 years in jail.
It is later revealed that:
* The policeman had had personal relationships with two of the mothers of the
creche children, although he said this did not happen till after the inquiry
was over, and had sexually propositioned a third.
* He later suffered psychological difficulties and has since left the police.
* None of the complaints against the creche worker were unsolicited.
* The complainant children had, in fact, had the allegations of sexual abuse
virtually squeezed out of them by social workers.
* Many of the child witnesses had, with the passage of time, recanted their
accusations.
The madness finally abates when two journalists, David McLoughlin of North
& South magazine (August 1996) and Melanie Reid of TV3's 20/20, expose
the deficiencies in the Crown case against the Christchurch creche worker.
However, no one in authority makes any move to free the unjustly imprisoned
man. He is not compensated for the four years he has spent in jail.
Peter Ellis must be freed immediately and he must be compensated for the
outrages he has suffered.
An official investigation must be held to find out why the police officer,
Colin Eade, was allowed to be so out of control. An internal police investigation
is unlikely to be sufficiently rigorous.
The conduct of the Crown prosecutor, Brent Stanaway, who did not reveal to
the judge his connection with the jury foreman, must form part of this
inquiry.
The actions of the social workers who tormented the bizarre allegations
against Peter Ellis out of the children must also come under scrutiny, as
must those of their mentors and their superiors.
The conduct of Christchurch City Council which ran the creche must be
investigated.
And finally, blame for helping create the climate of hysteria that led to the
injustices against Peter Ellis should be placed firmly where it belongs -
with the people who invented the false statistics that led gullible people to
still believe in witchcraft.
Such an inquiry should not be chaired by a judge. The judiciary has not
exactly covered itself in glory in this sad business. Someone sensible is
needed for this job.
* Warwick Roger is editor-at-large of North & South magazine and The
Post's Auckland
columnist.
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