|
|
The
Christchurch Civic Creche Case |
|
|
|
|
The parents of a child
who was a victim in a child sex abuse case involving Peter Ellis have
complained to the Press Council against an opinion article published by The
Press. The article was by a
named freelance journalist whose central thesis was that Peter Ellis might
have been wrongly convicted, and that an injustice might thereby have been
perpetrated. The council does not
uphold the complaint. The case brought by the
Crown against Ellis was that he sexually abused children attending the
Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre between 1986 and 1989 while he was
employed there as a carer. The complainants' child attended the centre and
was one of a number of child witnesses called by the Crown as part of its
case against Ellis. The case was heard
before a judge and jury in the High Court in Before and during the
trial some of the charges contained in the indictment were dismissed by the
trial judge, but the jury found the defendant guilty on 16 counts involving
seven children. There was a guilty
verdict on the count involving the child of the complainants, as well as for
other children. Ellis was sentenced to 10 years prison. He appealed against the
verdicts and in 1994 the Court of Appeal dismissed three counts, on special
grounds concerning one child witness who retracted her evidence, but
dismissed all other appeals. Ellis has continued to
maintain his innocence and instructed counsel to take a petition to the
Governor-General seeking a pardon. The petition has been referred to the
Court of Appeal and a hearing is awaited. It is fair to say that since the
convictions the issue of the guilt, or innocence, of Ellis has been
prominently canvassed in the public arena. The Press Council said
that not surprisingly the case had attracted attention in On November 26, 1997,
The Press on its front page under the headline ``Abuse cases `tip of the
iceberg' '' printed a bylined news article dealing generally with child abuse
(including sexual abuse) of children, quoting from a statement of the
then-Commissioner for Children, Laurie O'Reilly, that child abuse rates could
be 10 times higher than official statistics. At the foot of the
article there was a reference to another part of that edition of the paper to
an article under the caption ``Opinion'', enigmatically headlined ``Pity the
abuses and those abused'', written by freelance journalist John Goulter, in
which he strongly doubted the guilt of Peter Ellis. This is the article about
which the complaint has been laid. The council said the
letters of the complainants, first written to the paper's editor and then to
the Press Council, were lengthy, well-constructed, and gave closely reasoned
arguments that the opinion article should not have been printed by the
newspaper so as to give currency to the proposition that Ellis was innocent. The position of the
parents is that if Ellis were innocent, their child supplied evidence that
should not have been accepted by the jury as a basis for finding guilt,
raising at least the possibility the children's evidence was the result of
``schooling'' by parents. Read as a whole, the
opinion article was inferentially critical of the parents of the children who
gave evidence in the Ellis case, and that is the way the complainants read
it. The case of the complainants is that the foregoing are the inescapable
implications, even if they are not spelled out in the challenged article. A particular of the
complaint is that the newspaper had linked two disparate views on abuse of
children. The front-page news article ``Tip of the iceberg'' without
qualification recognised that child abuse was a social problem deserving of
attention. However, in the same edition the opinion article ``Pity the abuses
etc'' basically challenged the correctness of the court decisions in the
Ellis case simply by assertion, unsupported by reasoned argument or evidence. The complainants
described this as a ``pernicious tactic'' stating ``the editor cannot have it
both ways''. This important argument to the complainants makes their point to
the editor's over-all handling of the two articles, but at the same time also
significantly demonstrates the extreme complexity of the socio/legal problem
of sexual child abuse. The foregoing also
reveals the refinement of the arguments of the complainants, which were
matched by the answers of the editor, and the journalist, who also responded
to the complaint. The Press Council's
decision is primarily based upon a fair reading of the opinion article
itself, and not on subsequent interpretations or constructions of the meaning
of the article that have arisen in disposing of this complaint. No useful purpose is
served in this adjudication by canvassing all points made by either side
during the exchanges over this complaint. The complainants
requested the editor to publish, under an assumed name, an article putting
the contrary view to the opinion expressed by Mr Goulter. The editor was
prepared to publish the article, as submitted, but final agreement was not
reached on the context in which it would appear. The response of the
editor to the parent complainants, and to the Press Council, lacked nothing
in sympathy for the parents' viewpoint, which he clearly understood, but
nevertheless he held steadfastly to his position that the article represented
responsible journalism on an issue within the public area, and about which
there were differing viewpoints as to Ellis's guilt. The editor maintained
it was a seriously written article by a journalist honestly expressing his
opinion on a matter of public interest, which the newspaper published,
adequately indicating by prominent use of the word ``opinion'' that the views
expressed in the article were those of the writer and not of the editor or
the newspaper. In a few words, the
defence of the editor for the article and its over-all treatment in the
edition was one of fair comment and freedom of expression. The Press Council
expresses no opinion whatsoever on the substance of the debate concerning
Ellis's guilt or innocence. The obligation of the council is to determine
whether, as an ethical issue, the newspaper was correct in publishing the
opinion expressed in the article by the writer. Whilst appreciating the
complainants' viewpoint entirely, the council has refused to uphold a
complaint that might inhibit freedom of expression. That is certainly not the
way the complainants phrase their objections, but nevertheless that is what
they amount to in the end. The
complainants seem to be saying that on ethical grounds the newspaper should
not have allowed, in the way The Press did in this edition of the paper,
currency to an assertive opinion that challenges the criminal justice system
which resulted in guilty verdicts for an accused. For the reasons given that
is not the view of the Press Council. |
