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Sunday News
October 25, 1998
Free Peter Ellis
by Rana Waitai
I visited Peter Ellis in Rolleston prison last
week.
He is the guy doing 10 years for the alleged sexual abuse epidemic at the Christchurch creche a
few years ago. He is starting his seventh year and has about 15 months to run
if the usual get-out-early rules apply.
He would not be surprised if the rules didn't apply because all kinds of
other rules in the due process of law, investigation, evidence and justice
have been creatively applied to his case and those of his finally acquitted
creche co-workers.
Myself and a whole army of New Zealanders have long since concluded Peter
Ellis is the victim of the extremes of sexual abuse and ritual abuse mania
which swept through this country in the early 1990s.
Peter is waiting for the outcome of an appeal and when I visited him, two of
his support team were holding their weekly briefing. Over the years they have
put all their material together and have computerised the whole sorry saga in
detail which would do credit to a police homicide inquiry.
They have an information kit, complete with police photos (lawfully obtained)
and they will take any interested MP or police officer on a guided tour of
the main sites involved in the case.
The litany of fantastic complaints from alleged child victims is really
something else. How sane officials and bureaucrats, let alone parents, could
accept those stories makes one marvel at the mindless hysteria generated by
the sexual and ritual abuse industries.
But then, of course, much of the children's evidence was never put to the
court because it was fantastic nonsense.
Anyway, just like the Clinton
file, I have no doubt there will eventually be a site on the internet
everyone can read to make up their own minds.
The Ellis support group wants a royal commission of inquiry. That is the very
least Peter Ellis is entitled to.
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