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Otago Daily Times
July 6 1999
Claims against Ellis were `increasingly bizarre'
NZPA
Wellington: Allegations made by children against convicted
paedophile Peter Ellis became increasingly bizarre the more interviews they
were subjected to, the Court of Appeal in Wellington was told yesterday.
Opening her submissions for the appeal which began yesterday, counsel Judith
Ablett-Kerr gave examples of children being pressured by five or six
interviews.
And at each, the stories had grown. In this way, by the fifth or sixth
interview, an allegation Ellis had shown a child his penis had grown to
children having had to strip and dance naked, or having been hung up in a
cage, Mrs Ablett-Kerr said.
But when it got to trial, such allegations, although outlined strongly at
depositions, had been substantially watered down by the Crown, making them
appear more reasonable to the jury, she said.
The jury had not been asked to find beyond reasonable doubt that children had
been strung up in a cage and had their private parts cut off, or that they
had needles inserted in them, Mrs Ablett-Kerr said.
The appeal, against Ellis' conviction in 1993 on 13 sexual abuse charges
against children at the Christchurch Civic Creche in 1993, argued miscarriage
of justice on six grounds.
These related to the techniques used to obtain evidence, the risks of
contamination of children's evidence, the retraction of children's evidence,
issues of trial procedure, issues to do with the jury, and the non-disclosure
of material to the defence.
Mrs Ablett-Kerr argued there had been a failure of the system to recognise
where child evidence should have been treated with "caution".
Expert advice suggested such caution "at the very least" was
essential in a case of mass allegation at a day care centre.
Not only had children's evidence been contaminated, but the jury had been
ill-equipped to give a fair and balanced judgement because they did not have
all the necessary information to hand and some jury members had a
predisposition to find him guilty, she said.
Mrs Ablett-Kerr spoke at length of "networking" that had occurred
among the mothers of creche children.
As an example of parental contamination, Mrs Ablett-Kerr said the mother of
another child had repeatedly insisted her child be re-interviewed after
eliciting new information.
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