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Allegations made by children
against convicted paedophile Peter Ellis became increasingly bizarre the more
interviews they were subjected to, the Court of Appeal in Opening her submissions for the
appeal which began yesterday, counsel Judith Ablett-Kerr gave examples of
children being pressured by five or six interviews. 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. When it got to trial, such
allegations, though outlined strongly at depositions, had been substantially
watered down by the crown, making them appear more reasonable to the jury. 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 spoke of
"networking" that had occurred among the mothers of creche
children. ". . . It's an extraordinary
coincidence that mothers of four out of the six (children whose evidence
resulted in the convictions) were engaged in counselling work or sex abuse
therapy," she said. The appeal is proceeding. |
