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The Dominion
July 7, 1999
Officer's competence raised at Ellis appeal
If the jury that convicted Peter Ellis had been aware of the extent of the
investigating officer's stress and his relationships with mothers he was
investigating, "it would have made hay" with the information, the
Court of Appeal heard yesterday.
In the second day of Ellis's second appeal against his 1993 convictions for
sexually abusing creche children, his counsel, Judith Ablett Kerr, rebutted
arguments from the bench that the competence of the officer, Colin Eade, was
beyond the scope of the hearing.
Justice Gault said Governor-General Sir Michael Hardie Boys had declined to
review the competence of Mr Eade, adding that: "In the light of that I
think you're overdoing it."
Mrs Ablett Kerr replied: "My purpose has been to demonstrate
contaminating factors . . . if the jury had had (access to withheld
documents) they would have made hay with them.
"Detective Eade escaped relatively unscathed."
Mrs Ablett Kerr referred to documents that had not been disclosed by the
Crown to the defence.
In relation to Mr Eade, these highlighted his at-times extreme stress, and
his "inappropriate" telephone behaviour with a mother of one of the
children.
Mrs Ablett Kerr also suggested Mr Eade may have been unqualified for a mass
allegation case of such scope as the Christchurch Civic Creche investigation.
"The job required someone who was cool and of a steady mind, someone who
perhaps was experienced in this type of arena."
Among other documents she said had not been disclosed, was a police report
that showed early police concern about parents reading literature on ritual
abuse.
"This is the heart of the case, that it is going on," Mrs Ablett
Kerr said.
Similarly undisclosed had been a document showing police concerns about
parents being in "a frenzy" at an early creche meeting, before
charges were made against Ellis.
Photographs not made available to the defence included one from a creche
parent, seized by police, that showed the unlikelihood of other creche
workers not seeing abuse alleged to have happened in the creche toilets.
Others showed children on innocent outings, giving clues to details recalled
by some of the children in other, abusive situations.
Speaking of repeated parental interviewing of their children, Mrs Ablett Kerr
said: "In my submission, the extent of interviewing by parents in this
case was highly unusual.
"One parent had relayed her version of what another child's mother had
said to her daughter, to her child, saying, `This is what (the girl) has
said. Did it happen to you?'
"If a professional interviewer did that, I have no doubt that it would
have been thrown out."
Just how vulnerable to suggestion children were, could be seen in one child
who, in a professional interview, used the words "clitoris" and
"vulva".
"These types of words, in my submission, are unusual for a child,"
Mrs Ablett Kerr said.
When Justice Gault suggested the judiciary was well aware of the pitfalls in
sex abuse case evidence, Mrs Ablett Kerr said: "It's the accumulation of
these cases.
"When they are drawn together in the context of a mass allegation
scenario, they assume a different significance."
Asked to explain the similarities between ritual allegations in different cases
around the world, she said they were either fantasy or implanted.
Appearing with Mrs Ablett Kerr, Greg King argued that the evidence of the
eldest girl, presented at trial as the most uncontaminated, had been used as
a "yardstick" by the jury in accepting allegations of the others.
But the girl, at the time nine years old, had subsequently retracted her
allegations, and had not changed her stance.
"This court has recognised on numerous occasions that where there are
multiple complainants, there's inherently a prejudice to the accused
person," he said.
Ellis was jailed for 10 years in 1993. The appeal, before the full five-judge
bench of Justices Gault, Thomas, Richardson, Henry and Tipping, is
proceeding.
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