New Zealand Herald,
Tuesday 19 October 1999,
Page A11.

"Non-judicial inquiry needed in crèche case"
by Brian Rudman

The justice system has failed Peter Ellis yet again. Now it's up to the Prime Minister to take a leaf out of Rob Muldoon's book and set up an urgent inquiry into the whole sorry mess.

Last week, five Appeal court judges said they were not persuaded a miscarriage of justice had occurred in 1993 when the former crèche worker was locked up for 10 years for child abuse. It is hard to believe that many of the rest of us feel such certainty about Ellis' guilt, except that is, those caught up in the anti-satanist, paedophile-behind-every-tree hysteria that erupted in Christchurch in late 1991.

In 1978 Muldoon faced up to growing public unease about the conviction of Arthur Allan Thomas for the Crewe murders by setting up an extrajudicial inquiry. He was right. The inquiry supported claims that the police had planted incriminating evidence. Thomas was pardoned.

In Ellis' case it isn't a matter of a single cartridge case. Here it is a case of evidence so fanciful and unreliable that even the prosecutors couldn't bring themselves to use the more extreme stuff for fear of being laughed out of court. Fatal for Ellis was the refusal of the trial judge to allow his lawyer to produce this bizarre evidence - the testimony of preschoolers - to underline how fairy-taleish and unsafe it was.

On the evidence of these kids, some of them endlessly badgered by their parents with leading questions, Ellis and four female workers at the

Christchurch Civic Crèche were accused of all sorts of vile and sordid acts dating back over five years. The charges against the women were dropped on the eve of trial.

As for Ellis, he was supposed to have sexually violated the children, stuck needles and sticks into their anuses and penises and forced them to stand naked while women crèche workers danced around them. One child claimed on video that another had been killed. Others claimed they had been suspended in cages from high rafters.

All of this allegedly happened without one child showing any signs of distress or physical injury. No one reported the alleged murder victim missing. No one saw any of this happen, although the crèche had several entrances and was open to parents and the public at any time.

It now seems obvious that Ellis was the victim of a ritual-abuse hysteria that had previously swept the United States and had now found a fertile home in Christchurch. He was not helped by a law which allowed juries to convict alleged child molesters on the uncorroborated word of young children, or by the trendy social worker belief that children - particularly sex-abuse victims - never lied.

There is growing expert evidence that that is nonsense, especially when kids are pushed and prodded for an answer. Even when nothing has happened they will try, under pressure, to give what the adult wants, often romancing away like the brothers Grimm.

Since his incarceration, Ellis has discovered, as did Thomas, and more recently, David Dougherty, that like most justice systems, ours is not built to handle its mistakes. To allow for mistakes is to admit the system is flawed. It would also open the way to endless relitigation.

Some justice systems cope with this need for finality by running a same-day system. First the trial, then a quick truck trip to the stadium for the bullet in the back of the neck. Our system allows appeals, but only on the limited grounds that the judge didn't stick to the trial rule book, or that new evidence has become available.

Twice now the Appeal Court has ruled that Justice Williamson did stick to the rule book. As to new evidence, such as that children lie when pressured, the latest Appeal Court ruling says that has nothing to do with it. It suggest such matters are for "the more wide-ranging function of a commission of inquiry."

If that's the case, then let's have one. It's time the people of Christchurch were forced to confront the anti-satanist madness that gripped their city in late 1991. It is also past time Ellis got justice.