Otago Daily Times
Wednesday, 20-October 1999

`Ellis deserves re-trial'- researcher

Christchurch: Convicted paedophile Peter Ellis deserves a new trial based on science rather than rhetoric, says a Victoria University memory specialist and psychology lecturer.

Maryanne Garry said research into children's memory had grown "by leaps and bounds" since Ellis' 1993 conviction and 10-year jail sentence on 16 counts of sexual offences against children at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre.

"The jury should have been properly educated when Ellis was originally tried by allowing psychologists to discuss the research on children's memory - something that didn't happen during the trial," Dr Garry said.

"If we were to retry that case today, he would not be convicted." The public today were "much more educated" about how human memory worked.

Dr Garry refuted suggestions by an expert Crown witness that children were quite resistant to misleading suggestions of abuse.

Research showed adults could "remember" entire events that never happened to them and often the events were unpleasant.

She said children could be very accurate if not subjected to leading questions and research clearly showed that, despite belief to the contrary from supporters of recovered memory syndrome, memory was much worse in traumatic situations.

Since Ellis' conviction, research had shown children could be wildly inaccurate about parts of events and entire events.

Dr Garry said that in reality there did not have to be a lot of suggestion. Simply asking children repeated "yes or no" questions could cause them to create false stories they probably came to believe.

Dr Garry attacked a statement that the Civic Child Care Centre children's behaviour was consistent with true allegations of child abuse. She said research showed there was no consistent cluster of symptoms that reliably classified child abuse.

"So the idea that there is some child sexual abuse syndrome is just nonsense, wholly disproved by scientific research."

Dr Garry has researched the Ellis case since arriving in New Zealand four years ago. - NZPA