"The Press"
Christchurch, New Zealand
Wednesday,
October 20, 1999
Page 4

Ellis Retrial ‘Deserved’
by Cullen Smith

Convicted pedophile 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's 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," she 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 rejects suggestions by an expert Crown witness that children were quite resistant to misleading suggestions of abuse. Research showed that adults could come to "remember" entire events that never happened to them.

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's conviction, much research had shown that children could be wildly inaccurate about parts of events and even about entire events.

Dr Garry also took exception to 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.

Dr Garry has researched the Ellis case since arriving in New Zealand four years ago. She gained her post-doctorate degree at the University of Washington at Seattle, working with renowned memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus.

Ellis's counsel, Dunedin QC Judith Ablett-Kerr, yesterday presented the third petition seeking Ellis to be pardoned to the Governor-General, Sir Michael Hardy Boys. Ellis, 41, has maintained his innocence throughout.