"SUNDAY STAR TIMES"
New Zealand
October 24, 1999
Page C4.
FOCUS
 
When will it be over for the children?
by Sandra Coney 
 

LET'S spare a thought for the children of the Christchurch Civic Creche case and their families.

For nine years they have had to put up with the in-your-face campaign run by the Peter Ellis faction, with a great deal of media support.

They are young adolescents now, and the continual denial of their abuse must cause considerable grief. Instead of the safety of knowing their abuser is behind bars, their victimisation has been prolonged. Ellis, his mother and the loquacious Judith Ablett-Kerr are constantly on the attack.

There has been no voice for the children or their families all these years.

The justice system has bent over backwards to investigate Ellis's claims.

The original trial has been held up to more scrutiny than any other court proceedings held in New Zealand. Every appeal has failed. In the latest, the full five-member Court of Appeal unanimously rejected each individual appeal ground as well as their cumulative effect.

The Ellis camp is now calling for a Royal Commission of Inquiry. But what superior powers does a Royal Commission have that the Court of Appeal does not?

Some people seem to think that because Ellis continues to say he is innocent, he must be. And they have argued that because other people were around when the abuse occurred, it would have been obvious.

But paedophiles commonly deny their actions. Paedophilia is not a one-off offence hut a systematic behaviour that the abuser needs.

Paedophiles put themselves in situations where they have access to young children, whether it's a youth group, school, or creche. This often involves large numbers of other adults being around. in families, relatives have been found to abuse a child in social situations, by inserting a finger in a baby girl's vagina under her skirt, for instance.

Systematic abuse often only comes to light when the children are older or even grown up. We have seen that in cases such as Centrepoint, Peter Liddell, and those involving the Catholic priesthood. The "secret" can be covered up, ignored or even unseen by coworkers, even over long periods.

It astonishes me that people who never heard the evidence that was put before the court, think they have arrived at some superior truth based on a version of events that has come through the biased filter of the Ellis camp.

For instance, it is not true that the only evidence that convicted Ellis came out of the evidential interviews with counsellors.

Parents told the court about their children's puzzling behaviour. There was refusal to go to the toilet at the creche, fear of strangers, clinging to parents, terror at cameras and TV, sleep problems, crying, and bizarre and withdrawn behaviour. Parents talked about their children crying on arrival at the creche. "Don't worry," said the staff, "she's fine when you've gone." At the end of the day, children would be found clinging to the top of play equipment. Many were first time parents and odd behaviour could be rationalised as the developmental stage the child was at, or a reaction to being in day care.

The parents were educated, liberal, professional people who were accepting of Ellis's unusual behaviour. He was openly bisexual, and had had an alcohol problem. He first began working at the creche when he was serving a sentence of 80 hours community service for misleading a social worker, A most inappropriate placement, I would have thought.

In the Ellis version of events, these same urbane, tolerant parents quickly transformed into hysterical believers in Satanic abuse. Frankly, the scenario is not credible.

I wish that those so ready to believe the Ellis line would go back and read Justice Williamson's remarks when sentencing him. These were published in this newspaper (then called the Dominion Sunday Times) on July 11 1993, Ellis's crimes are spelled out in plain language. Three sexual violations, eight indecent assaults, five indecent acts involving children under one year of age. Two indecent acts "concerned the bathing of children involving touching them and having one of them masturbate you. One of the crimes involved a child touching his penis and the remaining two concerned you urinating on two children, as well as in one case placing your penis in the mouth of one".

The judge said that, despite Ellis's fellow creche workers' claims in the media, the evidence "including your [Ellis's] own, realistically established" that there were opportunities for the abuse to occur.

Peter Ellis is due to be released from prison next year. This will be another nightmare for the children, and it will not be helped by more media frenzy.

When will it be all over for the children?