The Christchurch Civic Creche Case
	News Reports Index
	1999 July-Dec
	The Dominion November 16 1999 Court ‘failed to look at Ellis case with fresh eye’ by Alan Samson The Court of Appeal, in rejecting the latest appeal of convicted child abuser Peter Ellis, had missed an opportunity to look at a problematic case with a fresh eye, a report in the latest Law Journal says. Ellis, 41, was sentenced in 1993 to 10 years' jail for sexual offences against children at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre, a sentence upheld at appeal. Last month's second appeal, ordered by Governor-General Sir, Michael Hardie Boys, rejected renewed concerns about child interviewing techniques, unfair screening and withholding of evidence, retractions of child statements, and alleged influential juror relationships. Central to the court's decision was its ruling that the appeal, even though at a governor-general's direction, could not extend its interest beyond the normal appellate scope of correctness of law and process. But in his criminal practice review of the case, Wellington barrister Robert Lithgow suggests that the court failed an obligation of "eternal vigilance" that required it to undertake peer review of itself, not just of lesser courts. The court's approach to last month's directed appeal had been widely described as "restrictive rather than expansive", Mr Lithgow says. "The opportunity has been missed for the Court of Appeal to use the governor-general's reference procedure to look at certain problematic cases afresh with a genuinely new eye and greater understanding." Eternal vigilance was a principle of the court's oversight of court processes, Mr Lithgow says. "In this case it was opportunity for oversight of themselves, the opportunity for peer review. "The court decided not to approach it in that way. And so it is demonstrated yet again that jurisdiction and the interpretation of the terms of any criminal case can determine the outcome." Among specific concerns about the court of Appeal's stance, Mr Lithgow queries the sense of its ruling that it was impossible to consider a wide range of new reports related to child complainant evidence. The court's view was in part that there was still a lack of expert consensus - "in other words, 'we've been through all this before'". The court had also dismissed the suggestion that cases like the Civic Creche, characterised by mass allegations of sexual abuse, held special dangers for the accused, ruling that the evidence of child complainants in mass allegation cases was not inherently unreliable. In response, Mr Lithgow points to 12 pages before the court listing problems.