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The Dominion
March 15, 2001
Supporters say new complaint against Ellis is smear attempt
by Alan Samson
A new complaint against convicted child abuser Peter Ellis was dismissed by
Ellis's supporters yesterday as a smear deliberately raised at a time he was
again the focus of public attention.
Ellis, who was sentenced in 1993 and served nearly seven years jail on 13
counts of abuse, had an application for pardon declined on Tuesday by
Governor-General Sir Michael Hardie Boys after a ministerial inquiry.
The complaint, as reported on TV One News, said that a 17 to 18-year-old boy
had a "fresh disclosure" about actions dating back to the time the
former Christchurch Civic Crèche worker was accused of indecencies.
Christchurch
police initially refused to comment on any complaint but yesterday
spokeswoman Maggie Leask spoke of "privacy issues" making it unfair
to discuss, adding "nothing may come of it".
If there was something for the police to report, she said, they would.
Supporter Winston Wealleans said similar "revelations" had arisen
at other key stages of their battle for freedom, then pardon, including an
earlier disclosure by the mother of a teenager, and the reports of Ellis
wearing frocks in his jail cell.
Meanwhile, Justice Minister Phil Goff said Ellis's counsel, Judith Ablett
Kerr, was wrong to suggest psychologist Graham Davies, of Leicester University,
had advised a broader inquiry was necessary.
"Professor Davies said in the report there were issues beyond his remit
relating to details of evidence which the wider inquiry may wish to consider
. . . in its context, however, the reference meant the inquiry by former
chief justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum," Mr Goff said.
A wider inquiry, he said, would have been inappropriate. It would have
resulted in the children being required to revisit the evidence they
originally gave when they were aged only three or four years old, and would
create unnecessary trauma.
Mrs Ablett Kerr said that Professor Davies had made clear references to the
need for a wider investigation, including the type of inquiry he had in mind,
which included whether the creche toilets offered sufficient privacy for the
offences.
"If indeed Professor Davies . . . meant Sir Thomas's inquiry then he
clearly did not understand the very limited material available to the inquiry
nor its narrow terms of reference," she said.
She also said it had never been suggested on Ellis's behalf that children be
called to again give evidence.
"Indeed expert evidence suggests that such a course would now be futile,"
she said.
Supporters yesterday also took issue with reported comments by Sir Thomas
that he saw as "convincing" the body of evidence from which it
could be inferred Ellis took children to a Hereford St address that contained
"various secret cavities".
The evidence of the time, they said, had discredited the house as a possible
site for child visits.
Victoria University
sociology professor Mike Hill said, from Singapore,
that all the major United
States ritual abuse cases had now been
overturned.
"Australia never got
as far as conviction and I don't think any similar cases have been proved in Britain.
"Ellis got caught between the wave of hysteria generated by the satanism
scare, and propagated by New Zealand
social workers in 1981, and the official reports in the UK and USA which totally debunked the
claims but were not published until 1994.
"By then the legal process was complete," Professor Hill said.
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