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The Dominion
March 17, 2001
Ellis angry judge's report was kept secret
by David McLoughlin
Former Christchurch Civic Creche worker Peter Ellis is angry that a report
casting doubt on his convictions for child abuse was kept secret for two
years but another affirming his guilt was made public.
He said yesterday that if the hitherto-secret report on the Civic Creche case
by retired High Court judge Sir Thomas Thorp had been made public when it was
written two years ago he might have got out of jail earlier.
Sir Thomas Thorp looked at the way creche children were interviewed and
expressed "serious doubts" about the safety of Ellis's convictions
for sexual abuse.
Details of his report were published for the first time yesterday in The
Dominion. The Government had previously refused Official Information Act
requests for a copy.
On Tuesday, a report on the same issue by retired chief justice Sir Thomas
Eichelbaum was published just two weeks after it was completed. It said Ellis
had failed to prove "by a significant margin" that the convictions
were unsafe.
"When an inquiry suits them, they release it straight away. The Thorp
one didn't, so they sat on it for two years," Ellis said.
Ellis was convicted in 1993 of 16 charges of abuse and sentenced to 10 years'
jail. He was freed in February last year. He has always maintained his
innocence.
The Thorp report was written for the secretary of justice in response to
Ellis applying in 1998 for a second Court of Appeal hearing (which, like the
first, upheld his convictions).
Justice Minister Phil Goff denied the Thorp report was "secret". He
had withheld it because it was sub judice, but a copy had been given to
Ellis's lawyer, Judith Ablett Kerr, QC.
Mr Goff said the Thorp report was not based on the same material as Sir
Thomas Eichelbaum's. It was based on "untested reports" of experts
commissioned by Mrs Ablett Kerr.
"These experts had been given selective materials on which to base their
opinions."
In his report, Sir Thomas Thorp urged the Justice Ministry and Crown Law to
seek expert opinion from Professor Stephen Ceci of Cornell University in the
United States, who was an expert on preschool abuse cases and was familiar
with the Civic Creche affair, having reviewed the evidence of more than 20
children for an Assignment documentary.
But Professor Ceci was not approached. Sir Thomas Eichelbaum rejected a plea
from Mrs Ablett Kerr to consult the professor.
Instead, he asked Leicester University psychology professor Graham Davies and Ontario psychologist
Louise Sas to examine the interviews of six children. Dr Sas has appeared for
the prosecution in many sex abuse cases.
Mr Goff said the Crown did not consult Professor Ceci for several reasons.
"Most significant was the fact that Professor Ceci had previously been
commissioned by TVNZ to provide an opinion on the case, and had been given
only selected materials on which to base his view. It was also impossible to
know what he had been told about the facts and to what extent accounts given
about the facts were accurate. This was likely to create concerns about the
impartiality of his report."
As well as casting doubt on the way the creche children were interviewed, Sir
Thomas Thorp examined defence claims that the children's allegations of
bizarre happenings came from American literature about satanic ritual abuse
which circulated among the Civic Creche parents. Children claimed to have
been buried in coffins, hung in cages, injected with needles, been urinated
upon and suffered other indignities detailed in the literature.
"If the question is `where did the allegations originate?' (then)
arguments based on coincidence point as strongly to the ritual abuse
literature as to (Ellis)," his report said.
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