The Dominion
March 22 2001

Ellis 'a victim of witch-hunt'
NZPA

The author of a long-awaited book on the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre case has concluded that convicted child abuser Peter Ellis was the victim of a witch-hunt.

Writing in Touchy Subject -- Teachers Touching Children, a collection of articles about the shift in the relationship between teachers and young children, author Lynley Hood says she found no evidence of illegality by anyone accused in the case.

After years of "dredging through the mire", she instead found convincing evidence that "more than 100 children had been subject to unpleasant and psychologically hazardous procedures for no good reason, and that a group of capable and caring adults with no inclinations towards sexual conduct with children had had their lives ruined as a result".

Ultimately, the question of how the police, the child-protection services and the justice system got it wrong drew her into an intensive study of the past 30 years of New Zealand's social history, Ms Hood says.

The study revealed a convergence of feminism, religious conservatism and the child-protection movement under the banner of combating child abuse. With New Zealand initiatives in the field of child sexual abuse driven by this loose coalition, child sexual abuse became, like witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries, "a crime distinct from all others", she says. Special investigative techniques and special investigators had to be devised and special laws passed.

Law changes that "swept away the rights of suspects to a fair trial" and the near-universal acceptance that the coerced evidence of child sexual abuse was reliable made the "late 20th century sexual abuse panic" possible. In New Zealand in 1993, these factors also made the conviction of Peter Ellis possible," she says.

Ms Hood, whose previous books include Sylvia! and Minnie Dean -- Her Life and Crimes, has been writing her book on the creche case, A City Possessed, for the past seven years. It is due to be published this year.

The results of a ministerial inquiry into the case, conducted by former chief justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum, which were issued by the Government last week, found the convictions against Mr Ellis were safe. The Court of Appeal has twice rejected Mr Ellis's contentions that the complainant children's evidence was unreliable. Mr Ellis served 6<> years of a 10-year jail sentence imposed.