From: Craig Young
Subject: The Ellis Controversy: Problems With Lyn Hood's Book.
Newsgroups: nz.politics
Date: 2001-03-25
I have some grave misgivings about Lynley Hood's book on Christchurch during the
Peter Ellis controversy if her Sunday Star-Times article is anything to go by.
Here are my chief problems:
1. Feminism:
Lynley Hood provides a caricature of feminism during the eighties and
early nineties. It's the sort of interview-your-typewriter drivel that characterised
Metro coverage of feminism during that period. Specifically, it pays little
attention to the improvement in abortion access, specific developments within
rape and incest law and professional practice during that period, as well as
the incorporation of liberal feminist perspectives during the Lange and Palmer
administrations of that period. I found her anti-lesbian outburst about child
sexual abuse prevention to be ad hominem and little else. Please, could we have
some factual focus on what really happened in public policy and professional
practice during that period?
As a matter of fact, there were two separate positions within the believe- the-children
camp during that period. Either one accepted SRA, or viewed it as a Christian
Right attempt to divert attention from the reality of widespread child sexual
abuse within families. I tended to accept the latter.
2. Religious conservatism:
You wouldn't know from Hood's article that religious conservatism had
lost key court and legislative battles over abortion during the early eighties,
homosexual law reform (1985-86), censorship policy, the 1987 General Election,
and the debate over addition of HIV/AIDS status and homosexuality to the Human
Rights Act 1993.
Hood also erred in characterising the Christian Right as denominationally
or philosophically homogeneous. It is not true to state, as she does, that
the Christchurch Christian Right endorsed satanic ritual abuse or stronger
child protection laws.
Rather, what happened was this: The Pentecostal Churches, including the New
Life Centre, endorsed a worldview of pervasive supernatural influences that
included the possible presence of SRA. Admittedly, I remember talking to one of
the Kate Shepherd Women's Bookshop collective members about the presence of a
conservative Christian SRA book within their child abuse section, and I also
saw one in a since-closed Palmerston North feminist bookstore. But it is
important to remember that Pentecostals are not usually professionals and do
not operate well within formal organisations, so it is unlikely that there was
an organised Pentecostal presence that advocated for SRA.
However, there has always been another tradition of strong opposition to child
protection laws from the militant fundamentalist community. Take a look at
Challenge Weekly, the NZ fundamentalist newspaper, and you'll find a schizoid
approach to the issue. On the cover of one recent issue, it talked about the
importance of protection from SRA and child porn. Yet, Challenge has run
articles that oppose social worker intervention within abusive and
dysfunctional families that perpetrate child sexual abuse and child battery.
The Christian Heritage Party ran John Tonson, a PN rabble-rouser against CYPFS
as their local candidate at the 1999 General Election. Auckland conspiracy
theorist and Radio Pathetic talkback harridan Mrs. Barbara Faithful is of this
persuasion as well. I submit that these non-Pentecostal networks would tend the
other way and prevent religious conservative acceptance of the existence of SRA
as they would view it as "anti-family."
3. Child protection:
I'd be far more impressed by this if it told the full story. Fact is,
as I note above, there was an orchestrated Christian Right campaign against
stronger child protection laws during the eighties and early nineties from some
quarters of the conservative Christian community. These people endorsed the
efforts of Felicity Goodyear-Smith, COSA and other anti-feminist organisations
that campaigned against feminist child protection efforts. And remember,
Goodyear-Smith is liable to conflict of interest concerns given her Centrepoint
connections. In one recent issue of the New Zealand Womens Studies Journal,
there was an interesting professional exchange over the content of her polemic
against feminist child protection efforts.
So...was Peter Ellis wrongly accused? Therein lies the controversy. Was SRA as
strong a component of the accusations against him as Ellis supporters make out?
If so, I believe that the Privy Council should hear all the relevant evidence.
Was the investigation a straightforward examination of child sexual abuse
against an individual who may have had a painful and dysfunctional past?