“INVESTIGATE”
Auckland, New Zealand.
Page 80.
PAGES
a
city possessed by Lynley Hood, Longacre Press, $59.95
Lynley
Hood, an accomplished biographer, has focused her considerable talents on the
highly controversial Peter Ellis case. This is a remarkably thorough book which
may succeed in prompting an eventual clearance of Ellis's name - a vindication
which many believe is overdue.
Ellis
was a child care worker at the Christchurch Civic Creche accused of numerous
sexual and sadistic offences against small children many of them bizarre eg
forcing children to drink his urine or eat his faeces, inserting sandwiches up
a child's rectum. Hundreds of children were believed to be involved. Hood
believes that the implausible extent of these offences made this case like the
witch hunting craze. As she wittily writes, the allegations "spread with
the speed and virulancy of a sociogenic Ebola virus."
Hood
expertly and lucidly shows how the 80s gave rise to the Sexual Abuse Specialist
not unlike witch hunters of earlier times and how changes in New Zealand law
made it easier to convict sex (or supposed) sex offenders. The growth of the
sexual hysteria industry was accompanied by false statistics such as the well
known claim by Miriam Saphira that one in four girls would be the object of
sexual abuse by their fathers, a misinterpretation of a figure reported by
Kinsey (Kinsey's figures actually showed a ratio of 1 in 300).
The ironic and sad thing is that prior to the outburst of accusation, Ellis was extremely popular with the children even though some of his horseplay was considered overly boisterous by adults eg hanging a child on the picket fence by their overalls. However, the children liked it. Since Ellis was never seen committing any sexual or sadistic acts evidence was largely derived from interrogations of small children often with leading questions, a method subsequently demonstrated to be fraught with peril. The Sexual Abuse Specialist complete with nonsensical Recovered Memories have been copy-catted from the USA. Now the Americans are recanting it is time we did the same. This book - with its highly critical views on Sir Thomas Eichelbaum's quashing of the review of the Ellis case - is part of a hopeful return to legal as well as sexual and ethical sanity.