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Sunday Star Times
January 20, 2002
Children's testimony 'unreliable'
Letter to the Editor:
by Bernard Gadd, Auckland
Readers of the Sunday Star-Times' coverage of Lynley Hood's meticulous
investigation of the Peter Ellis case might be interested to know a recent
study has demonstrated clearly that testimony regarding sexual abuse from
children as young as those in the Christchurch creche case cannot be relied
upon.
The study is presented in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied Vol
7, p27.
The worrying thing is that the same "counsellors" and others who
provided the children's evidence for the Ellis case are still appearing in
court using the same flawed procedures in the same sort of cases with
apparent success and that lawyers are still urging people to claim childhood
sexual abuse in order to win large sums of cash from the ACC.
It's time for Justice Minister Phil Goff to face reality, to order a
re-examination of the entire Ellis and associated cases and to bring those
dealing repeatedly in accusations of sexual abuse of small children to
account.
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