FMS Foundation
Newsletter
January/February 2002, Vol 11 No 1
A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case
Lynley Hood
New Zealand: Longacre 2001
ISBN 1 877135 62 3
The great witchhunts of history "represented the fusion of three
separate but related sociological disturbances: a moral panic, an epidemic of
mass psychogenic illness and an outbreak of scapegoating," writes Lynley
Hood. The 672 pages of this meticulously researched book follow this
framework to show what went wrong in the most notorious day care case in New Zealand.
In the early 90s, Peter Ellis, an openly gay teacher at the Civic Creche in Christchurch, was
accused of abusing children in all manner of fantastical ways. Hood writes:
"When I began this project, the key question underpinning my research
was this: to what extent were the staff of the Christchurch Civic
Child Care
Center involved in
child sexual abuse? I expected, sooner or later, to uncover some real-life
happenings on which, rightly or wrongly, the allegations of criminality were
based. But, in my years of dredging through the mire in which this story has
foundered, I found no evidence of illegality by anyone accused in this case.
Instead, I found convincing evidence that more than 100 Christchurch 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 misconduct with children had had their lives
ruined as a result." p.33
This fascinating and important book covers 30 years of New Zealand social
history to explain the travesty of justice in the Ellis trial. Factors such
as the merger in the early 1980s of feminism, religious conservatism and the
child protection movement; changes in laws; the handing out of up to $10,000
to people who said but didn't have to prove that they had been sexually
abused; and visits by therapists from the United States all played a role in
what happened.
A City Possessed is available directly from the publisher.
Email: [email protected]
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