The Christchurch Civic Crèche Case
	News Reports Index
	2002 Jan-June Index
	National Business Review June 4 2002 Hood gains traction in book awards by Nevil Gibson The Montana Book Awards judges have made a brave call in their selection of Dunedin author Lynley Hood as a finalist in the history section for A City Possessed (Longacre). Hood’s book is by far the most controversial to be published in past few years. It reveals how a small group of health professionals, aided and abetted by a sympathetic media, culpable politicians and judicial officers, not to mention the financial fuel provided by the ACC gravy train, brewed up an hysteria over “ritual sex abuse” into a fullscale Salem-style witch-hunt in Christchurch. As has also been exposed around the world, this strange phenomenon was a heated concoction of feminism and Puritanism. In the book, Hood names names (plenty of them, in fact) and, though only Justice Minister Phil Goff has admitted he won’t be reading it (though he has said someone will read it for him), nothing has been retracted. This is a triumph of denial rather than the libel laws, it would seem, for it is a daunting read. Hood, for her part, has not let up in her allegations of a grave miscarriage of justice (notably, the jailing for seven years -- of a 10-year sentence-- of daycare worker Peter Ellis) and laws that put fantasy before truth. Even top people in the judicial tree, including former chief justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum and a former prime minister, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, are not let off the hook: the first for his so-called “review” of the Ellis case (2001) on the basis of legal protocol rather than the evidence; the latter for being swayed by feminist ideology to allow uncorroborated evidence in sex cases (1988). Observers at the time noted Sir Thomas did not examine any actual evidence. He simply critically examined the videos for how the interviewers collected the children's verbal reports, and these reports were called 'evidence.' " Hood’s achievement has raised quite a few ripples in legal circles, particularly among commentators in the NZ Law Journal, but no official response has been forthcoming. Reviews of the book were mainly favourable, but some areas of the media, notably National Radio, television and the NZ Herald, have ignored the book and her findings. Planned interviews have been called off at the last minute while the universities, where such a debate should be encouraged, have shown little interest. All credit, then, to the Otago Daily Times, which on May 29 published a commentary on how the lessons from the crèche case still need to be learned in a recent Dunedin choir boy case. The child sex abuse campaigners, Hood writes, are still active and keen to besmirch anyone who gets in their road. While on the subject of the Montana books, it is interesting to note what didn’t make it into the finals, particularly in the hotly-contested fiction section. While four of the five finalists – Elizabeth Knox, Patricia Grace, Maurice Gee and Lloyd Jones – are all well-established writers, there were plenty who were passed over in a vintage year for fiction publishing – Barbara Anderson, Joy Cowley, Alan Duff, Shonagh Koea, C K Stead, Noel Virtue and Damien Wilkins, among many others. The fifth finalist was a tyro – London-based Craig Marriner for Stonedogs. You can’t accuse the Montana judges (Witi Ihimaera, Lyndsey Dawson and Bill Ralston) of lacking courage. They even chose a book published in Maori though two of them couldn’t read it. The winners of the non-fiction sections and the final three in the fiction award will be announced on Friday, June 28. The big winners, including the $15,000 Deutz Medal for Fiction, will announced on Saturday, July 20. Voting for the Reader’s Choice Award starts on the Booksellers New Zealand website (see link below) on June 28. This is the first time voting has been allowed online.