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Address to
Skeptics Conference
September 14, 2002
How to stop a witch hunt
by Lynley Hood
Three weeks ago I
received my first bad review of A City Possessed. It was written by
Val Sim, Chief Legal Counsel for the Ministry of Justice, on the instructions
of Phil Goff. I thought, ‘Well, we can all have a good laugh about this at
the Skeptics Conference.’
When he released Sim’s review, Goff admitted that he had finally got around
to reading at least some of A City Possessed. He told The Press he
was impressed. He said the book was well argued and researched, and quite
compelling. ‘Anyone who looked at the case, and the circumstances of the
case, would not be objective if they did not feel unease about the atmosphere
that existed and some aspects of the case,’ he said. But he added that
questions of guilt or innocence are not for authors or politicians to decide.
Up to that time, our Minister of Justice had been dismissive of A City
Possessed. I thought he was a moral coward with a closed mind. But Sim’s
review and Goff’s comments raised another possibility. Maybe he was just
getting bad advice?
But then Phil Goff sent Val Sim’s
review, with a covering letter endorsing it, to the scores - perhaps
hundreds - of concerned scholars, academics, professionals and lay people who
had written to him about A City Possessed. Professor Mark Henaghan,
Dean of Law at the University
of Otago, was probably
not the only one who enclosed published reviews of A City Possessed with
his letter. Every one of those letters was written unprompted by
someone who had taken the trouble to read that large, scholarly book right
through. For me, Goff’s shallow and dismissive response again raises the
possibility that, as well as getting bad advice, our Minister of Justice
really is a moral coward with a closed mind.
So it seemed ironic that, immediately after giving Sim’s review his blessing,
Goff released a bundle of long suppressed documents about the 1975 Indonesian
invasion of East Timor. These show that our
politicians and their advisors minimised, discredited and ignored reports of
gross civil rights violations because they didn’t want to upset the
Indonesian authorities.
‘There are lessons to be learned from the Timor
experience,’ Goff said in his press release. Indeed there are - lessons about
the damage that can be done to innocent people by politicians and bureaucrats
who are more interested in covering their own backs and not rocking the boat,
than in doing justice.
As Edmund Burke said: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is
for good men to do nothing.’ Anyone who has tried to make bureaucrats or
politicians accountable will have heard the excuses. When the first excuse -
‘there isn’t a problem’ - collapses under the weight of evidence, the second
excuse - ‘I had no idea there was a problem’ - kicks in. According to
historian and philosopher Tzetvan Todorov, when real, this ignorance is more
or less a matter of conscious and deliberate effort. As Hitler’s armaments
chief Albert Speer put it: ‘Being in a position to know and nevertheless
shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences.’
Currently Val Sim is clinging to the first excuse - ‘there isn’t a problem’ -
as if her life, or at least her career, depends on it. While Phil Goff,
perhaps sensing that he’s in trouble, is taking the line: ‘Well I don’t think
there’s a problem, and even if there is a problem there’s nothing I can do
about it.’
In essence, Sim is saying that A City Possessed contains no new
evidence that can justify reopening the Ellis case, and since a high court
judge, two courts of appeal and a ministerial inquiry have endorsed the jury
verdicts, that should be an end to the matter.
Prior to the publication of A City Possessed that was an easy argument
to run because no outsider had enough information to effectively challenge
it. But I’m astounded that Sim and Goff still think they can get away this
self-serving obfuscation - when thousands of New Zealanders have read my
book. These readers know that I haven’t just disagreed with the findings of a
jury, a high court judge, two courts of appeal and a ministerial inquiry,
I’ve demolished them. They know that the book isn’t just about the guilt or
innocence of Peter Ellis. They know that it identifies serious flaws in the
justice system that need to be addressed. They know that the Court of
Appeal’s ‘new evidence’ rule is just a confidence trick invented by Their
Honours to save themselves from ever having to admit that they’ve made a
mistake. And readers of A City Possessed also know that our Minister
of Justice does have the power to instruct the Governor General to pardon
Peter Ellis and establish a commission of inquiry. So who are Sim and Goff
fooling? Certainly not the readers of my book.
Since A City Possessed was published almost a year ago, none of the
individuals or institutions who appear in the book in a less than flattering
light, and no lawyer other than Val Sim, has seriously challenged anything
I’ve written. Indeed, legal authorities nationwide have said: Lynley Hood’s
got it right and the government can’t afford to ignore this book. So I have
to conclude that Val Sim is wrong. There was a miscarriage of justice in the
Civic Creche case, and my book has exposed problems in society in general,
and in the justice system in particular, that need to be addressed.
In the book, I argue that the Civic Creche case was just one manifestation of
an international phenomenon comparable to the great witch hunts of the 16th
and 17th centuries. In the classical sense, a witch hunt is a combination of
three separate, but related, phenomena: a moral panic, an epidemic of mass
psychogenic illness, and an outbreak of scapegoating.
Earlier this year, a correspondent to the Otago Daily Times suggested
that episodes of this sort are a force of nature, like a tidal wave or a
hurricane. Everyone is a victim, nobody is to blame, and the only way to
right the wrongs done to Peter Ellis is to compensate him from the Earthquake
and War Damages Commission.
In some ways that’s not a bad idea, because while there are clearly wrongs to
be righted, if we want to live in a society that values compassion, tolerance
and forgiveness over vengeance and retribution, and if we want to avoid setting
off another witch hunt - because the last thing we need is another witch hunt
- then demanding that heads roll will solve nothing.
In my view, there are no monsters in the Civic Creche story. I think the
problems arose when the winds of panic swept through Christchurch and the moral compasses of
ordinary, decent, well-intentioned people became so disoriented that they
ended up doing harm when they thought they were doing good.
That said, one of the lessons of the great witch hunts is that we shouldn’t
under-estimate the power of the authorities to either inflame or dampen down
these panics. Imagine what would happen if ACC offered financial compensation
to the alleged victims of alien abductions.
But we don’t need to imagine what happened in Salem, Massachusetts
in 1692. We know that the governor brought that panic to an end by declaring
spectral evidence inadmissible in court. Spectral evidence is the dreams,
vision and hallucination of people who believe themselves to be bewitched.
The fact that the governor’s wife had been accused of witchcraft probably
helped focus his mind. And in any event the community had been calling for an
end to witch hunting for some time, so the governor’s actions weren’t all
that remarkable.
James 1 of England is a far more interesting case. Earlier, as James VI of Scotland,
he was a rabid witch hunter. But in 1604 he moved to England and became a skeptic.
Which I suppose shows that even the most fervent demonologists can change
their ways.
One of James 1's most famous cases was that of 20-year-old Anne Gunther, who
foamed at the mouth and vomited pins. After questioning her closely, the King
concluded that Anne’s real problem was a desperate need for love. So he gave
her a dowry. Whereupon - according to the King’s physician William Harvey -
she married and found herself miraculously cured.
In 1634 William Harvey was sent by the King to examine seven Lancashire women accused of witchcraft by an
11-year-old boy. By the time Harvey
arrived three of the women had died in their cells, but the rest were
acquitted when they were found to show no unambiguous signs of witchcraft.
Later, the boy admitted that his father had put him up to it, and had told
him they would make a lot of money.
Even in Continental Europe, where around 100,000 witches were executed in
spasmodic bursts over a 200 year period, strong minded leaders could hold the
panic in check.
Between 1673 and 1684, in the German town of Calw, 39 children accused 77 adults of
witchcraft. But when the legal faculty at the University of Turbingen
examined the evidence, they rejected the children’s stories as fantasies, and
condemned the irresponsible way in which the parents had questioned their
children. The legal faculty also insisted that no witch be condemned without
reliable evidence and due process. And so, in Calw, disaster was averted.
An even more remarkable intervention took place in Spain. In 1610, Dr Alonzo
Salazar, a judge of the Spanish Inquisition, spent eight months conducting
reality checks on the confessions and accusations of witchcraft recorded
during a panic in a Basque country. Salazar’s assistants took the accusing
children to the scene of the supposed witches’ sabbat one by one, secretly,
in daylight. They were asked where the devil had sat, where they had eaten
and danced, how they had got in and out of their own homes, whether they had
travelled alone or in groups, whether they had heard clocks or bells and ‘any
other circumstances which might serve to clarify the problem and provide us
with sure proof of these things’. (I’ve spelt out these details because,
unlike Dr Salazar, Sir Thomas Eichelbaum did not do reality checks on the
children’s evidence during his inquiry into the Ellis case.)
Salazar found that the children contradicted themselves and each other. He
reported that there was not to be found ‘a single proof nor even the
slightest indication from which to infer that one act of witchcraft had
actually taken place’.
Salazar also conducted experiments on the ointments found at the homes of
accused witches. According to the witch hunters, when these embrocations were
applied to the skin they made a body turn invisible and fly through the air.
So Salazar rubbed the ointments on pigs. ‘Pigs might fly!’ he said.
Salazar’s colleagues regarded his findings as convincing proof of the
unreliability of witch accusations and witch confessions. At that point, the
Spanish people did not stop believing in witches, but prosecutors - having
realised that they could not distinguish between true and false allegations,
and that false allegations were destroying the social fabric - became very
wary of prosecuting them.
Witch suspects were still prosecuted when there was reliable evidence that
real people had committed real crimes (and they did find the occasional crone
who really had poisoned her neighbours well, or committed some other offence
commonly regarded as the work of a witch). But after 1611, no one in Spain
was executed for witchcraft. I can’t stress this too strongly: Salazar’s
reality checks brought witch hunting in Spain
to a complete halt - 80 years before the panic burnt itself out throughout
the rest of Europe.
So what can we learn from all this? I don’t pretend to have any answers.
Indeed, one of the lessons of A City Possessed is - beware of people
who claim to have the answers.
Nonetheless, I think it’s important to challenge the pessimists who say:
‘Nothing will be done about the creche case because it’s TOO HARD. The
problems are too big. The ripples spread too wide. Too many influential
people will have their careers and reputations called into question.’
Of course it’s not too hard. If South Africa can deal with
apartheid and move on without civil war breaking out, surely we can deal with
this.
In my view, we can deal with it, and we must deal with it - not only for the
sake of the past, but also for the sake of the future. Ten years on from the
Civic Creche case, the sex abuse hysteria that drove it continues unabated,
and the damage that hysteria is causing to the fabric of New Zealand society cannot be
ignored.
Currently, children as young as ten are being labelled ‘sexual predators’.
Prurient computer technicians are determining what responsible adults should
be allowed to see, read and hear. Respected school teachers - who have been
abusing nobody but themselves - have had their careers and reputations
destroyed. A one-legged 60 year old has lost his international sporting
career over a bit of tomfoolery that harmed no one. The explosion of historic
allegations against Catholic priests escalates daily. In my view, we’re as
much as risk today of having our lives, our families and our communities
ripped apart by false allegations of sexual abuse as the people of
Christchurch were in 1992.
Overseas countries are also dealing with these panics. Earlier this year
retired Canadian Judge Frederick Kaufman presented his long-awaited report
into the epidemic of historic allegations of abuse in Nova Scotia youth institutions.
That scandal began in the early '90s, when a paedophile who had worked for
the province in the ‘70s was convicted. Two more abusers turned up. Fearing a
deluge of lawsuits, the government hired a respected former judge to assess
how deep the rot went.
The judge identified 89 cases of possible abuse that had occurred 20 to 40
years earlier. None of the claims were tested by the usual rules of evidence.
But the government concluded it was in deep trouble, and the justice minister
made his pitch.
All survivors would be compensated according to the severity of their abuse.
To ensure speedy justice, no one would have to prove a thing. He might as
well have hung out a sign saying: Get Free Money Here.
When the 89 claims swelled to 500, the government simply increased the
compensation fund. And as the claims escalated, so did the hysteria. People
who had devoted their lives to the care of troubled and needy children were
pilloried by the media. Juvenile delinquents were recast as tragic choirboys.
No one checked old medical records, or interviewed former employees. The
government did not want to "revictimize the victims."
In the end, 30-million dollars was paid out to just over 1200 claimants.
Legal fees, counselling, and criminal investigations brought the cost to more
than $60-million.
But Judge Kaufman found that, by 2002, it was impossible to know how much
abuse there really was. The real victims (and he didn’t doubt there were
some) had been discredited along with the fakes.
Meanwhile, in Britain,
a select committee inquiry is underway into the police practice of
“trawling”. Trawling involves police officers contacting former residents of
children’s homes and asking them if they were abused, or if they witnessed
incidents of abuse, and informing them of the availability of financial
compensation. The inquiry was prompted by a concern that a whole new genre of
miscarriages of justice may have arisen from this practice.
Also in Britain,
in a case with remarkable similarities to the Civic Creche case, two former
child care workers were recently awarded maximum libel damages of 200,000
pounds each. The judge found no basis for allegations that the pair were part
of a paedophile ring that was exploiting children for pornographic purposes.
He ruled that those responsible for spreading the allegations had ignored the
principles of natural justice, and had included claims which they must have
known were untrue, and which could not be explained on the basis of
incompetence or carelessness.
There are lessons from all this that we ignore at our peril. They relate to
the harm being inflicted on society by current campaigns to protect children
from vaguely defined sexual dangers by criminalising and scapegoating a wide
range of people and behaviours.
These campaigns ignore the
realities of childhood and adolescent sexuality. They distract us from
serious problems related to the health, education and welfare of children.
They put a destructive barrier between all adults and all children. They
erode essential freedoms for us all. But the hysteria surrounding the issue
is so pervasive that anyone who suggests more thoughtful discussion risks
being branded a child abuser. In my view, we must insist on a more sensible
and compassionate approach. So what’s to be done?
Well - laws and procedures can be changed. It happens all the time. All
that’s needed is moral courage and political will. Where is Dr Salazar when
we need him?
Given the will to do so, ACC could throw out its counselling guidelines that
are known to induce false memories of abuse, and it could treat sex abuse
fraud as seriously as it treats other sorts of fraud.
Given the will to do so, CYFS could admit that its interviewers can’t
distinguish between true and false allegations of sexual abuse.
Given the will to do so, parliament could change the laws that make it easy
to convict on unreliable evidence of sexual abuse, and courts could insist on
reliable evidence, no matter how great the clamour for a conviction.
Given the will to do so, the Court of Appeal could correct its own mistakes.
But these changes won’t repair the
damage done by the Civic Creche case. I think what’s needed there is a royal
commission headed by a robust overseas judge.
Of course we shouldn’t expect too much of such a commission. It won’t fix
everything. But it will enable everyone involved to have their say. It’ll
help the truth to come out. It’ll bring a degree of accountability. It’ll
help clear the air, and in doing so it’ll help everyone move on. At the very
least, it’ll give the State the opportunity to acknowledge the magnitude of
the damage done.
In my view, a royal commission on the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission model is the way to go. A commission of this sort would offer
amnesty to those whose conduct is called into question in exchange for a
full, truthful account of their role in the case, while those whose rights
have been violated would be offered the chance to be heard, and to hear the
truth come out, as an alternative to expensive and divisive show trials and
administrative purges, and endlessly escalating compensation claims.
In the course of researching A City Possessed I uncovered many
scandals. The biggest scandal was the discovery that, since the mid-’80s, New
Zealanders have been calling for a commission of inquiry into the ways in which
sexual abuse allegations are handled in this country, but successive
governments have simply buried the problem. Since A City Possessed was
published the clamour for an inquiry has reached a crescendo. But still the
government doesn’t want to know.
So what’s to be done?
I want to close by telling you about an interview I did in the United States
20 years ago. This was back when Ronald Reagan was President, and the fall of
the Berlin Wall was still seven years away.
My interview was with suburban grandmother Molly Rush. Molly belonged to a
group known as the Ploughshares 8 who had entered a nuclear weapons plant and
damaged the nosecones of two warheads. At the time of my interview she had
spent 11 weeks in jail and was out on bail awaiting appeal.
By temperament I’m slow to take sides
on any issue, but I knew where I stood on the arms race. I asked Molly what
her group had done, and why they had done it. I asked her what they had hoped
to achieve, and whether they had achieved it. And I told her about a
demonstration I had attended.
I said: ‘One of my feelings was that in no way did anything that was said or
done influence any of the dignitaries at that meeting. They were so sealed
off by the police and the secret service.’
I think the philosophy she conveyed in her reply can be applied to everything
we do. She said:
”I think it’s important to counter that feeling of helplessness or
hopelessness that can lead to either violence or apathy. A couple of things
need to be said; one is that when you participate in any kind of public
protest to assume that you’re immediately going to change those people whose
whole lives are so committed to these policies is unrealistic. What you’re
trying to do is galvanise public opinion.
”Peace demonstrations, large and small, have served to create a climate of
public opinion that has finally made politicians address this issue. We need
to take heart from that.
”But beyond that you have to deal with the whole issue of effectiveness and
pragmatism. I’m a pragmatic organiser at heart but what I’ve learnt in the
past few years is that one can’t necessarily predict the results of one’s
actions. Some of the most profound changes have come about in situations that
seemed exceedingly hopeless and exceedingly unaffected by what you’re doing.
”I guess I’m instructed by the example of a young priest who climbed the
fence of a nuclear weapons plant. He received no media attention and spent
more than six months in jail with no apparent result. He was visited in
prison by Bishop Matthieson who has since become an outspoken opponent of the
arms race. Bishop Matthieson has said publicly that his meeting with the
young priest in jail was part of the process that lead to his conversion. Yet
if that priest had climbed the fence thinking - ‘I’m doing this to convert
Bishop Matthieson’ - that would have been absolutely absurd.
”So we’re not talking about acting to achieve specific goals, what we’re
talking about is trying to hang onto a vision, and to live out our lives in a
way that contains truth, and to have faith in the power of truth in the
Ghandian sense - faith that the power of truth can overcome wrong.
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