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New Zealand
Listener
October 19, 2002
How to stop a witchhunt
by Lynley Hood
In this abridged version of her address to this year's Skeptics
Conference, author Lynley Hood makes the case for not allowing the Peter
Ellis story to die.
I've just received my first bad review for A City Possessed. It was written by Val Sim, Chief Legal Counsel
for the Ministry of Justice, on the instructions of Phil Goff. When he
released the review, Goff said he had read “significant parts” of A City
Possessed and had found it 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.
So it seemed ironic that, immediately after giving Sim's review his blessing,
Goff released long-suppressed documents about the 1975 Indonesian invasion of
East Timor. These showed 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. 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 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
Albert Speer put it: "Being in a position to know and nevertheless
shunning knowledge creates direct responsibility for the consequences."
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 settle the matter.
Prior to the publication of A City Possessed no outsider could
effectively challenge that argument. But I'm astounded that Sim and Goff
think they can get away with this self-serving obfuscation when thousands of
New Zealanders have read my book. These readers know that the book isn't just
about the guilt or innocence of Peter Ellis. They know that the Court of
Appeal's "new evidence" rule is 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? Not the readers of my book.
In the 11 months since A City Possessed was published, 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 Sim is wrong. There
was a miscarriage of justice in the Civic Crèche case, and my book has
exposed flaws in the justice system that need to be addressed.
In the book, I argue that the Civic Crèche case was 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
Commission.
That's actually not a bad idea, because although 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, 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
underestimate the power of the authorities to inflame, or dampen down, these
panics.
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 Basque country. Salazar's assistants
took the accusing children to the scene of the supposed witches' sabbath one
by one, secretly, in daylight. The children were asked where the devil sat,
where they ate and danced, how they got in and out of their homes, whether
they travelled alone or in groups, whether they heard clocks or bells and
"any other circumstances which might serve to clarify the problem".
(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'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 neighbour's well, or committed offence commonly
regarded as the work of a witch). But Salazar's reality checks brought witch
executions in Spain to a
complete halt 80 years before the panic burnt itself out throughout the rest
of Europe.
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 ripples spread too wide. Too many influential people will have their
careers and reputations called into question.”
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 Crèche 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 10 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 at 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
Judge Frederick Kaufman presented his 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 that 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 "revictimise the victims".
Eventually, $30 million 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.
In Britain,
a select committee inquiry is currently under way 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 new
genre of miscarriages of justice may have arisen from this practice.
Also in Britain,
in a case with remarkable similarities to the Civic Crèche case, two former
child care workers were recently awarded maximum libel damages of £200,000
each. The judge found no basis for allegations that the pair were part of a
paedophile ring. He ruled that those responsible for spreading the
allegations had ignored the principles of natural justice, and had included
claims that they must have known were untrue, and that 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. 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.
Given the will to do so, ACC could abandon 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, Children Youth and Family Services could admit that
its interviewers can't distinguish between true and false allegations of
sexual abuse.
Given the will to do so, Parliament could revoke 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 Crèche 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
highlight the policies, procedures and laws that need to change.
A royal commission on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
model would be a good way to go. This 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 accounts of others, 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 of all 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. A commission of
inquiry into the Christchurch Civic Crèche case would finally address this
issue.
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