http://www.evasion.co.nz/main/issues/june03/three.html
Evasion
Issue 5 Vol
The Fall guy
by Anne Mathers
Reading
Lynley Hood's exact and exacting account of the Christchurch Civic Creche child
abuse case, you imagine it must have taken a person of perfect composure and
delicate negotiating skills to get it written.
The case of four female and one male crèche worker charged with horrific sexual
abuse of numerous children in their care divided the small city in the early
1990s.
Charges against the women were thrown out, but Peter Ellis, the sole man
charged with the crimes, spent seven years in prison, and was released in early
2000 as one of
Ellis always maintained his innocence, even going so far as to refuse parole
hearings because it would be a form of admission. Hood allies herself with him
from the first and uses A City Possessed to systematically dismantle the case
against Ellis.
It is difficult to feel happy about Ellis' conviction after learning the
details of the unconventional investigation.v
Hood carefully records the leading interview techniques the child complainants
were subjected to, the suppression at trial of their more unbelievable claims
and the complete lack of any physical evidence.
But Hood's target is not just a group of zealous Cantabrian
parents. More boldly, she argues that the real blame for the affair lay with a
hysterical international industry of child sexual "experts", who were
responsible for a string of similar cases.
The Civic Creche case indeed fits easily into a string of bizarre cases that
rocked communities from isolated British islands to urban
No wonder that the woman who placed
The shirt is revealed as she stands to address the audience at the recent
Auckland Readers and Writer's Festival.
Immediately after she rises, she slips gracelessly off the rear of the raised
speakers' platform.
It is the beginning of a performance that forces one to rethink just how this
woman managed to write A City Possessed.
Reading her book, in all its meticulous 800-odd pages, conjures up a picture of
a forceful, composed person.
Yet her nervous, pedantic replies on this occasion teeter on the brink of
dullness as she carefully details her struggles to get her book published the
way she wanted it.
Retreating afterwards from the airless underground rooms of the festival, an
epiphany presents itself; you don't go into a small city and write a book about
its most controversial and divisive criminal case through dexterity and
charisma.
What it takes is the kind of careful, plodding determination that is
illustrated in Hood's appearance at the festival.
Hood often refers to the fact that she is a grandmother during her talk, and
she is indeed the kind of grey-haired, comfortably dressed woman that abounds
in
The "
That low-point was when her editor wanted to make drastic cuts and changes to
the book; Hood eventually parted from him victorious.
The book also documents her near-arrest for withholding a taped interview from
the courts - an episode she refers to as "Granny goes to jail".
With these personal struggles and the looming controversy at the release of the
book, it must indeed have been a lonely road.
Lynley Hood was taking on a huge topic when she embarked on A City Possessed,
and the size of the task is reflected in the heft of the resulting book.
A percentage of the work is dedicated to setting the case in an era where
feminism, a "believe-the-victim" ethos and new psychological theories
around sexual abuse coincided with devastating consequences.
Hood is obviously angry about what she sees as foolish sexual abuse "witch
hunts" and her book is a campaign of sorts against the movement.
Her strong feelings on the subject are equally obvious in both the book and in
her demeanour.
It's hard to underestimate the impact the Civic Creche case had on
And Hood could not have expected a pleasant experience when she went up to the city's deepest wound and poked it with a stick.
But despite her diffident character, the author obviously has a backbone of
steel and real belief that A City Possessed needed to be written.
As well as firmly believing that Ellis is an innocent man, Hood wants to see
the beliefs that saw him convicted stopped.
As she told the festival audience: "If the courts would tighten up their
acts, then the psychologists would find their industry of convicting people
would start to dry up."
It's an unpleasant job, but we should all be glad that someone was willing to
do it.