The Press
June 28 2003

Being Peter
by Matt Conway


As pressure builds around the Christchurch Civic Creche case, Peter Ellis refuses to be cowed by his child-abuse convictions, or life generally. In his most candid interview since leaving prison, he talks to Matt Conway.

Peter Ellis steps into jandals, throws on a jersey and heads out into the night. The nearest convenience store is only a few hundred metres away. For a conspicuous convicted paedophile, this could be a furtive dash.

Not for Ellis. At a time when known child molesters are being flushed out and vilified by communities, the public face of the Christchurch Civic Creche scandal is happy to go for a stroll. Even this week, amid a renewed media clamour as the latest bid to clear his name surged into Parliament on the coat-tails of 140 famous New Zealanders. A retired High Court judge and two former Prime Ministers are among luminaries to have signed a petition calling for a royal commission of inquiry.

"I had some anonymity three months ago," Ellis says. "Now people know what I look like again. Every- one's looking. They do it nicely, no hard, horrible stares. It just brings everything crashing back down on you."

In 1993 the creche staffer was found guilty of abusing seven children in his care (one complainant later said she had lied, and the relevant convictions were quashed). He served two-thirds of a 10-year sentence.

How Ellis has lived since getting out of jail in February 2000, and his repatriation to Christchurch, have gone virtually unnoticed next to the twists and turns of the case.

The Press went looking for who Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis had become after 12 years in the eye of the storm. Now 45, he invited us to his home and shared, over several hours, his thoughts on subjects as diverse as parenting, spirituality, sexuality, and life ambitions.

We saw his talent for art and devotion to animals. We heard his explanation for why he played the smutty provocateur with some of his former creche workmates. And we asked, after all that has happened, how he now feels about children.


* * * *


Peter Ellis occupies a modern studio apartment above a cafe in the south of Christchurch. He insists the exact location go unpublished to protect his landlady, who owns the cafe, from any fallout.

The space is a homely mix of pets, furnishings, leafy plants, books, and bric-a-brac. One of his pastimes is finding curios in second-hand shops.

A slab of wood fixed over the door has "ellis" wundaland" burnt into it.

He lives on a benefit with two zebra finches, a persian cat called Monty, and five canaries: Andy, Ziggy, Noeleen, Hattie, and Lizzard Woman. Everyone seems to get on.

Ellis is bisexual, as he has always been, but claims to have curbed the lewd behaviour he delighted in shocking his former creche colleagues with.

"Gay people probably are a little bit more outrageous, a little bit more flamboyant, because it's a defence mechanism. We're a little bit sharp with our tongues, we're a little bit double comparative (quick on the innuendo). For me, I actually was good at it, so I was perhaps a little sharper, went more over the top."

He says he got to the stage where he stopped using it as a foil and started pushing the boundaries.

"Straight people feel that they have a right to ask gay people about what they did the night before. It's almost like a gay person has a sign over them 'yes, you can ask what I did last night'. . . It's not right. They do not have those rights.

"So for me, when people asked me what was going on in my life, I got to the stage where I said 'stuff you, here it is'. The majority of it was true. Sometimes, if it made the story better, I would embellish."

Ellis says he adopted a "what can I do to shock?" attitude.

Today, Ellis claims to be subdued on that score. He says he occasionally buses to Christchurch's Chameleon club to meet men.

"I'd like a relationship . . . it will be a man in my life."

But he says he hasn't pushed it because of the baggage of his legal battle. "At the end of the day, the Civic (case) can be all-consuming . . . I live it, eat it, and breathe it. You don't get a chance to leave it behind.

"People might think they're big enough and brave enough to be my partner. There's no room."

Loneliness is not a factor.

"I enjoy my own company. That's not to say I'm not gregarious and nattery. But, you know, I'm quite happy. I can exist on my own."

Against one wall of his apartment is a claw-foot bath, stylishly painted in teal and gold. Even the taps are splashed in gold. On the floor is a pot of incense sticks. A yellow Teletubby toy sits on the floor and Lladro animals on the shelves; a lion, a bear, a tiger, and two penguins. Two small novelty chocolate penises, testicles adorned with hundreds and thousands sit unopened in cellophone wrapping, on a sidetable near the door. He rolls his eyes in reference to what was an off beat birthday present.

Ellis flicks between TV channels to catch news coverage of the petition. He is "overwhelmed and humbled" by this latest lofty swell of support.

The walk to the convenience store shows him winning favour with ordinary, hard-working Kiwis, too.

Ellis waves at a truck driving by. It is the local milkman, who waves back.

At the store, the young woman behind the counter banters with Ellis, obviously aware of his notoriety. She slides across his favoured brand of cigarettes almost before he asks.

Walking out, Ellis sees the milkman carrying a stack of egg cartons.

"Want me to sign those for you?" Ellis jokes. The milkie laughs. "Sure, why not."

Ellis says the reaction was similarly positive when news of the petition broke three weeks ago. People kept approaching him while he shopped at Hornby, asking where they could sign.

"I feel like apiece of polished brass, having been patted and stroked all day," he told The Press at the time.

It would be wrong to regard these fleeting displays of warmth alone as indicative of a significant shift in public sympathy, given the intractable clash of views over the case.

But when you put that support alongside the petition's high-calibre signatories and Ellis's own assertion that he hasn't been seriously hassled since leaving prison, the question has to be asked: as Justice Minister Phil Goff resists the growing call for a full inquiry, is Ellis receiving a people's pardon?

The room shudders as trucks rumble past. None of the pictures fall off the wall, among them three pencil drawings by Ellis. "I did art at school but I failed," he says. "I was too busy being busy."

One is of Marilyn Monroe, the familiar, wide-eyed, pouty pose. Another features two King Charles spaniels, with doleful brown eyes, lazing by a pond on a sunny day, ringed by daisies and red hot pokers.

Books on the floor throw up an irony: one of his favourite authors is Jonathan Kellerman, whose plots revolve around a crime-busting child psychologist.

Ellis moved back to Christchurch 15 months ago, after spending his first two years out of prison with his mother, Lesley, at Leithfield Beach, near Amberley.

He "can only applaud" the small coastal community for making him welcome.

Ellis says when he first arrived, a young mother approached him with a baby in her backpack. "She said the Leithfield parents talked about it at school and they reckoned I was hard done by."

It was an extension of his prison experience. Not once, Ellis says, was he bashed or threatened inside. He credits this to prison guards who sat through the creche case, felt he was wrongly convicted, and spread the word. That, and "the hard nuts" Ellis spent time with in Paparua Prison's maximum security wing, who he says were similarly persuaded of his innocence.


* * * *


It's difficult to tell how Ellis's life might have turned out if he hadn't gone down for abusing creche kiddies. "I was probably heading to be Julian Clary (the outrageously camp British television star)."

And now? "For all the squawks and shrieks about my being outrageous and flamboyant, I'm actually a very conservative person," he says.

Prison, he says, tempered his excesses.

"I'm perhaps not as spontaneous as I used to be . . . you've got to bear in mind I was 28 (when he started at the creche). I was a young person. If I'm still doing the same things at 45, for God's sake, then perhaps I'd need a psych report. But I'm not. I've seen a hell of a lot of things go under the bridge. I personally know murderers. I personally know politicians. I personally know all sorts of different things."

Ellis follows horse racing but doesn't gamble, listens to gay-bashing shock jocks on radio station The Rock ("I don't mind telling gay jokes"), and refuses to ,get a computer, in part because he fears someone could set him up by sending him Internet pornography.

It is impossible not to detect a certain serenity, a spiritual calm, about Ellis.

"It comes from being innocent. It comes from being able to lie straight in bed to go to sleep at night. I know my conscience isn't troubled. How about yours, Mr Goff?"

Humour remains an undiminished part of his repertoire. When asked what he aspires to, he fires back "Minister of Justice". This sets him off in a raucous cackle. When Ellis laughs, he grabs for air between yelps, as if someone is standing on his chest.

Pressed for a serious answer, he at first expresses a desire to work in the prison system ("I believe I've got a lot to offer") then much later responds to the question with "huh, I don't really care". He seems to mean it. "I don't have big expectations. I don't know. It's not a silly question . . . at the end of the day, if I'm tootling along doing fine, then thanks very much."

Ellis won't babysit any child other than his 22-month-old nephew, Jacob, who he looked after while at Leithfield.

"Believe you me," he says, "I've got plenty of people who support me that have got no problems about my looking after their children."

We ask a blunt question: do you miss kids? "Do I miss children?" he repeats, falling quiet.

"Off the record?" No, on the record.

After a pause, he answers: "Children gravitate towards me. Animals gravitate towards me. I prefer animals to children."