National Business Review
Changing times or changing gender
Do you remember the terrible tale of "The Unfortunate Experiment,"
told by Sandra Coney and Phillida Bunkle
in Metro magazine in 1987. This magazine story led to the Cervical Cancer
Inquiry, presided over by (then) Judge Silvia Cartwright
One revelation that caused outrage and fury among both the campaigners and the
general public was the taking of cytology specimens or smears from "the vaginal
vaults" of newborn babies (under five days old) without their parents'
consent
But Ms Hood reminds us that at the same time (1987) Dr Dianne Espie, of
Christchurch's Child Protection Team, was examining young children entering a
children's health camp for signs of sexual abuse. In 1988 she reported that
"of the more than 250 children who had passed through the camp the
previous year 117 had probably been sexually abused, one probably had not been
and the rest were in doubt"
If you can believe that you can believe anything. Far too many did.
Dr Espie examined these health camp children, without parental consent, and for
no good reason other than her evident conviction that all men were child
abusers.
She used a tape measure to measure the opening in the hymens of these young
girls and assumed that an opening of more than 4 mm was evidence of
penetration.
Not only did parents not give their consent for such vaginal measurements but
the first some of them knew that anything was going on was when police arrived
to remove the children from their homes and arrest the fathers.
Some mothers were told that if they did not divorce their fathers they would
never see their children again.
The test is now totally discredited. The damage remains.
Why did one set of smears cause so much outrage while
another went quite unnoticed? None of the babies will have any memories of
their tests, while we can reasonably assume that the health camp children knew
exactly what was going on, even if they had no idea why.
If the children's commissioner has read A City Possessed why has he nothing to
say?