National Business Review
August 3 2003
"Toddler Testimonies" will go ahead
Verbatim transcripts of interviews
with children at the centre of the Peter Ellis case will be published in Sunday
papers after a ruling by the Crown Law Office said bids by Child, Youth and
Family (CYF) to block them would probably not succeed in a court.
The transcripts are being published
as a two page advertising spread underwritten by publisher Barry Colman.
Mr Colman has pointed out that the
transcripts contain much material that the jury in the case was denied access
to and that once readers see how the testimony used in the 10-year-old case was
developed from the interviews, the public will understand how seriously flawed
was the case made by the Crown against Mr Ellis.
According to the Dominion Post, Mr Colman, who has never
met Ellis or any of the children, says the interviews will show Ellis was an
innocent victim of a hysterical witch hunt and he wants a commission of inquiry
to prove it.
"You can see (from the
transcripts) how these children became more and more refined, from having no
complaint against Ellis whatsoever to be talking in fantasy terms," he
said.
"The public will see how much
gibberish these toddlers of three or four trying to remember things. It's crazy
stuff. They talk of trapdoors in the houses that don't exist, of being pulled
up in cages by Peter's mother."
The transcripts would show that some
children were interviewed up to six times, and they would show that the jury heard
interviews that suited the prosecution, he said.
Among other activities, Barry Colman
publishes The National Business Review.