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.