The Dominion Post
August 5 2003

Creche case website welcomed
By David McLoughlin and NZPA

Putting transcripts on the Internet of what the children from the Christchurch Civic Creche case said is a good idea, an academic says.

It would enable people to see evidence denied to the jury and make up their own minds about the credibility of the children, Canterbury University criminologist Greg Newbold said yesterday.

Publisher Barry Colman, who spent $25,000 on advertisements in the Sunday Star-Times carrying excerpts from transcripts of evidential interviews with the children, plans to put unedited copies of all the case transcripts on a website this week.

His moves have been condemned by Child Youth and Family, Commissioner for Children Roger McClay and parents of some of the children.

The transcripts are the accounts of videotaped interviews conducted by welfare workers with creche children in 1992 after allegations that childcare worker Peter Ellis was molesting preschoolers. Parts were used as evidence in Ellis' 1993 trial, but the trial judge, Justice Williamson, would not let the defence play many tapes regarded as so bizarre that they cast doubt on the tapes played in court.

Ellis was found guilty of 16 charges of sexual abuse and served seven years of a 10-year sentence, protesting his innocence. Mr Colman's move followed a petition to Parliament calling for a royal commission on the case.

Dr Newbold, who signed the petition, said the tapes suppressed by the judge showed that the children were capable of wild fantasies.

"The jury should have heard them talking about shooting all the birds in Hagley Park, about cutting a kid's leg off and sewing it back on, about the killing of the little boy Andrew."

Evidence designed to destroy Ellis' credibility, such as claims that he talked about "golden showers" (a sexual practice the judge told the jury was "kinky"), was allowed.

Asked how publishing the transcripts without supporting material that put them into context could help anyone, Dr Newbold said people who read them might have their appetite whetted enough to seek the context.

Ellis' mother said yesterday she was not getting her hopes up over the latest attempt to clear her son's name.

She was concentrating on the attempt by her son's lawyer, Judith Ablett Kerr, QC, to have the matter dealt with by the Privy Council.