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NZ
Herald
August 9, 2003
Women and the Peter Ellis affair
Comment by Diana Wichtel
Let's see if I've
got this straight. Four women who worked with Peter Ellis at the Christchurch
Civic Childcare Centre were charged with sexual offending against children on
the same sort of evidence that convicted Ellis.
There were 60 charges in all relating to those arrested. But the women never
went to trial and the charges against them just disappeared. The women were
discharged before trial on the grounds that their chances of getting a fair
trial were prejudiced by their association with Ellis.
What? I'm no lawyer but that's like saying Nazi war criminals shouldn't have
been tried because their association with Hitler meant they wouldn't get a
fair trial.
The women never seem to be mentioned by parents of the creche children and
others who oppose any further questioning of the Ellis verdict.
If we are to believe the children in the case of Ellis, surely we must
believe them in the case of the women, too. If the women were also
paedophiles, why doesn't anyone care?
"Some people seem to think that because Ellis continues to say he's
innocent, he must be," wrote commentator Sandra Coney in 1999.
What Ellis says doesn't worry me a bit. What does concern me is what those
who believe so strongly that Ellis is guilty fail to say anything about the
women. As long as Ellis' conviction remains in place, they seem content.
It's not usual to consider that justice has been done when one person out of
an alleged paedophile ring is convicted.
This aspect of the case has always bothered me. It's even more disturbing
when you read the transcripts that publisher Barry Colman had printed at his
own expense last week, so bothered is he by the case.
As the transcripts reveal, Ellis' mother was also the subject of disclosures
of abuse. None of those who oppose further investigation into the Ellis case
seem to want to deal with that, either.
Bizarre. But then so are the transcripts. They make for gruelling reading,
not just because of the distressing subject matter.
There's child B, who, over five interviews, goes from fairly innocuous talk
about being changed by Ellis on a changing table to talk of trapdoors in the
creche and Peter's mother hanging children in cages from the ceiling, among
other outlandish horrors.
The interview featuring E, aged 6, is full of "Don't know. Can't
remember" and "Didn't do it to me", although when the
interviewer introduces something the child previously said, the child agrees
it did happen.
It's not so much the outlandish nature of some of the things the children say
that alarms. It's the nature of the questioning.
Q: What did he touch you there with?
A: I don't know.
Q: What, what?
A: His penis. I want to go.
Q: Yeah, I know, yeah.
A: Can I please go?
Reading this you can see why a parent involved in something like this might
be against any reconsidering of the case. You wouldn't want to have put a
child through it for nothing.
Some of the exchanges, as the children bargain to get out of there, break
your heart.
Q: I haven't got very many more questions because I know that you're not
keen.
A: How many?
Q: Just a couple
A: How many?
Q: A couple means two or three.
A: How about just two?
Q: Come and sit here.
A: Please, just two.
That's a 6-year-old. Interview? The word "interrogation" springs to
mind.
A lot of the questioning technique rings alarm bells, even in a lay person.
In a March 2000 piece in the same newspaper, Sandra Coney says of the 1999
Court of Appeal hearing into the case: "There's a 48-page judgment and I
wish all those apologists for Peter Ellis would read it".
To cast anyone concerned about the case as an "apologist" for Ellis
is unfair, but I read the judgment anyway. Well, most of it. I can't say it
made reassuring reading. The experts might disagree about the degree of risk
but it comes as no surprise to read that leading questions, repeated
questions and multiple interviews are not considered best practice by anyone.
It seems incredible that the full transcripts weren't made available to the jury.
They were hearing a lot of expert testimony on interviewing techniques and
should surely have been allowed to evaluate more than 12, with excerpts of a
13th, of 22 videotapes.
It's constantly being suggested by those who oppose another look at the case
that unease in the community about it stems from ignorance. Yet the petition
calling for a royal commission includes signatures from a media law expert, a
couple of Queen's Counsel and a retired High Court judge.
Clearly even to some in the justice business, justice has not been seen to
have been done.
I can't see a downside to the printing of the transcripts. The children's
identities are protected and if the case is going to continue to plague the
collective consciousness, that consciousness might as well be as fully
informed as possible.
No matter how many times Phil Goff says it's all over, this case isn't going
away. It won't for me until someone explains why, if Ellis is guilty, the
women creche workers originally charged along with him aren't.
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