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Sunday Star Times
August 24, 2003
Creche children deserve our sympathy
by Frank Haden
I didn't think we'd hear about Peter Ellis again until parliament considers
the petition calling for a royal commission of inquiry into his unjustified
conviction.
But the ritual sex abuse industry doesn't like the way things are going.
There are too many news stories, too many prestigious names on the petition,
too many respected lawyers who want to see the justice system itself brought
to justice.
At stake is the public's right to trust in the system, now under a deep
shadow that won't go away until respect for the facts is restored to its
place ahead of rumour, panic and contrived accusations.
To thwart the petition movement, strings are being pulled behind the scenes,
past favours called in and all of a sudden, we have an anti-Ellis campaign.
The two central characters in the Civic Creche case, now aged 17, have been
thrust back into the public eye, this time named "Tom" and
"Katrina".
They feature as Bart Dogwood and Kari Lacebark in Lynley Hood's acclaimed
study of the Ellis case, A City Possessed, required reading for anyone
seeking to offer an opinion on the Ellis case. Especially Phil Goff.
Tom and Katrina's fairytales started the witch-hunt that ended with his
imprisonment. It was informed by the lists of "symptoms" in Pamela
Hudson's notorious book Ritual Child Abuse, encouraged by disgraceful $10,000
ACC payouts to 40 creche families claiming sex abuse and boosted by the view
all men are potential rapists and pedophiles.
Excerpts from the tales, under the names B and K, featured in a Sunday
Star-Times advertisement on August 3, with full transcripts on
www.peterellis.co.nz. Now B and K claim they can "remember" being
abused by Ellis.
Poignantly, they are upset they may be considered liars.
They are to be pitied, not condemned, for what they said under interrogation.
They are not liars, now or then. They are simply brainwashed.
In 1992 they believed what they said was true because they trusted their
mentors, their parents and the relentless social workers who questioned them
for hours at a time. Now they believe it because those implanted false
memories are indistinguishable from their real memories.
Pathetically, Tom says he stands by everything he said when he was little but
gives the game away when he adds, "Now I can make more sense of it ...
when you're a little kid, you think adults are always telling you the
truth". Exactly.
Of course Tom and Katrina still believe Ellis abused them, as they believed
it when they succumbed to pressure in 1992, after saying nothing for months
about abuse.
Tom's mother didn't question him until after she heard Ellis had been
arrested. The next day she asked him if Ellis had ever touched his bottom or
penis. He replied, "Peter wouldn't do that to me. He's my friend".
Later, after more close questioning at home, Tom told an interviewer Ellis
had done both these things but when he was lying on the creche toilet
changing table "because I done poos".
This is the same Tom who was to let his imagination run wild when he found he
could satisfy his interrogators with stories about anal and oral sex. At one
stage he had blazing paper shoved up his anus by Ellis, who also threw him
down trapdoors and hung him up in a cage.
He also said Ellis took him and Katrina to a party where women pulled down
their pants, showed their vaginas "for some stupid reason" and did
"clever tricks with their vaginas" for the edification of about 20
men in black with slanty eyes playing guitars.
Tom and Katrina eventually "disclosed" to their interviewers Ellis
had invaded their bodies with knives, sticks and his penis, drawing blood,
and kicked Tom in the balls.
While they were at it, they said Ellis's mother had joined in the abuse,
hanging Tom up in a cage from the ceiling and kicking Katrina in the groin.
I wonder what Tom and Katrina really feel about all this. As children they
were subjected to weeks of questioning at home before they got into the
clutches of the official interrogation system, where outrageous leading
questions eventually elicited satisfactory allegations.
Now we find a psychiatrist involved in the 1992 interrogations of Tom and
Katrina warned police about the dangers of parental indoctrination. It is
clear, the psychiatrist's letter says, that Katrina's parents elicited
accusations of abuse by highly leading questioning, and Tom's brothers and
parents did the same.
In Tom's case, the letter says, the parents subjected him to "intensive
interrogation" about ritual sex abuse between three key interviews on
consecutive days. Tom would then "disclose" in his next interview
the information elicited by his parents the previous night.
When they read of this expert warning, Tom and Katrina may still insist they
remember the abuse. My guess is they will.
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