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The Press
September 4, 2003.
Perspective
Civic Creche: Who can you really believe?
How valid is the evidence in the
Civic Creche trial?
Left, Bernard
Robertson suggests an inquiry is needed into the case and questions whether
psychologists do more harm than good, while, right, Chris Goddard and Neerosh
Mudaly ask why adults choose not to hear what abused children have to say.
Psychologists regularly give opinions
which result in families being broken up, people going to jail, people being
released from or kept in jail. This is a house of cards and the Ellis case is
the card that could bring it all tumbling down.
An inquiry is needed into the case
by Bernard Robertson
Bernard
Robertson, editor of The New
Zealand Law Journal and co-author of
Interpreting Evidence: Evaluating Forensic Science in the Courtroom (John
Wiley, UK 1995) and of Cross on Evidence (NZ ed)
Parents know that children are different. Their frame of reference is
different, they have little understanding of the consequences of their
actions, sometimes they are contrary, sometimes keen to please.
Yet in the early 1990s, the psychological mantra was "children never
lie". Even if this is limited to saying that children never deliberately
say something they know is untrue, parents know this is not right. Children
will lie to stay out of trouble, or to receive a benefit.
The proper point in psychology was that for therapeutic purposes one takes
what clients say at face value. One does not say "well that sounds
nonsense to me, get a grip of yourself’. But to accept that what the client
is saying is also an accurate reflection of reality is a leap of faith which
has no justification. But this is precisely what psychologists, and less
well-qualified people who call themselves "sex abuse counsellors” or
whatever, did in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Sadly, psychologists are notoriously gullible. In controlled studies with
prepared scripts, no psychologist ever detected a malingerer. The whole
split-personality farce was just a case of clever psychopaths feeding
psychologists what they wanted to hear. There has never been a proven
instance of split personality but every psychologist wants to find one and
publish articles about it. This
gullibility extended itself into fury at judges throwing out psychological
evidence about children in court cases. The common law developed various
ritual warnings that had to be given to juries in sexual offences and with
child witnesses. No doubt these rituals confused juries and resulted in some
wrongful acquittals. But in this area of the law as in others it is better
that the guilty go free than that the innocent are convicted. It is not clear
that psychologists accept that, however, and some of what they and others are saying is dangerously
close to saying that Peter Ellis and others must remain convicted so as to
help with the therapy of undoubtedly disturbed people.
In the 1980s, evidence was given in court in sex abuse cases by half-trained
counsellors and others which was rightly rejected by the Court of Appeal. It
was rejected because it was illogical and did not prove what the witnesses
seemed to think it proved. Rather than learn from the experience, the
psychological lobby managed to get section 23G of the Evidence Act passed.
This enables psychologists to give evidence about all sorts of ill-defined
things. In particular they can give evidence about whether a child’s
behaviour is "compatible or incompatible" with sexual abuse. This is meaningless. There is no behaviour
which is incompatible with sexual abuse, so all of us, all the time, exhibit
behaviour that is compatible with sexual abuse. "Compatible with"
does not mean "evidence for" or "supporting" but that is how surveys show lawyers, police, and perhaps jurors understand it.
Despite the latitude which section 23G gives, it seems that psychologists are
unable to stay within its bounds. Two recent Court of Appeal cases threw out
evidence given by experienced witnesses who have given evidence in many other
cases, one of them Dr Karen Zelas, who figured in the Christchurch creche case. Now, appeals
represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Many people do not appeal even against convictions because they cannot
afford it or because they want to put it behind them and get on with their
lives. If an appeal case shows that a prominent psychological witness has
misunderstood the boundaries of section 23G, then it seems to me that there
should be an inquiry and a re-examination of cases in which that witness gave
evidence, in order to ensure that the same errors were not committed in those
cases.
This is why there needs to be an inquiry into the Peter Ellis case, and this
is the reason why the establishment is vigorously resisting an inquiry. It is
not just a matter of the guilt or innocence of Peter Ellis but of (among
other things) the whole functioning of the judicial system and the role of
psychologists in it.
The Court of Appeal in the 1980s believed that psychology would “grow as a
science" and things would improve. Sadly, this will not happen.
Psychology is not a science. It has no agreed theoretical foundation and
after a century of floundering around has failed to come up with any general
theory of human behaviour. The differences between schools of psychology are
not about detail, they are about fundamentals.
Nor does psychology "grow". While physical sciences constantly
refine and expand their understanding of the world, psychology is swept by new
ideas which wipe out everything that went before. When the sex abuse
diagnostic manual is revised it is completely rewritten and often contradicts
what was in previous editions. Psychology is no nearer a general theory than
it was 100 years ago.
Nor is psychology of much practical value. There is no evidence that
counselling does any good, and plenty of evidence that it does harm. To the
extent that talking to someone can be valuable for some people, no
theoretical knowledge is required to make you a good listener. Most
psychological problems come from brain chemistry and can be alleviated with
drugs, diet, and exercise. Evidence
from controlled studies is that psychologists are no better at predicting
future dangerousness than schoolchildren and secretaries.
Yet psychologists regularly give opinions which result in families being
broken up, people going to jail, people being released from or kept in jail.
This is a house of cards and the Ellis case is the card that could bring it
all tumbling down.
Child death inquiries from around
the world have repeatedly shown that we do not want to talk to child victims
and do not listen when they try to reveal what is happening to them.
Why adults choose not to hear what abused children
have to say
by
Chris Goddard and Neerosh Mudaly
Dr Chris
Goddard is director of the Child Abuse and Family Violence research unit at
Monash University, Melbourne. Dr Neerosh Mudaly is senior counsellor with the
Australian Childhood Foundation.
Children
and young people who have been abused and neglected are rarely heard. It is
as if they are beaten into silence, neglected by the community and the State
as well as by abusive adults. The reality may be that we do not want to hear
what they say, that their words are too painful to absorb. They are silenced
by our talk of cases, notifications, investigations, and performance targets.
Child death inquiries from around the world have repeatedly shown that we do
not want to talk to child victims and do not listen when they try to reveal
what is happening to them.
Victoria Climbie, an eight-year- old West African child, died in London after shocking
abuse by her aunt and her aunt's boyfriend. Beaten, starved, and burned, she
was wrapped in a bin liner and left in her own excrement in an icy bathroom.
Many professionals failed Victoria.
After they received reports, police decided there were no crimes to
investigate — without speaking to her.
In Australia,
Daniel Valeric also had more than 100 bruises. He spoke few words. His older
brother, aged four, had a wider vocabulary and could describe what was
happening. Sometimes even direct reports from a child are not enough.
We know about these fatal failures only because the media ensured Daniel's
and Victoria's
voices and silences carried beyond the grave. It is as if only posthumous
complaints repeated and reported by journalists are loud enough to be heard.
Crimes against children are committed in hundreds of Australian homes every
day. In spite of the mortality and morbidity rates, there is scandalously
little research.
How the children who have been assaulted think and feel about their traumatic
experiences has remained largely unexplored. Research we have conducted at Monash University suggests children and young
people who have been abused can contribute a great deal to our understanding
of violence in the home.
One 11-year-old girl understood only too well why she had been sexually
abused. She saw herself as the "easiest target". "It's too
difficult to go out into a shopping centre . . . and catch whoever comes into
the toilet . . . I was there at the time . . . I was young
and did not know what it was."
A teenager, sexually abused since infancy, thought such assaults were
"normal". Only when she started secondary school did she begin to
learn that her father's abuse was out of the ordinary.
Children also have clear insights into the causes of abuse. A 12-year- old
understood: "They are picking on you because you are smaller than
them." It is ". . . the way they've been treated by their parents .
. . because they have had it done to them they lash out . . . they don't know
any way to channel their anger . . . that's how they've been shown, that's
how they've seen it". An 11-year-old boy:". . . he needed help, so he
made someone else need help even worse."
Children and young people understand the effects of abuse. "I had to
grow up too quickly and I just feel that I missed out on childhood pretty
much, which is a pretty huge thing to cope with . . . I really struggle with
that . . . you have to grow up very fast in that sort of situation, otherwise
you don't survive. It's as simple as that." Another young person
described how abuse "just creeps into every part of your life".
A number of children described how the abuse would always be with them. A
13-year-old boy: "I think it will be there really the rest of my
life." Children can understand the sense of complete powerlessness.
"I didn't have any control over my life . . . so I started controlling my
food; I would either eat it and throw it up again, or I wouldn't eat."
Perhaps we would listen more carefully if we realised how difficult it is for
the children to tell. A 13-year-old boy: "I did, but I didn't want to
tell. I wanted to but didn't want to . . . I was thinking, if I told and he
found out, I would be in serious trouble." Another child told why it was
hard to disclose: "Probably because some things like that are
embarrassing and because some people hadn't believed me." It took some
children years to tell: "They threatened me, 'if you don't do this I'll
do this to you'."
Fear features strongly in some accounts. One 11-year-old explained what it
was like to disclose abuse at the age of eight; in a loud voice he told how
he was "frightened, very frightened".
Some children also have remarkable insight into how some adults minimise the
abuse of children. A 12-year-old girl, subject to abuse and a witness to
domestic violence: "They don't want to believe the truth, they just want
to believe the easiest side . . . the simplest basically . . . They don't
want to hear the truth because the truth is so much harder to understand . .
."
Our failure to listen closely to children who have been abused contributes to
every child's vulnerability. A system that refuses to release essential data
- or does not collect it in the first place — does not have child protection
as its priority. A system that obstructs or prohibits research aids and abets
the abuser rather than the victim - holds up a ghastly mirror to us all.
It reflects a world where it is preferred that victims and their advocates
remain silent, where the "simplest" and "easiest" options
for adults are chosen, all because the truth is "harder to
understand".
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