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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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In 2003, I sat down on the sofa in
a comfortable suburban home to interview two teenagers. While normal, chaotic
family life flowed around us, the 17-year-olds told me about their memories
of being sexually abused as small children. I liked them very much. They were bright,
articulate, passionate and gutsy. But I did not enjoy our conversation. Four
hours later, when I stood up to leave, they were pale and exhausted, and the
girl looked as if she was going to vomit. I shut my notebook and realised
what a great story it contained - and felt ashamed of my part in it. You may, up till this point, be
feeling some sympathy for the teenagers, who were called Tom and Katrina in
my story. But let me give you a clue as to who they might be, because you
have certainly heard of them, even if you will never hear them called by
their real names, The interview was carried out in
Christchurch. And the kids, when they were small, were enrolled in
Christchurch Civic Creche. So now you might have an entirely
different view of Tom and Katrina. You might think they are liars. You might
think they have parents who, because they were paranoid or homophobic or
thought there might be money in it, managed to brainwash Tom and Katrina into
believing they had been molested. Or you might think Tom and Katrina
were helpless pawns in the hands of a coterie of police officers, court
officials and expert witnesses out to further their own careers at the
expense of a group of vulnerable toddlers and the man convicted of abusing
them, Peter Ellis. When I first read Lynley Hood's A
City Possessed, which has somehow come to be accepted as the official New
Zealand textbook on the case, it seemed clear there had been a gross
miscarriage of justice. But on second reading, I began to wonder why there
were such huge gaps in the story: why, in a book claiming to provide a
balanced picture between many conflicting points of view, evidence from the
children and their families had been treated with such scorn. I read everything I could find
from the trial before reading it for a third time. This time, I realised the
mistake had been my own: I had treated the book as investigative journalism,
but I should have seen it as a polemic. Hood's agenda is clear from the
contents page: she devotes twice as much space to her theories about witch
hunts and gender politics as she does to the actual trial. Evidence that does not support
Ellis is quickly dismissed, while the character, background and professional
credentials of those who believed the children are repeatedly attacked. The
children's parents are - there is no other word for it - demonised. Hood's big idea is that
Christchurch was seized by an outbreak of mass hysteria that extended not
only to an entire community but to all rungs of the criminal justice system.
You'd think this was a fairly controversial theory, yet it is now routinely
reported not as opinion, but as fact. Ellis is often referred to in the
media as an "alleged" child abuser, as if his conviction counts for
nothing compared with the kangaroo court of public opinion. What you will never see in a story
about Ellis is a quote from the families of the six children he is convicted
of abusing, or their supporters. Journalists never bother to call them. Of
course, the families don't even have their own lawyer, whereas Ellis has a
well-run and well-bankrolled campaign behind him. I've interviewed lots of liars,
and I didn't think Tom and Katrina were lying. Nor did I think they had been
brainwashed: they showed no signs of stress when they talked about being
interviewed by child abuse experts. They had a clear recollection of the
things Ellis had done, and were able to clarify some of the more bizarre
elements of their testimony. Most of all, they remembered how scared they
were of Ellis. After my interview was published,
Hood told a TV interviewer that Tom and Katrina could never be trusted to
tell the truth because they had been implanted with "false
memories", She regarded their testimony, then and now, as worthless. Ellis' case has so far been
through a jury trial, two high court appeals, a ministerial inquiry and, most
recently, a parliamentary inquiry. He has been given an extraordinarily fair
deal by the justice system. But Tom and Katrina, and the other
children Ellis is convicted of abusing? They've been mocked, slandered,
dismissed, ridiculed, and stripped of their right to speak. Now that's what I
call a witch hunt. |
