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The
Christchurch Civic Creche Case |
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Linley Boniface
(Dominion Post, 22 August) claims that child complainants in the Peter Ellis
case have been "mocked, slandered, dismissed, ridiculed, and stripped of
their right to speak". Hardly. She apparently
published an interview with two of them. Another parent/child family made
lengthy if bizarre accusations against Peter Ellis on national radio. The
recent parliamentary committee rejected the establishment of a commission of
inquiry into the case partly on the grounds that the child complainants did
not want to be exposed again to the requirement to give evidence. Moreover, I have never
seen any attempt to blame the children for what happened. That was always
laid fairly and squarely at the feet of the supposed professionals and adults
involved. Those seeking justice for Peter Ellis including the man
himself have always seen the children as fellow victims along with the other
innocent creche workers. So long now after those
sadly mismanaged events in Christchurch there is little chance of proving to
everyone's satisfaction what happened. The best that can be done is to
recognise that the convictions were wholly unsafe because of the lack of any
physical evidence whatsoever, the reliance by the court on very young
children's evidence obtained in ways that would be inadmissible and
unacceptable today and the suppression by the judge of parts of that evidence
which could have been used by the defence to demonstrate unreliability. |
