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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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To cynics, they are self-serving
members of the innocence industry: natural dissidents who get a kick out of
backing irredeemable murderers and who enjoy casting aspersions on police and
the justice system. To others -- even if only a few --
they are crusaders for justice, heroes prepared to battle authority and
cosseted institutions to gain redress for the wronged. But though their persistence and
zeal are often dismissed as a sort of madness and obsession, sometimes
something else can win through. Convicted murderer Rex Haig would
probably still be railing at the stars about his innocence in the killing of
a crewman on his fishing boat had fellow inmate Dean Parata not drawn
attention to his case by taking prison officers hostage in Christchurch
Prison. It cost Parata a seven-year
addition to his jail term but gained Haig legal representation, which
ultimately led to a Court of Appeal hearing this week and strong indications
that Haig's conviction will be overturned. David Bain's case would not be
receiving a hearing in the Privy Council next year without Joe Karam's
one-man crusade. Arthur Allan Thomas would probably
still be regarded as the killer of Jeanette and Harvey Crewe if Auckland
journalist Pat Booth had not taken up his case. Who knows what would have happened
to accused rapist David Dougherty had Auckland journalist Donna Chisholm not
gritted her teeth and spent years trying to show why a dna test that
purported to put Mr Dougherty firmly in the frame was wrong. Though the innocence campaigners
have chalked up considerable success over the years, progress is often
tortuously slow and the cases they adopt inevitably come to dominate their
lives for years. Some will have to stump up their
own funds and devote endless hours, often after a busy day, to poring over
documents and evidence. That will just be the beginning. Endless phone calls,
visiting libraries, reading and interviewing witnesses will be required. They
will often become lightning rods for similar cases, or magnets to people who
just want to chat or pour out their hearts. Booth spent seven years
researching and writing about the Thomas case while holding down a fulltime
job as deputy editor of the Auckland Star. "I can say without any
exaggeration that there wasn't one day during those years that the issue was
not in my mind," he says. He is thankful his wife, Valerie Davies, was
as committed as he was, because the case put the family under horrendous
pressure. Their telephone was tapped by
police, he had to travel extensively at his own cost and was forced to
arrange legal protection for the family home in case he was sued. "I
knew all along that if I put a foot wrong, I could be sued or even end up in
jail. There was a fair amount of vindictiveness." Lynley Hood, whose book A City
Possessed cast overwhelming doubt on the conviction of Christchurch Civic
Creche worker Peter Ellis on child abuse charges, spent six years (17,000
hours) on her book. Of late she has campaigned for a
royal commission into the case and is also seeking changes in the process by
which sexual abuse claims are investigated and prosecuted. She admits her
book became a huge preoccupation: an Arts Council grant of $9000 and the $6
she gets for the sale of each book have provided little monetary
compensation. "Even when I was not working
on it I was thinking about it. Lying awake at night, on long walks. My
children grew up, left home and made their way in the world when I was
writing the book." Pharmacist Patti Napier, who has
supported David Bain for the past 12 years, can also count a heavy personal and
family cost. She and her husband, Lindsay, have
four children who are now grown up. The couple have tried to visit Bain in
prison in Christchurch at least once a month during the past 12 years,
driving from Dunedin where they live and work. The expense of petrol,
accommodation and meals has been onerous, but there is more. "We've set
up our lives around what we do on a day-to-day basis on how we support
David," says Mrs Napier, quick to acknowledge the help received from
many well-wishers. "I never thought it was too
hard. I have thought, though, `Gee, it's a long bloody way to Christchurch.'
" Joe Karam, because of his profile
as a former All Black, is probably the best-known of the current batch of
crusaders. He has never counted the exact cost of campaigning for Bain, but
reckons it must be in the millions. His 200 or so visits to Bain in prison
have probably cost about $100,000 in flights, accommodation and time lost, he
says. He has also funded numerous trips to see forensic scientists in Australia.
"It has been an enormous
struggle financially to the point a couple of years ago I had gone from being
reasonably well off to being a person with no money and living in a little
rented flat. Luckily that part of my life is now back in balance." Relationships have been virtually
impossible: "You can't maintain the focus and resolve necessary for
something like this and live a normal life." The tireless efforts made by the
campaigners raise the obvious question of why? Many people have concerns
about convictions but get on with their lives. What is behind the devotion to
the cause? Mike Kalaugher, an accountant and
passionate yachtie who lives on Waiheke Island, is the author of The
Marlborough Mystery, a book about the haunting disappearance in 1998 of
Olivia Hope, 17, and Ben Smart, 21, who vanished after a New Year's Eve party
at Furneaux Lodge in Endeavour Inlet, Marlborough Sounds. Lone yachtsman and general
rouseabout Scott Watson, who already had 48 convictions, is serving a 17-year
sentence for their murder. The evidence about the yachts that
emerged during Watson's trial was the first element of the case to spark his
interest, Mr Kalaugher says. "It just didn't ring true to
me as someone used to boats and how people observe boats . . . The size and
the amount of freeboard of the boat at which Olivia and Ben were dropped off
just doesn't match Watson's yacht." Those doubts started a
6<<1/2>>-year campaign, which included a book and documentary and
currently entails work on a petition to the governor-general. He struggles to explain why a
quietly spoken bean counter from Waiheke Island would spend six years of his
life campaigning for a man whom he admits he was once inclined to believe was
a "real bad bastard". Mr Kalaugher, a non-denominational
Christian, has long been interested in philosophy and epistemology -- the
theory of the method or grounds of knowledge. He defines the arcane field as
"the science of how you work out if you ever know anything about
anything -- ever". As for Napier's championing of
David Bain, Napier says it stems from their association at a Dunedin opera
company where she was a wardrobe assistant, and her husband and Bain were
tenors. Napier, 45, says Bain, the
murderer, just didn't gel with her image of him. "It didn't really make much
sense. It didn't sound like the person we knew. The more time we spent with
him and the more time spent dealing with the judicial system and trying to
work our way through screeds of information ... it didn't fit." All very fine, but again it
doesn't explain why she took the next step and devoted 12 years of her life
to supporting Bain. "I think it's because I
believe in people. I think people are more important than things and stuff. A
lot of people over the years have said `why don't you stop?' But it's not in
my nature to stop. David's still in prison. He still needs the support of
friends. He has no family. "If he said he had done it, I
would still support him. He would still need us just as much," she says.
Lynley Hood says her work has
always featured people who have been demonised or are highly controversial
figures. "It's the contrast. Where you
have a controversy like this that's so divided, the fascination is where the
truth lies. "By temperament, I'm the sort
of person standing on the footpath where people are carrying placards and I
say to myself `how can you be so sure you are right?'" By circumstances rather than
design, she became a campaigner for Ellis, whose guilt or innocence is
obviously crucial, she says. "But what matters even more,
is that the process which convicted him on such unreliable evidence still
exists," she says. "I was left feeling I
couldn't walk away without the ongoing process of sex-abuse hysteria being
dealt with because it just keeps rolling on." Pat Booth credits his dogged
pursuit of the truth behind the Thomas case to a stubborn streak, but says
his misgivings about the case were crystallised by the reaction of Thomas,
his wife and family to the guilty verdict in the second of Thomas's trials. "A wail rose from the family.
Thomas said `I swear I am innocent'. I simply just had to respond. "I think I can also be
obsessive and I think it's fair to say there was a degree of obsession,"
Booth reflects now. Joe Karam says he became interested
in the Bain case after he rang a group of Bain supporters, whom he had seen
in a newspaper photograph, to offer a donation. He explains his zeal for the
cause as a lifelong sympathy for the underdog. "I saw David as having been
walked over by a system that got it wrong. He was a totally defenceless
person. He never even had a family to help him." None of the campaigners
interviewed expected the burden they decided to shoulder would need to be
carried for so long. Kalaugher: "I never expected
to spend 6<<1/2>> years on it. I'd have loved to give it up years
ago but I can't bring myself to say `we'll write a letter to Scott Watson
saying I know you're innocent but I don't give a s... Just stay in jail
mate'." Karam says 10 years ago he never
dreamed the Bain campaign would still be active in 2006. The fact campaigns take so long is
"the nature of the beast", he says, but he also blames the
obstinacy of the criminal-justice system. "At any given time I could
have packed up and said `bugger this, I'm not going to keep on fighting these
guys. Their myths and lies and fabrications will be the final word on the
matter.' I wasn't prepared to do it." Booth says he was also countered
every step of the way by the system. "I had some major points but
not once did anybody in the police or justice system say `look, you could be
right. Let's have a look at it'. What they said was `you're wrong and we are
going to prove you are wrong'." Karam says he naively went to the
police with his concerns thinking they would be as horrified as he was. "The response to my visit was
they were going to dump the remaining evidence in the tip." The resulting outrage, however,
certainly helps sustain the fire and all the campaigners say they continue to
feel its heat. Karam: "I was just so
outraged at the dishonesty of people who should know better. Their motivation
was to protect a system rather than to uphold what it was there for." Booth says his astonishment
eventually turned to anger. "I found the whole process
totally shattering because I had a belief there was an incorruptibility about
the police and justice process and that was certainly not the outcome in the
Thomas case. "It was astonishment to start
off but when I started reading the notes of evidence (trial transcripts),
then there was a slow burning anger that they had been allowed to get away
with it. People had co-operated in deceiving the courts and juries." It helps to like the person you
are working to free, but it's not always necessary, the campaigners say. Karam calls Bain his good friend,
although Booth says he always kept a distance between himself and Thomas,
mainly to keep a clear mind, and they had very little in common anyway. Hood doesn't seem to think it
matters very much but says she gets on with Peter Ellis "well
enough". Kalaugher says Watson "seems
OK to me" while Napier clearly has established a bond with Bain. "I don't want to drive to
Christchurch and visit and then go away again. Going away is just incredibly
hard. I don't want to leave him there. I don't think he belongs there." Wry observers might wonder if the
innocence campaigners are always in full possession of their faculties but
their stamina and indefatigability can only inspire admiration. They may seem like misguided Don
Quixotes tilting at windmills but, as has been shown by their points on the
board, that doesn't mean they are necessarily wrong. . THE CAMPAIGNS * David Bain: Accused of murdering
five family members in Dunedin in June, 1994. Convicted in 1995. Last week,
the Privy Council in London agreed to review his case. * Arthur Allan Thomas: Accused of
murdering Pukekawa couple Jeanette and Harvey Crewe in 1970. Pardoned in
1979. * Peter Ellis: Accused of sexually
abusing 13 children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Creche. Convicted
in 1993 of abusing seven children. His case has been the subject of various
reviews and petitions and his lawyer, Judith Ablett-Kerr, is pursuing an
appeal to the Privy Council. * David Dougherty: Accused of
raping a neighbour in 1992. His conviction was overturned in 1997 after the
work of Auckland journalist Donna Chisholm, and he was acquitted at his
retrial. * Scott Watson: Accused of
murdering Olivia Hope and Ben Smart in 1998. Convicted in 1999. * Rex Haig: Accused of murdering
his tuna-boat crewman Mark Roderique in 1994. Convicted in 1995 and paroled
in 2004. His insistence on his innocence led to a prison siege in 1997 which
gained undertakings to review his case, and he has attracted renewed
political and media attention over the past three years leading to this
week's Court of Appeal hearing. -------------------- CAPTION: Innocence industry: campaigning
for someone considered wrongly convicted can be a daunting enterprise. Photo:
Dean Kozanic Pat Booth Donna Chisholm Mike Kalaugher Lynley Hood Joe Karam
Patti Napier |
