The Christchurch Civic Creche Case
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	http://www.victoria.ac.nz/ipnz/conference/speakers/harlene-hayne.aspx retrieved December 10 2007 Prof. Harlene Hayne Department of Psychology University of Otago An Empirical Analysis of the Evidential Interviews in the Peter Ellis Case Professor Hayne On 20 November, 1991, one of the most extensive and high profile police investigations in New Zealand’s history began with a comment made by a four-year-old boy. The boy reportedly told members of his family, “I don’t like Peter’s black penis.” The boy was referring to Peter Ellis, a childcare worker who was employed at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre from 1986 to 1991.  On 26 April, 1993, Ellis faced a jury trial in the New Zealand High Court on 28 counts alleging sexual offences against 13 young children who attended the Civic crèche. Given the lack of physical evidence, the prosecution case was based primarily on the videotaped evidence of 20 children who had attended the crèche from 1986 to 1991. On 5 June, 1993, the jury acquitted Ellis on nine counts and found him guilty on 16; he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. In the years that followed, two appeals were launched against the Ellis conviction; both were unsuccessful. In the course of these appeals, a number of experts were asked to review the transcripts of the children’s interviews. These experts differed in their opinion regarding the quality of the interviews. Some experts argued that the questions were unduly leading and prejudicial, while others argued that the questioning was adequate, particularly for the time in which they were originally conducted. To date, however, there has been no empirical analysis of the quality of the questions that the children were asked. The overarching goal of the present study was to step away from “expert opinion” and move toward an objective analysis of the interviews in the Peter Ellis case.  To do this, we compared the quality of questions in the Ellis case with the quality of the questions in another high-profile childcare case conducted in the United States involving a defendant named Kelly Michaels. The Michaels case was similar to the Ellis case in many ways and, like Ellis, Michaels was initially convicted. In comparing the transcripts in these two cases, our goal was to determine 1) whether the interviews in the Ellis case were conducted in accordance with what was considered best practice at the time, 2) whether the interviews would be considered best practice now, and 3) whether any of the questioning techniques may have compromised the reliability of the children’s evidence.