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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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Stuff An Otago University academic has
aired fresh doubts about evidential interviews of children at the centre of
the 1993 Peter Ellis sex abuse case. Research findings by the head of
the university's psychology department, Professor Harlene Hayne, suggest
there is a "strong risk" their evidence was contaminated by the way
the interviews were carried out. Addressing the Innocence Project conference
in Wellington at the weekend, Prof Hayne urged the courts to consider the
case again. Ellis, convicted in 1993 of 13
charges of sexually abusing children at the Christchurch Civic Childcare
Centre, has always protested his innocence and is fighting to clear his name.
He served two-thirds of his 10-year prison sentence. After a High Court trial and two
failed Appeal Court hearings, a ministerial inquiry conducted by former Chief
Justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum in 2000 found that the interviewing of children
who gave evidence at Ellis' trial was appropriate and hadn't been undermined
by contamination by others. However, Prof Hayne's research
shows that questions put to the Christchurch children were much worse than
those done in a similar American daycare child abuse case in the 1980s that
Sir Thomas accepted in his report was a major miscarriage of justice. Prof Hayne analysed hundreds of
pages of verbatim transcripts of the pre-trial interviews with very young
children involved in the Christchurch case and in a similar case involving
New Jersey daycare worker Kelly Michaels. In his 2000 ruling, Sir Thomas
declared the Christchurch interviews were "best practice" and much
better than those in the Michaels case, which he accepted were badly flawed. Kelly Michaels, aged 23 when she
was arrested in 1985, was a daycare worker at the Wee Care Nursery School in
Maplewood, New Jersey. After a trial that lasted almost a year, she was
convicted of 115 counts of child sexual abuse and jailed for 47 years. She was released on appeal after
five years, with the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that the
"interviews of the children were highly improper and utilised coercive
and unduly suggestive methods". Prof Hayne found the Christchurch
children were each subjected to an average 400 questions by Social Welfare
Department specialist service staff, compared with an average 200 questions
in the Michaels case. "There is a strong risk that
the children's evidence was contaminated by the way those interviews were
conducted," Prof Hayne told the Innocence Project conference in
Wellington. "The courts should look at
this again." Each child in the Ellis case was
asked an average of 20 suggestive questions, Prof Hayne said. "Just one can give a wrong
answer in laboratory tests." She said the accuracy of children
was "terrible" when they faced large numbers of questions. The 400 questions each child in
the Ellis case was asked was double the number faced by children in the
Michaels case, yet Sir Thomas had said the Christchurch questioning was best
practice, Prof Hayne noted. "The standard of the
questions was not consistent with the best practice of the time, as a lot was
known then about the dangers of suggestive questions," she told the
conference. "The standard of the
questions in Ellis was not substantially better than those in Michaels." Prof Hayne said as a scientist it
was difficult to talk about certainty. "We will never know what
really happened," she said. "We can't reinterview (the Christchurch
children) now as they will have taken on well-ingrained false memories of
things that didn't happen. "This case has been a tragedy
for the children." The Innocence Project, a group of
scientists, writers and lawyers who seek to investigate possible cases of
wrongful conviction, is a joint venture between Victoria University and Otago
University. |
