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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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The Peter Ellis case is now headed
for the Privy Council with new evidence after the Government rejected a call
for a royal commission of inquiry. The request for a commission by
Ellis's lawyer, Judith Ablett-Kerr QC, was turned down in a letter from
Associate Justice Minister Rick Barker last week. He repeated a 2005 parliamentary
justice select committee comment that a commission would be no better placed
to deal with the facts of the case than Ellis's High Court trial in 1993. A spokesman for Barker told The
Press yesterday that Barker had decided no commission of inquiry would be
held. Ellis, who was convicted of
abusing children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre, said
the decision was not surprising. It would have taken somebody with
more political heft than Barker to tell former justice minister Phil Goff and
former chief justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum "they got it wrong", he
said. Although the Privy Council now
appeared to be his last resort, he hoped the Government's decision would
anger the New Zealand legal system and prompt people to say "enough is
enough". "We've had 17 years of this
nonsense," Ellis said. Ablett-Kerr said Barker's response
was "superficial" in that he had "brushed aside" her
request about "arguably New Zealand's most significant miscarriage of
justice", probably without reading the new research she had presented to
him. In her request she had outlined
the background to the case and had mentioned three new aspects, including
research from Otago University academic Professor Harlene Hayne, who had
concluded the children's evidence carried a strong risk of being contaminated
by the way the interviews were carried out. The children were often questioned
by their parents and then underwent a series of interviews by specialists
working for the then Department of Social Welfare. Ablett-Kerr said the Privy Council
decision in the Bain case suggested the Court of Appeal was wrong in its 1999
decision, declining to evaluate expert evidence she had put before it. She would now proceed with the
petition to the Privy Council. It would include evidence from Hayne. "At the end of the day, we
have to find enough money to get that petition over there," she said. Lynley Hood, the Dunedin author
who wrote a devastating criticism of the case against Ellis in her book, A
City Possessed, said Barker's decision was "cavalier".
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