The Christchurch Civic Crèche Case |
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A City Possessed: Reading Lynley Hood's
exact and exacting account of the Christchurch Civic Creche child abuse case,
you imagine it must have taken a person of perfect composure and delicate
negotiating skills to get it written. The case of four female and one male crèche worker charged
with horrific sexual abuse of numerous children in their care divided the
small city in the early 1990s. Charges against the women were thrown out, but Peter Ellis,
the sole man charged with the crimes, spent seven years in prison, and was
released in early 2000 as one of Ellis always maintained his innocence, even going so far
as to refuse parole hearings because it would be a form of admission. Hood
allies herself with him from the first and uses A City Possessed to systematically dismantle the case against
Ellis. It is difficult to feel happy about Ellis' conviction
after learning the details of the unconventional investigation.v Hood carefully records the leading interview techniques
the child complainants were subjected to, the suppression at trial of their
more unbelievable claims and the complete lack of any physical evidence. But Hood's target is not just a group of zealous
Cantabrian parents. More boldly, she argues that the real blame for the
affair lay with a hysterical international industry of child sexual
"experts", who were responsible for a string of similar cases. The Civic Creche case indeed fits easily into a string of
bizarre cases that rocked communities from isolated British islands to urban No wonder that the woman who placed The shirt is revealed as she stands to address the
audience at the recent Auckland Readers and Writer's Festival. Immediately after she rises, she slips gracelessly off the
rear of the raised speakers' platform. It is the beginning of a performance that forces one to
rethink just how this woman managed to write A City Possessed. Reading her book, in all its meticulous 800-odd pages,
conjures up a picture of a forceful, composed person. Yet her nervous, pedantic replies on this occasion teeter
on the brink of dullness as she carefully details her struggles to get her
book published the way she wanted it. Retreating afterwards from the airless underground rooms
of the festival, an epiphany presents itself; you don't go into a small city
and write a book about its most controversial and divisive criminal case
through dexterity and charisma. What it takes is the kind of careful, plodding determination
that is illustrated in Hood's appearance at the festival. Hood often refers to the fact that she is a grandmother
during her talk, and she is indeed the kind of grey-haired, comfortably
dressed woman that abounds in The " That low-point was when her editor wanted to make drastic
cuts and changes to the book; Hood eventually parted from him victorious. The book also documents her near-arrest for withholding a
taped interview from the courts - an episode she refers to as "Granny
goes to jail". With these personal struggles and the looming controversy
at the release of the book, it must indeed have been a lonely road. Lynley Hood was taking on a huge topic when she embarked
on A City Possessed, and the size
of the task is reflected in the heft of the resulting book. A percentage of the work is dedicated to setting the case
in an era where feminism, a "believe-the-victim" ethos and new
psychological theories around sexual abuse coincided with devastating
consequences. Hood is obviously angry about what she sees as foolish
sexual abuse "witch hunts" and her book is a campaign of sorts
against the movement. Her strong feelings on the subject are equally obvious in
both the book and in her demeanour. It's hard to underestimate the impact the Civic Creche
case had on And Hood could not have expected a pleasant experience
when she went up to the city's deepest wound and poked it with a stick. But despite her diffident character, the author obviously
has a backbone of steel and real belief that A City Possessed needed to be written. As well as firmly believing that Ellis is an innocent man,
Hood wants to see the beliefs that saw him convicted stopped. As she told the festival audience: "If the courts
would tighten up their acts, then the psychologists would find their industry
of convicting people would start to dry up." It's an unpleasant job, but we should all be glad that
someone was willing to do it. |