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New Zealand Press Council Case Number: 692 The parents of a child who was a
victim in a child sex abuse case involving Peter Ellis have complained to the
Press Council against an opinion article published by The Press in
Christchurch. The subject article was by a named free lance journalist whose
central thesis was that Peter Ellis may have been wrongly convicted, and that
an injustice might thereby have been perpetrated. The Council does not uphold the
complaint. The case brought by the Crown
against Ellis was that he sexually abused children attending the Christchurch
Civic Childcare Centre between 1986 and 1989 whilst he was employed at the
Centre as a carer. The complainants’ child attended the Centre and was one of
a number of child witnesses called by the Crown as part of its case against
the defendant Ellis. The case was heard before a Judge
and Jury at the Christchurch High Court in 1993. Throughout the trial, and at
all times since, Ellis has steadfastly maintained his innocence on any of the
charges contained in the indictment. Before and during the trial some of the
charges contained in the indictment were dismissed by the trial Judge but the
Jury found the defendant guilty on 16 counts involving seven children. There
was a guilty verdict on the count involving the child of the complainants, as
well as for other children. Ellis was sentenced to 10 years prison, and he is
presently serving the term. The defendant in the High Court
appealed the guilty verdicts against him, and in 1994 the Court of Appeal
dismissed three counts, on special grounds concerning one child witness who
retracted her evidence, but dismissed all other appeals. Ellis has continued
to maintain his innocence and instructed counsel to take a petition to the
Governor General seeking a pardon. The petition has been referred to the
Court of Appeal and a hearing is awaited. It is fair to say that since the
convictions the issue of the guilt, or innocence, of Ellis has been
prominently canvassed in the public arena. Not surprisingly the case has
attracted attention in Christchurch. On Wednesday, November 26, 1997 The
Press on its front page under the headline “Abuse cases ‘tip of the iceberg’”
printed a bylined news article dealing generally with child abuse (including
sexual abuse) of children, quoting from a statement of the then Commissioner
for Children, Laurie O’Reilly, that child abuse rates could be 10 times higher
than official statistics. At the foot of this article there was a reference
to another part of that edition of the paper to an article under the caption
“Opinion”, enigmatically headlined “Pity the abuses and those abused”,
written by the freelance journalist, John Goulter, in which, he strongly
doubted the guilt of Peter Ellis. This is the article about which the
complaint has been laid. The letters of the complainants,
first written to the paper’s editor, and then to the Press Council are
lengthy, well constructed and closely reasoned arguments that the opinion
article should not have been printed by the newspaper so as to give currency
to the proposition that Ellis is innocent. The position of the parents is
that if Ellis is innocent, their child who gave evidence upon which a
conviction was based supplied evidence which should not have been accepted by
the Jury as a basis for finding guilt, raising at least the possibility the
children’s evidence was the result of “schooling” by parents. Read as a whole
the opinion article was inferentially critical of the parents of the children
who gave evidence in the Ellis case, and that is the way the complainants
read it. The case of the complainants is that the foregoing are the
inescapable implications, even if they are not spelled out in the challenged
article. A particular of the complaint is
that the newspaper had linked two disparate views on abuse of children. The
front page news article “Tip of the iceberg” without qualification recognised
that child abuse was a social problem deserving of attention. However in the
same edition the opinion article “Pity the abuses etc” basically challenged
the correctness of the court decisions in the Ellis case simply by assertion,
unsupported by reasoned argument, or evidence. The complainants described
this as a “pernicious tactic” stating “the editor cannot have it both ways”.
This important argument to the complainants makes their point as to the
editor’s overall handling of the two articles, but at the same time also
significantly demonstrates the extreme complexity of the socio/legal problem
of sexual child abuse. The foregoing also reveals the
refinement of the arguments of the complainants, which were matched by the
answers of the editor, and the journalist who also responded to the
complaint. The Press Council’s decision is primarily based upon a fair
reading of the opnion article itself, and not on subsequent interpretations
or constructions of the meaning of the article that have arisen in disposing
of this complaint. No useful purpose is served in this adjudication by
canvassing all points made by either side during the exchanges over this
complaint. The complainants requested the editor to publish, under an assumed
name, an article putting the contrary view to the opinion expressed by Mr
Goulter. The editor was prepared to publish the article, as submitted, but
final agreement was not reached on the context in which it would appear. The response of the editor to the
parent complainants, and to the Press Council, lacked nothing in sympathy for
the parents’ viewpoint, which he clearly understood, but nevertheless he held
steadfastly to his position that the article represented responsible
journalism on an issue within the public arena, and about which there were
differing viewpoints as to Ellis’s guilt. The editor maintained it was a
seriously written article by a journalist honestly expressing his opinion on
a matter of public interest, which the newspaper published, adequately
indicating by prominent use of the word “Opinion” that the views expressed in
the article were those of the writer and not of the editor or the newspaper.
In a few words the defence of the editor for the article and its overall
treatment in the edition was one of fair comment and freedom of expression. The Press Council expresses no
opinion whatsoever on the substance of the debate concerning Ellis’s guilt or
innocence. The obligation of the Council is to determine whether, as an
ethical issue, the newspaper was correct in publishing the opinion expressed
in the article by the writer. Whilst appreciating the complainants’ viewpoint
entirely the Council has by its previous adjudications, which is affirmed by
this one, refused to uphold a complaint that might inhibit freedom of expression.
That is certainly not the way the complainants phrase their objections, but
nevertheless that is what they amount to in the end. The complainants seem to
be saying that on ethical grounds the newspaper should not have allowed, in
the way The Press did in this edition of the paper, currency to an assertive
opinion that challenges the criminal justice system which resulted in guilty
verdicts for an accused. For the reasons given that is not the view of the
Press Council. The complaint is not upheld. |
