We Must Set the Record Straight

Peter Ellis--An Unsafe Conviction

At Contra Celsum we have previously called people's attention to what appears to be one of the worst violations of criminal due process and justice in New Zealand.  It has been dubbed the Christchurch Creche Case.  It involved the trial and conviction of one Peter Ellis. 

Ellis is now dying of incurable cancer.  His days upon earth are coming to an end.  He wants to be vindicated before he dies.  It should have happened years ago--but it is always hard for a justice system which has so many reputations to protect to admit a gross miscarriage of justice.  For our part, we became convinced of the innocence of Ellis upon reading Lynley Hood's A City Possessed--a book demanding to be read.

During the trial of Ellis events were witnessed by a young court reporter, Martin van Beynen.  Now, much older, Beynen recounts the Ellis trial(s).

 Peter Ellis, seen here in 2003, is making a last-ditch attempt to clear his name, and Martin van Beynen believes that should happen.

Ellis worked as a childcare worker at the Christchurch Civic Creche. In 1991, an allegation by one of his charges eventually escalated into a police investigation in which about 120 children were interviewed by specialist Social Welfare Department interviewers. About 40 children reported some form of abuse, some of it mundane, some of it fantastical and bizarre, featuring infanticide and cannibalism.

. . . . The abuse in Christchurch was thought to be well organised, top people were involved and somehow the perpetrators were so cunning they managed to get away with it for years.

It was soon clear that if Ellis had sexually abused children in his care in the manner suggested, he needed accomplices. By the end of 1992, police had charged four women creche staff and Ellis.  The women were discharged before trial but Ellis went on to be convicted of 16 charges relating to seven children. Three of the convictions were overturned when one of the children recanted.

The Civic Creche case is not an exciting case in the vein of intriguing murders and whodunnits. It does not contain puzzling clues or relationship dramas. Its central allegations are sordid and off-putting and it never grabbed the public attention it deserved.  At its heart, the case presented a simple question. Were the accounts elicited from the children reliable? No corroborating evidence, such as physical injuries, was available.

As a youngish court reporter, I saw the videos, listened to the children in court and heard all the evidence. My view was the accounts emerging from the interviews of the children were totally unreliable. It just seemed common sense.

The first problem was the lead-up to the interviews. Some of the parents were networking and had already asked their children leading questions before their specialist interviews. Some children had talked to each other.

The social welfare interviews were professional enough for the time but the children were hardly ever challenged, no matter how fanciful their answers. If the answers were inconsistent or incoherent, then they would be asked again in more elaborate form until an acceptable answer was elicited.

In many interviews it was not so much about believing the children but believing the children only when an implausible answer became more plausible. If they did not disclose or were unclear, they were brought back for more interviews. The children, most between 5 and 8, were recalling events from two or three years earlier.

Interviewers fed them tidied-up summaries of their most plausible stories and then told them to continue. As the interviews continued, allegations became more bizarre, as though the children believed they had to perform better to satisfy the adults. Some almost begged for the interviews to end.

The quality of evidence rendered the convictions against Peter Ellis not only unsafe but farcical.

Lynley Hood, author of A City Possessed, which Martin van Beynen calls the best review of the Christchurch Civic Creche case.

After 26 years people could be forgiven for thinking it's too late to start yet another chapter in the legal saga that has already featured two Court of Appeal hearings and a review by former Chief Justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum. The best review was in fact Lynley Hood's book A City Possessed.

Ellis will have to bring new evidence to the table. It will reveal that advances in how allegedly abused young children should be interviewed, especially against a background seen in Christchurch in the early 90s, throw huge doubt on the creche interviews.

The Civic Creche case is probably New Zealand's most important case in its illustration of how a justice system, with all its checks and balances, will always be susceptible to prejudice, public mood and paranoia. . . .  The small matter of a man wrongly convicted on flawed evidence needs to be dealt with.