CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND, RITUAL ABUSE CASE

New Zealand Ritual Abuse Cases

• A number of child sexual and ritual abuse panics were probably a byproduct of a conference held in Christchurch in 1991-SEP. That conference included a workshop of Satanic Ritual Abuse which was run by a member of the Ritual Action Group. Immediately after the conference, the print and TV media published articles and broadcast documentaries which raised public awareness and concern over ritual abuse of children. New Zealand appears to be a focal point for multi-victim child sexual abuse cases. Two reasons might be:
  1. Since 1985 in New Zealand, child molesters can be convicted on the uncorroborated testimony of young children.
  2. Parents of abused children who claim to have been sexually abused can apply for government awards (typically NZ$ 10,000; about 7,000 in US funds). No charges or convictions are required as proof.
• Peter Ellis, 35, was convicted in 1993 of sexually abusing 7 small children at the Christchurch Civic Child Care Centre (commonly known as the Christchurch Civic Creche) where he worked along with 11 female employees. (1, 2) After one of the most extensive and expensive police investigations in New Zealand history, he was accused of collecting a number of children, bussing or driving them in a car to another location, sadistically abused them, returning them to the Centre, swearing them to secrecy, cleaning them up and calming them down so that they showed no signs of the abuse. He was also accused of sexually abusing children in the center's toilet area and in many other locales.

  The triggering complaint in this case was lodged by a therapist who specialized in sexual abuse problems, had a history of mental illness, and believed that Peter Ellis may have sexually abused her son. The complaint was made 17 days after the above mentioned conference. Her son never actually disclosed any abuse, either to his mother or during many interviews by the Children & Young Person's Service of the New Zealand Department of Social Welfare. The mother transferred her son to another day care center and subsequently accused a male worker at that center of also abusing her son.

  In 1992-MAR, Ellis was arrested on a single charge which was later dropped for lack of evidence. A meeting was held of parents who had had children in the Creche. A social worker gave a list of abuse symptoms: bedwetting, nightmares and tantrums (common events with both abused and non-abused children). Parent support groups were then formed. Networks were established to exchange rumours and suspicions. Some parents, without training in interview techniques, intensely and continually interrogated their children, trying to get them to disclose. Children started disclosing stories of bizarre abuse, including rituals involving gravesites, both human and animal sacrifices, urine, and feces. Allegations included:

  • forcing one boy to kill another boy named Andrew in a Satanic ritual; no boy was reported missing in town
  • inserting items into body cavities;
  • being forced to stand naked while female creche workers danced around them;
  • being placed in ovens;
  • being taken through tunnels, inside ceilings, across rooftops and through trapdoors;
  • being suspended in cages from the ceiling;
  • having lighted paper stuck into their rear
  • hitting a child and bruising it's knee (Ellis was in jail at the time the abuse allegedly happened).
  • Ellis engaging in sexual intercourse with a female staff member on the toilet floor while the children watched. (Ellis is gay)
  By September, Ellis and four of his female co-workers were arrested.

  The hearing began in 1992-NOV. There were 45 charges involving 20 children against Ellis and an additional 15 charges against both Ellis and his co-workers. By the time that the trial started, the most ridiculous and bizarre charges were dropped. Charges against the women were all dropped; 28 involving 13 children remained. Three charges collapsed during the trial when the children recanted. One of the children testified that "Cathy [an interviewer] taught me what Peter [Ellis] did". The defense attorney wanted to show many interrogation tapes to the jury. His theory was that if the jury saw children disclosing both memories of conventional sexual activity and of truly bizarre activity, then the jury would realize how unreliable the children's testimony was. The judge severely restricted the tape viewing, thus crippling the defense. Ellis is an openly gay person; it is not known how his homosexuality affected the trial.

  Ellis was found guilty of 16 charges involving 7 children. Half of the charges concerned children whose parents were counselors, social workers or therapists.

  At least 127 children were interviewed from 1 to 6 times in interviews lasting from 1 to 2 hours. A common pattern was that during the first interview, the child denied that any abuse occurred; during subsequent interviews, disclosures were made of an increasingly bizarre nature. Some detectives believed that dozens of children had been abused over a five year period - perhaps as many as 80. A local newspaper article claimed up to 200! Three of the charges (all of which produced guilty verdicts) related to the abuse of "Lucy" (a.k.a. "S"), who was the oldest of the children to testify. She was described by the prosecution as being "compelling and believable" . Her allegations developed according to pattern whose elements are commonly seen in MVMO cases:

  • Lucy was 5 when the interviews were made
  • she said that she had disclosed abuse to other workers at the center, but none of them could recall any such report
  • she had not mentioned the abuse for years, until after the case went public.
  • The initial disclosure occurred when her mother asked suggestive questions and described Ellis in a negative light
  • her first disclosure matched the scenario of one of her mother's initial questions
  • The Department of Social Welfare repeatedly interviewed Lucy in six sessions, years after the event.
  • during the first session, she asked 14 times that the interview stop
  • when details did not fit the accepted scenario, they were ignored
  • anatomically correct dolls were used improperly and produced conflicting stories
  • the interviewers used leading questions
  • the interviewers repeated questions (this conveys to the child the message that her answer is not acceptable, so the child will often try a different response in order to satisfy the adult)

  There were some logical problems with the trial testimony:

  • Lucy and others had no physical signs of abuse; the only evidence was the children's testimony
  • many of the activities that she described were not physically possible
  • the toilets where she said the touching occurred were visible from the main indoor play area where parents and staff were continually present. Yet none of them observed any abuse
  • Ellis would have had to abuse the children with the toilet doors open. It is inconceivable that frequent abuse could have occurred undetected
  • Lucy gave varying accounts of the state of her clothing, the state of Ellis' clothing, the location, and the perpetrators during her interviews.
  • one child retracted their story after the trial
  • transporting the children to another site, abusing them, returning them and cleaning them up had to be done within 90 minutes (even if no safety factor were allowed). Nobody saw him drive; he did not own a car; he can't drive.
  • parents visited the Creche at random times during the day, yet saw nothing. One local dentist in particular would often drop over unannounced.
  • there were many student teachers at the Creche and almost a dozen other employees; all saw nothing.
  • the children said that Ellis threatened them with harm if they told the secrets. But experts agree that such threats make disclosure of abuse more likely. The probability that none of the children would disclose is extremely small.
  Lucy retracted her allegations, 18 months after the trial. She said she had lied about the abuse, because she thought that was what the interviewer had wanted her to say.

  The New Zealand Court of Appeal reviewed the convictions. The Court rejected any criticism of the interviewing techniques used. Yet this is the key factor in the case, since there was no physical evidence. They overturned the 3 convictions involving "Lucy" but upheld the remaining 13 guilty verdicts. His 10 year sentence was not changed.

  On a TV New Zealand program, Dr. Stephen Ceci's, Professor of Psychology from Cornell University reviewed the interviews, which had been videotaped. He is one of the world's leading experts in this field (14). He said that the interviews were professionally conducted but unsound and could have led to incorrect statements. He felt that they were typical of interviews conducted in the US during the late 1980's. His main points of criticism were:

  • the interviewers did not examine alternative explanations for the children's allegations
  • they asked repeated questions; this often leads to different conflicting answers.
  • the children reported highly implausible events that were never checked
  Dr. Ceci concluded "In my view it is very unlikely that you could persuade children to be silent about that [abuse] for long periods and also to exert affection for the perpetrator which many of these children did. So on that level I'm exceedingly skeptical. I don't think the bizarre stuff happened. Does that mean nothing happened? Well, I simply don't know. No one else knows either except God and Mr. Peter Ellis."

  Ellis' lawyer, Graham Panckhurst said: "The single allegation trigger, parents painting the person as a bad person, the swapping of information between parent, the growth of allegations, and the combination of plausible and highly implausible allegations were all present in the civic creche case." These are common features in MVMO cases in North America and Europe.

  A complicating factor in this case is a claim by a woman that that Ellis had abused her two children while she was involved in a relationship with him. Workers at the centre found her claims strange, because she had frequently visited Ellis at the centre after the relationship ended. Ellis claimed that she also continued to visit him with her children after the relationship ended.

  Ellis remains in jail; he is clearly innocent of child abuse. His guards sat with him during the trial and spread the word at the prison that Ellis is innocent. As a result, he has not been subjected to the beatings that many people convicted of childhood sexual abuse have suffered. The staff at the creche were awarded NZ$ 1 million for damages when the center was abruptly closed on 1992-SEP. Parents from 40 families were awarded a total of more than NZ$ 500,000 (about 345,000 in US funds). The creche has since reopened. Parents remain deeply divided over whether any abuse actually happened.

  In 1996-JUL, information about a "smoking gun" letter was released by a New Zealand journalist (3). It destroys the credibility of 7 of Ellis' 13 remaining convictions. During research into the case, David McLoughlin found a letter dated 1992-AUG-28, a time when the investigation was at its peak. It was written by psychiatrist Dr. Karen Zelas to Detective Sergeant John Ell of the Christchurch police. Dr. Zelas was the supervisor of the social workers who performed the children's interviews; she was the prosecution's expert witness during the trial. The letter shows that Dr. Zelas knew that the evidence against Ellis was tainted by massive parental questioning of the children. Dr. Zelas wrote:

  "It is clear that L's parents elicited disclosures of abuse by Peter Ellis by highly leading questioning. N's brother and parents did the same. In N's case, the parents subjected him to intensive interrogation pertaining to ritual abuse between the three August interviews which were on consecutive days. N would then disclose in the next interview with Sue Sidey [the principal welfare interviewer] the information elicited by his parents the previous night."

  Ellis was convicted on 3 charges involving "N" and 4 charges involving "L". McLoughlin writes:

  "So many of the [48] charges against Ellis have been withdrawn, dropped during the depositions stage or were dismissed during the trial or by the Court of Appeal that the remaining charges must be seriously questioned. They came from the same flawed interviewing process that led to the others."

  Pressures are growing for an independent inquiry into the case. This letter raises some interesting questions about the investigative and court processes.
• Other Christchurch Cases Prior to the Creche case, there were a number of other multi-victim abuse panics in the city. It has been alleged that Dr. Zelas' involvement was a factor common to all four. Fortunately, all died down before any charges were laid:
  • the Ward 24 case based on manipulative interviews of children at the Christchurch Hospital
  • the Glenelg Children's Health Camp based on a mass-misdiagnosis of the children
  • the Spence Family allegations involving a father and his children
  • a belief circulated about a massive sex and kiddy-porn ring involving prominent adults in the Christchurch community - including Judges and members of the Masonic order.

References

1. The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1995-JUL-28, P. 3; 1995-JAN-9, P. 11
2. David McLoughlin, "Second Thoughts on the Christchurch Civic Creche Case; Has Justice Failed Peter Ellis?, North and South (New Zealand monthly), 1996-AUG, P. 54-69
3. David McLoughlin, Senior Writer, North & South: News Statement, 1995-JUL-19