BY JOAN SHIELDS
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand - Renewed calls are being made for a public inquiry into the 1992-93 police investigation of the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre.

On March 16, the Employment Court ordered the Christchurch City Council to pay more than NZ$1 million compensation to 13 workers at the center who were dismissed in 1992 amid allegations of child sex-abuse.

The largest of the personal grievance payouts will go to four women child-care workers who were arrested on child- abuse charges one month after the city council closed the center in September 1992. These charges were thrown out of court in March and April 1993.

Another former worker at the child-care center, Peter Ellis, is well into his second year of a 10-year prison sentence for 16 charges of sexually abusing children in his care. When first arrested in March 1992, 45 charges were laid against Ellis.

Late last year, New Zealand's Court of Appeal declared that it found no reason to overturn the jury's verdict. This is despite the revelation during the hearing that one of the children who testified against Ellis - and was the basis of three charges against him - had retracted her testimony, declaring she had made it up.

Ellis has also been refused legal aid to continue his challenge.

Among the charges against Ellis were claims that he forced children at the center to drink urine and eat feces, touched children in their anal and genital areas with needles, and put sticks in their anuses. The women had each faced several charges of indecent assault and one of sexual violation.

The prosecution case was based almost solely on videotaped interviews conducted by Social Welfare Department interviewers. In all, 118 children were questioned. The case that went to court was based on more than 60 taped interviews with 20 children.

The children alleged they had been buried in coffins and hung in cages from the ceiling, that animals had been sacrificed, that one boy had been stabbed to death, and another had had his penis cut off and then stuck on again with tape.

Not one corroborating witness was produced for any of the allegations. Defense lawyers called a number of former workers at the child-care center and some parents who described management practices at the center that would have made it virtually impossible for many of the alleged incidents to have occurred as described.

Medical experts who appeared for the prosecution testified that they had found no physical evidence of abuse.

"Having seen a lot of the transcripts of evidence presented during the Ellis case, I'm staggered by the way the whole thing was handled - by the police and by the interviewers," unionist Peter Lawson told the March 29 Christchurch Star. Lawson is secretary of the Southern Local Government Officers Union, which represented the child-care workers at the Employment Court hearing.

An editorial in the same issue of the Star commented, "In simple terms this case should serve as a landmark of what not to do."

From the beginning, the police whipped up a witch-hunt atmosphere around the case. Allegations of "satanic rituals" involving snakes and Asian businessmen, and of child pornography rings, appeared in the news media.

Police raided the houses of the four women , seizing "evidence" that included a charm bracelet of the Ten Commandments and a Christmas decoration made by a school child. At one house, they photographed the design on the carpet. At another, they dredged the goldfish pond.

"Common sense has been lacking as superstition and hysteria have propelled this black farce," columnist Frank Haden declared in the April 2 Sunday Star-Times. "The Ellis jury should never have accepted the charges were established beyond reasonable doubt."

Supporting the call for a public inquiry, an editorial in the March 31 Christchurch Press declared: "For the sake of genuine cases of sexual abuse the outpourings [of criticism] need to be staunched and confidence in the system restored . ...

"It would be a false economy to limit the inquiry solely to the case of the four women. If flaws are exposed in the handling of their case they will apply equally if not with greater force to the case against Peter Ellis."

Joan Shields is a member of the Meat Workers Union in Christchurch.  
 
 
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