Key art draws inspiration from the cover page of North & South magazine, November 2015, illustrated by Henrietta Harris. Courtesy North & South magazine. Photo: Trajan/RNZ
The aunt of a child who says they were abused by Peter Ellis at the Christchurch Civic Creche has described the “blood-curdling” experience of a child fainting in front of her when asked about claims of abuse.
The story has come to light as part of investigations for the podcast Conviction: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case and features in the episode released today.
The aunt, who has been named Rose in the podcast to protect her identity and the suppression orders around her family, says she has never told this story before but wants the public to understand what it was like for the whānau of the children who said Ellis had abused them.
Rose was a young mother when sex abuse claims were first made against Ellis in 1991 and her own child was on the waiting list to attend the creche.
She was in her home with some creche parents one evening in March 1992, when the event took place.
They had just been at a large public meeting at Knox Hall, held to discuss the allegations of abuse.
Peter Ellis in 2000, after his release from prison. Photo: Getty Images
Parents desperate to know how to raise the issue with their own children had been handed a flyer telling them not to put words in their children’s mouth and not to panic.
Social workers had suggested one or two safe questions but told them not to ask anything leading.
Rose says they were with a 6-year-old girl who used to attend the creche and whose parent was “a friend of a friend”. Taking the advice from the meeting, they gently raised the issue.
“So I was in the room at the time. Anyway, this child went rigid and then they fainted right in front of us. When we just asked them that question. They fainted face down. It was horrific. In my lounge.”
Rose says she’s never seen anything like it.
“This child just went rigid and fainted and quite quickly came to but when they came to they said: ‘Who told and are they dead?’ You know, I was in the room for that. It was pretty out here. Kids don't make that ... kids can't do that. That never made it to the media. That happened in someone's house. So I ask your listeners to consider that. That’s the strength of disclosure parents were getting out of the blue.”
A year ago this week, the Supreme Court quashed Ellis’ 16 convictions for sexual offending against seven children.
It said a "substantial miscarriage of justice" had occurred due to unbalanced or inadmissible expert evidence given at the original trial in 1993 and the contamination of evidence given by the child complainants, mostly due to questioning by their parents.
The court said its judgment should not be read as a criticism of those parents but that the jury at the initial trial was not properly informed of the level of risk from contamination.
One of the key concerns discussed in the podcast is that the parents of some children who initially accused Ellis of abuse arranged play dates and meetings with other parents to discuss their concerns and warn them.
But Rose says there were other children who disclosed abuse who had never met and had no interaction. Children such as the girl who fainted in her living room.
That child had had no interaction with the other creche children in the room for a couple of years.
“They hadn’t been playing, they hadn’t been at the creche at the same time. They were a loose connection either side of me. There was no overlap that could have caused the disclosure I witnessed.”
Supporters of Ellis also raised concerns that a surprisingly large number of the creche parents whose children made accusations against Ellis worked as counsellors, some in the area of child abuse.
They have claimed these parents were seeing what they knew, what they expected to see.
But Rose stressed she had no background with counselling and no experience with abuse.
She was reluctant to talk to RNZ for Conviction, saying that most New Zealanders have made up their minds about Ellis and re-telling the story only caused her pain.
But she ultimately agreed to be a voice for the children in the case who stand by their allegations of abuse.
She said most members of the public have come to conclusions about the case based on the bizarre allegations by some - but not all - of the children, claims of homophobia and moral panic around Ellis and leading questions by parents that contaminated the children’s memories.
But she said you can’t know what the families know if you weren’t there as the children described what happened to them.
“I understand why your listeners might want to make these stories knit together. But it just doesn’t work for us wider whānau that have had these kids come and say these blood-curdling things to our face.
“I want the public to remember that they were representative charges from a representative number of complainants. And they weren’t the only complainants. There was quite a high stringent standard to get there.”
There were a lot of consistent claims the children made amidst some of the more extreme stories and those are what the court relied on.
Rose says the fainting episode wasn’t a one-off either.
“I actually did babysit that child about a year later and she’d had terrible nightmares. She got up in the night, she thought there was a monster under her bed or … I don't want to go into what she thought. But it was a striking disclosure and other families were experiencing the same kind of thing. And it can’t have come out of the blue.”
Follow and listen to Conviction: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you get your podcasts.
