Ellis living to see justice
Peter Ellis says he is excited and optimistic that he may finally clear his name. Now he hopes he will live to see the results. Ellis, 61, served seven years of a 10-year jail sentence for abusing seven children at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre in 1991. He had been convicted, after a trial in the High Court at Christchurch in 1993, of 16 counts of sex offending.
The verdicts have always been contentious and last month the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case once more. The approved ground of appeal was whether a miscarriage of justice occurred.
Ellis will be supported by a team of University of Otago staff who have done a vast amount of work on the appeal.
Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking yesterday Ellis said the university had done a “wonderful job”.
“There have been people who have been working at the coal face for nearly 27 years,” he said.
Law school dean Mark Henaghan, who is working on the case, earlier told the Otago Daily Times the basis of the appeal was the “unreliability” of evidence admitted to the court by an “expert” psychiatrist and the children themselves.
When asked about the complexity of the evidence against him, Ellis told Hosking witnesses didn’t “quite get it right”.
“It’s something that probably innately we all know as human beings that children are children and adults are adults, and we can all make mistakes,” he said. “We think we might have seen something or done something — and it’s just unfortunate our memories have failed us or we just don’t quite get it right.”
Ellis said he was “feeling quite excited” about the impending hearing, but hoped to live to see it
happen. He has terminal bladder cancer.
“Somebody said to me ‘it looks like the creche case is pulling into the station’ and I said ‘well I hope my train isn’t going out first’.
“It’s taken a long time, but I am very optimistic,” he said.
Ellis was tearful as he spoke of what it had been like living with the convictions for all of these years, but he chose to focus on the positives.
“I have friends I never knew I had and expert witnesses that turned up; people who read Lynley Hood’s book A City Possessed; and other people who have stumbled upon their own things and had their own life experiences and suddenly realised ‘oh Peter Ellis has been through something similar’,” he said.
“The North Canterbury community have looked after me.
“It’s been 19 years since I have been out of jail and I can walk through my community and the children there call out to me.
“They don’t look at me in a different way any more because they have actually known me and they trust in what they see.”
He said clearing his name is important not only to him, but also to all who have fought for him over the years — some of whom have died.
“It becomes important when the number of people who have supported me and helped me over the years that have passed away; the stories that haven’t been told of parents that chose sides and their marriages broke up; the creche children that didn’t believe it happened.
“There is also my mother who put her time into this — those people who have slipped away and have deserved an answer,” he said.
Ellis hopes if he dies before the hearing, these people may still get closure. “[I hope] the select committee might look at putting in something that would safeguard someone’s right to still clear their name even when they have passed away.”
Ellis has twice appealed to the Court of Appeal.
The first appeal quashed three of his convictions, but the second appeal against the remaining 13 convictions was dismissed in 1999.
A ministerial inquiry in 2001 concluded there was no risk of a miscarriage of justice. There have also been unsuccessful petitions for a Royal Commission.