Peter Ellis Childcare Abuse Allegations

This place, the Christchurch Civic Creche, is where Peter Ellis worked as a childcare worker. He was convicted of 16 counts of sexual abuse against seven children here in June 1993. He spent seven years in jail, but maintained his innocence until he died in 2019 from bladder cancer.

The Supreme Court cleared his name posthumously in a judgment released in 2022. They quashed all his convictions, citing a substantial miscarriage of justice. This was due to issues with expert evidence given at trial and the contamination of the complainants' own evidence from outside influences, including direct questioning from parents.

A key figure in this was child psychiatrist Karen Zelas, who gave evidence for the Crown and supervised the children’s interviews. The court found she "exceeded the proper bounds" of the 1908 Evidence Act. She commented on the credibility of the complainants’ evidence, which wasn't allowed, and her evidence lacked balance. She didn't present other explanations for 20 behaviors—many common in childhood—that she presented as consistent with sexual abuse. She also suggested that an allegation of abuse transformed normal behaviors into symptoms. The court said her evidence incorrectly suggested "clusters" of behaviors supported a finding of sexual abuse, an impression compounded by an unbalanced chart the Crown used.

The admission of her evidence was found to be an error of law. The court also found the risk of evidence contamination was higher than the jury was led to believe. Professor Harlene Hayne, for Ellis, noted potential contamination from meetings and discussions between parents and children. Professor Gail Goodman, for the Crown, largely agreed, finding high contamination risk in four complainants. Zelas’s evidence understated this risk, and she had expressed concerns about contamination before the trial that were not presented.

The court noted that if the jury had been correctly informed of the risk, it might have created reasonable doubt. This isn't the first time Zelas's work was criticized; in 2003, she was blamed for a miscarriage of justice in another sex abuse case. She left psychiatry in 2006.

The court stated its ruling marked "the end of a long and painful journey" and was not a criticism of the parents, who were in an "impossible position." They concluded that the special care needed for such a complex case was underestimated at the time, leading to a miscarriage of justice. One child who retracted her evidence said the outcome was a "huge relief," adding, "It shouldn’t have taken 30 years but at last the truth is out."