Peter Ellis
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Crime & Punishment
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Satanic panic in the Garden City
In 1991, Peter Ellis, a childcare worker at a daycare centre in New Zealand was charged with horrific abuse of several preschool children in his care.[1] Police alleged, on the children’s own evidence that, among other things, Ellis abducted children en masse during the day, took them across town to a flat where he subjected them to bizarre rituals and acts of unthinkable cruelty and violence before returning them to the creche unobserved before their parents were due to collect them at the end of the day.
In 1993 Ellis was convicted on 16 counts of child sex abuse against seven children.
But none of the allegations was true.
In total, police and social workers interviewed 118 children but presented evidence from just 20. They discarded evidence from children who did not report abuse and those whose claims were patently impossible (some claimed amputation of organs that they still possessed).
Therefore, the evidence put before the court — and fully disclosed to the defence — appeared more credible than it might have had it been viewed in the wider context. Police interview techniques may have encouraged the children to embellish their stories or make them up altogether.
Ellis, who died in 2019, was finally exonerated posthumously in 2022.
See also
References
- ↑ Alexander Behse and Ali Jones’ Conviction: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case is an outstanding account of the Peter Ellis case.