Talk:Peter Ellis (childcare worker)/Archive 1

Peter Ellis (New Zealand)

Nominated on 22 April 2006, needs 2 votes by 30 April 2006

This is the guy who was convicted on child sexual assault charges in 1993. He was released after serving seven years in prison, and has always maintained his innocence. It's topical because he's still pushing for a Privy Council hearing. Many New Zealanders believe he was innocent, and his name is very well known, but we currently have no article at all. To create a good article, we'll need a number of editors from different points of view working together.-gadfium 05:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

• Support as nominator.-gadfium 05:57, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support; I would have thought we would of had an article of him, his case is well known Brian | (Talk) 07:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support; agree with all the above reasons. However I wonder if this is the best title. A quick Google search found a couple of other possibly notable NZers with the same name; a Kapiti District councillor [1] and a professor at the Wellington School of Medicine (aka Pete Ellis) [2]. -- Avenue 07:58, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
  • The title is certainly up for negotiation. Obviously a title such as "Peter Ellis (pedophile)" would not be suitable, nor would "Peter Ellis (hysteria victim)".-gadfium 09:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I take it "Peter Ellis (witch hunt martyr)" is out as well then. (support, BTW). Grutness...wha? 10:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
      • How about "Peter Hugh Ellis" or "Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis" as an article title. No one is going to search for that, but no one is going to search for any of these article names; they'll find Peter Ellis and follow the link from that.-gadfium 08:24, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support, sounds like a good start, no idea on title. - SimonLyall 12:25, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I propose that we start this, this Sunday (23 April) (i.e. End voting Sunday, Make this The COTF from Monday) What do you think ? Brian | (Talk) 13:01, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds grand, although I'm a bit disappointed there have been no other nominations. I'll be away until Monday night (going to a wedding in Queenstown), so I look forward to seeing the start of an article when I get back.-gadfium 19:02, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Weblinks

I have done some quick google searches, and have come up with some links we could use:

• [3] Ten or so articles, mostly media items, contains alot of background on the case
• [4] Offical Report - Sir Thomas Eichelbaum's report into the peter ellis case
• [5] Info, histoty, background.
• [6] Peter Ellis Org : Seeking Justice for Peter Ellis

Links to thousands of web pages about Peter Ellis and the Christchurch Creche case

• [7] Essential preliminary reading about the Ellis case
• [8] Thousands of news reports (including opinion articles) year by year to 2006
• [9] Official Documents, letters, petitions etc relating to the Ellis case year by year, Some trial transcripts (more will be coming), The Thorp Report, Eichelbaum report etc.
• [10] The toddler testimonies - transcripts of the interrogations of the children.
• [11] [12] lots of info on the case
• [13] info, media stuff, calls for 1999 inquiry.
• [14] BSA upholds Nine to Noon complaint
• [[15] ASAH news letter, has an article on the case (PDF)
• [[16] info about Drawing Out Children’s False Memories, refers to the case (PDF)
• [17] intresting little article
• [18] media
• [19] media
• [20] media
• [21] media
• [22] [23] blog
• [24] Book review- but has some basic info
• [25] Dozens more book reviews

Could someone with abit of know-how remove the quotation marks fromthe following reference: London, Kamala, Maggie Bruck, Stephen J. Ceci, and Daniel W. Shuman (2005). "Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse: What Does the Research Tell Us About the Ways That Children Tell? Psychology, Public Policy and the Law" 11 (1): 194-226

I've moved the journal title to its own field in the template. Is that what you wanted? See {{cite journal}} (talk) for details of how this template works.-gadfium 04:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Categories

Category:Moral panics might be an a category that some people will place him under, and others would not (depending on whether they think he is innocent or guilty respectively). I remember my sociology lecturer talking about this case as being part of a moral panic. But would placing the article in this article compromise the NPOV policy? What do people think? --Midnighttonight 07:36, 23 April 2006 (UTC) Also Category:Day care sexual abuse hysteria is questionable. Is this hysteria? Is it hysteria if he is guilty? --Midnighttonight 07:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

If his is guility it is still part of the hysteria, the fact that he has an article and the hundreds of other child abuse cases in NZ don't shows that. Are we going to cover everything about the case here or is there going to be a seperate article on the Christchurch Civic Crèche abuse case? - SimonLyall 09:15, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I would think, for now keep them as one article, if later this gets to big, we split them up, I don't think it warrents it own article yet Brian | (Talk) 11:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Rename

I would like to rename the article Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis, as suggested by gadfium above. Does anyone object? -- Avenue 11:50, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead :) (I just stared it, as Peter Ellis (New Zealand) untill we came up with a better title) Brian | (Talk) 16:45, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Thomas Eichelbaum

People might want to have a look at this related article. I'm not sure it is strightly NPOV. - SimonLyall 23:11, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I have moved most of the recent additions to that article by Nz researcher into this article, because I think this would be a better place for them. -- Avenue 00:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I've already reverted User:Nz researcher twice in this article and he just keeps putting the POV stuff back. no luck with geting him to respond on his talk page or anything. Thoughts? - SimonLyall 01:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

My feeling is User:Nz researcher is a mask for someone pushing a certain POV, but unwilling to do it under their normal user ID. At the moment the article is being looked at enough to be fine, but I'm more worried about when the article is no longer the Collaboration. People will need to keep a watch on it. We don't want this article getting to be POV. --Midnighttonight 10:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I have already responded to this on the discussion page. NZ Researcher is my normal user ID, so I have no idea what you are referring to. --NZ Researcher

Great

The article has taken shape, well done to everyone who has partook in it so far. Nice to see what can happen when a whole lot of kiwis work together :) Brian | (Talk) 01:00, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

<Test>, I would like to participate in this article via this discussion , I have joined wikipedia and given my email. Another site for source material, especially psychological considerations of the ellis case is:

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/r.christie/

Can a current contributer to article contact me by email as to how I should access this discussion in more usual manner. Thanks,

Richard Christie

Welcome Richard. I have put a message on your user talk page, so you should see a "You have new messages" sign near the top of your screen until you click on the sign.-gadfium 08:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

add?

Should we add, about that $300,000 was paid out by ACC to the victims before the case went to trial? (NB it was a total payout of $300,000)Brian | (Talk) 02:05, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

If we can cite a source for the information, I don't see any great problem with that. It seems arguably relevant. It would be even better if we could cite someone discussing it in connection to the case, so that we are not seen as casting new aspersions on people's motives. -- Avenue 03:02, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Found a site [26] quote: "Up to $10,000 can be awarded in sexual abuse cases and the Accident Compensation Commission paid $300,000 to crèche parents before the trial" Brian | (Talk) 05:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Brian, I've cited David McLoughlin's work. He mentions a figure in excess of $500,000. User:NZ Researcher

Picture

This article needs a few pictures. These will probably have to be found on the net and carefully checked for copyright stuff. Is there anyone in Christchurch who could take a photo of the creche? That would be a good start. Also, the front cover of "A City Possessed", or a pic by Lynley Hood. And, most importantly, a pic of Peter Ellis himself is key. --Midnighttonight 08:50, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I was just coming here to post such a request.-gadfium 09:21, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I was going to ask as-well :) Brian | (Talk) 11:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I may be able to assist with photos of Creche. Allow me a day or two. Richard 05:43, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Photo available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:North_wall1.JPG

This is of north wall taken by me Jan 2006 through windows from outside the building. The door to toilet lobby is clealy visible and unchanged from 1991. It was kept open in day to day operation of creche, also note glass window in door. As you can see the centre still operates as a day care centre and the toilet plan appears unchanged, one would have thought such an area, where horrific acts could so easily be concealed might have been redesigned. A detailed plan of the centre is available on peterellis.org.nz and simple layout drawing here http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/r.christie/2.html#centre_layout Richard 03:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course, it may have been redesigned, can't tell from outside the building. Richard 03:37, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that picture is a good start, and I've added it to the article, although the caption needs a bit of tweaking.

Any chance of a picture of Peter Ellis? There must be pictures taken by people who are involved in pro-Ellis campaigns, and people here on Wikipedia who have contact with those people who can ask them to release the picture under a free licence.-gadfium 04:34, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, you can ask the two original sources of the photos on the Ellis website. TV1 News and Ch Ch Press. Those photos have been up there for years without the sources complaining. I've no photos of the fellow. Richard 06:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Information resource

I'm thrilled that people have started this project. The main information resources for the project should include "A City Possessed" and the thousands of web pages at www.peterellis.org.nz. Richard Christie has also provided an important link.

The peterellis site should provide all available news reports, opinion pieces, and documents associated with the case. If an article is NOT on the ellis site, please send me a copy! While the site has a definite position on the innocence of Peter Ellis, it has not deviated from the policy of including ALL opinion, regardless of what that opinion is.

If you find an article on the ellis site that has been copied from elsewhere, please use the original reference.

This project has the opportunity to re present the information available in a different structured way: The Ellis site for example has collated news reports and opinion articles in a chronological order - the encyclopaedia approach allows subjects to be tackled separately - eg, off the top of my head "The Women's employment Case", "The police investigation", etc etc. There are certainly quite a few summaries of the case. Those who get involved studying Ellis invariably get drawn into the wider issues of "What factors caused the case" "The Satanic ritual abuse scare (of the late 80s and early 90s)", "True and false allegations of abuse" etc (A good example are the introductory chapters of A City Possessed, that Lynley Hood thought to be an essential integral part of the Ellis story.)

(brianr) 18:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)~~

Article name revisited

I'm very upset with your title however. Probably the majority of New Zealanders now consider Peter Ellis to be innocent and to be New Zealand's most well known person who has been wrongfully convicted. (There are obviously many people who have strong views the other way)

We do not generally refer to people by all their names unless they are accused or criminals. Peter is of course convicted, but the name does provide a reinforcement of his guilty status, when most New Zealanders now do not think he is. Calling him by all of his names provides an unnecessary implicit statement that he is a criminal.

Perhaps he could be permitted to be "humanised" a little more and called by his ordinary name: "Peter Ellis" as all other Peter Ellis are on Wikipedia:

Peter Ellis (actor)

Peter Ellis (CHP politician)

Peter Ellis (Green Party candidate)

Peter Ellis (Controversially convicted in NZ Christchurch Creche case)

Peter Ellis (architect)

brianr@wave.co.nz

We have debated the article title; see above under "Peter Ellis (New Zealand)" and "Rename". This title was intended to be absolutely neutral. The practice of calling criminals by their full name was not considered when we named the article.

Because Peter Ellis is a moderately common name, and there are even other New Zealanders with this name who may eventually have articles in Wikipedia, the original article name of Peter Ellis (New Zealand) was not considered a good one. We very definitely didn't want a POV title such as "Peter Ellis (witch hunt martyr)". In Wikipedia, we normally differentiate between people with the same name by their occupation, their nationality, or adding middle names or initials. I'd be happy to see further suggestions for renaming the article. "Peter Ellis (Controversially convicted in NZ Christchurch Creche case)" is rather unweildy. "Peter Ellis (child care worker)" doesn't seem right. "Peter Ellis (accused pedophile)" feels very wrong. "Peter Ellis (Christchurch Creche case)" I could live with.

On the other hand, while we don't yet have an article on Arthur Allan Thomas, that's the name that most New Zealanders (or at least the older ones) would recognise, and most people would not consider calling the article by his full name to be an implication of anything. -gadfium 19:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I changed the article's name, and I had no intention of implying he was a criminal by using his full name. I'm sorry for any upset this has caused. As gadfium says, the idea was to make the the article name unambiguous, and using his previous occupation didn't seem right. I have no objection to changing it to "Peter Ellis (Christchurch Creche case)". Does anyone have any other concerns or suggestions? -- Avenue 23:13, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think refering to people by their full name implies they are a criminal either - Martin Luther King for instance is not a criminal. While I sympathise with your beliefs that he is not a crimial, he was found guilty in a court of law and is, legally, a criminal. While Wikipedia aims to be neutral, it is a legal fact that he is guilty, until overturned be a court. Furthermore, I would like to see evidence that "most New Zealanders" believe he is innocent (for what it is worth, I don't care that much but tend to side with the law for various reasons).

I recommend new Wikipedians attracted to this page read Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. --Midnighttonight 23:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

See the article, "Ongoing influence", where I added a public opinion poll which said 51% believe him innocent. This is so close to 50% (within the margin of error), that I'd say "many" rather then "most" New Zealanders believe he is innocent.-gadfium 01:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Note however that twice as many regard him as innocent c.f. guilty. That's hardly in realm of the margin of error, all the 'don't knows' would have to come down on guilty side of the fence for that to happen. Lies, damn lies and statistics ;-) Richard 04:01, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I recommend you read the official reports into the case. They don't come close to NPOV. But I'm guessing we can still cite them, right? NZ Researcher

yes they can still be cited, so to can pro-innocence texts. The article itself must be NPOV however. If it falls out of line too much, I will stick a {{NPOV}} tag on to it. I should add that my main concern is that this page is NPOV, as I don't really have too much else to add to this article in terms of info. --Midnighttonight 03:39, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It's good that there is a discussion on what is "neutral". The Ellis site publishes ALL points of view. So that if 100 people have a story with one opinion, and one person has a different story with another opinion, all stories are given equal weight. There is no attempt to give "equal" weight to the two different opinions.

brianr

"Peter H. M. Ellis" or "Peter Ellis (creche worker)" Both short and neutral. Richard Christie Richard 00:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I am perfectly happy with either the current name or with "Peter H. M. Ellis". I'm not objecting to "Peter Ellis (creche worker)" but I prefer the former two.-gadfium 01:40, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I favour Peter Ellis (creche worker) or Peter Ellis (Christchurch Creche case)mentioned earlier.

brianr

On further thought, I do have a minor objection to "Peter Ellis (Christchurch Creche case)". The capitalisation is incorrect, because the usual name of the creche was Christchurch Civic Creche, not Christchurch Creche. "Peter Ellis (Christchurch creche case)" (using lower case for creche) would also be correct, and I think it reads better than "Peter Ellis (Christchurch Civic Creche case)".

"Peter Ellis (creche worker)" may be neutral, but I believe it's no longer correct. And "Peter Ellis (former creche worker)" seems ugly.

I'd be happy with "Peter Ellis (Christchurch creche case)", "Peter H. M. Ellis", or the current name. -- Avenue 10:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

It should stay the current name IMO, or if need be Peter H. M. Ellis will do. I dislike putting creche in Brian | (Talk) 11:17, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually it was the Christchurch Civic Child Care Centre. It may seem trivial but the staff objected to it being referred to as a creche (i.e. not having an educational focus). Unlike BrianR whose opinions I regard highly, I have no objection to current name but feel perhaps only one person can determine whether the current name dehumanises Mr Ellis, and that person lives 15 minutes drive north of Christchurch. No, I don't have his phone number._ Richard 11:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

And another complaint against Ellis - this needs to be mentioned

"A young Christchurch man laid a formal complaint with police in January 2001 alleging he was sexually abused by Ellis and others when he attended the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre." Police get no help from Ellis on complaint By: VAN BEYNEN Martin THE PRESS, 5 SEP 2002, Edition 2, Page 4. --Midnighttonight 08:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC) (copyrighted material removed)

Yes indeed, it should be included along with reference to Ellis's employment records that show the complaint had no foundation in reality. Ellis first had contact with the creche a year after the complainant put him there. This paragraph should include how the Police reactivated this "unresolved allegation" each time author L Hood had positive publicity eg winning of Montana Book Awards. Also be sure to include the complainant's debut on Linda Clark's RNZ programme that resulted in the most humiliating censure and fine in RNZ's history. Richard 08:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

08:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC) This story has me laughing. The "further complaint" against Ellis were trotted out for several years, every time some new publicity occurred about Ellis. The public were permitted to find out about the "complaint" when it was exposed by Linda Clark on Radio New Zealand in August 2003.

The complainant was supposedly abused by Ellis months before Ellis was even at the Creche! Needless to say the so called "complainant" has never been heard of again - probably hiding his head in shame - and Radio New Zealand were forced to apologise to Peter.

brianr

Can you provide references for that? I'm not doubting you, it would just be handy so that we can have a paragraph on that incident. this is the problem with doing database searches of news items I suppose, I only hit somethings and miss others. (PS, can you sign with --~~~~ instead?) --Midnighttonight 08:54, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

BSA Ruling: http://www.bsa.govt.nz/decisions/2004/2004-115.htm , Employment history http://www.peterellis.org.nz/docs/1986/index.htm , Nine to Noon transcript: http://www.peterellis.org.nz/docs/2003-0825_RadioNZ_NineToNoon.htm .

You're welcome :-)_Richard 12:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Link in

While the primary focus upon this Collaboration is obviously this article, it is also important that we get other articles linking in to this one. From a look at the "what links here", the vast bulk are from the Collaboration template or the Community Portal. Some articles are getting linked in, and we just need to keep them coming. --Midnighttonight 08:52, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The children still feel as though they've been molested

Extracts from:THE DOMINION POST, 16 AUG 2003, Edition 2, Page 1. CHRISTCHURCH CIVIC CRECHE CHILDREN SPEAK OUT By: BONIFACE Linley

"I would have been happy to never talk about the abuse ever again. I want to forget it. But I'm sick of being called a liar. And if I don't say anything, Peter Ellis will keep going around saying he's innocent and more people will believe him," - 'Tom'

"How would a five-year-old know about ejaculation? My parents had never talked about that to me. I was able to describe it because of what Peter Ellis did to me, not because anyone had told me about it." - 'Katrina'

"I stand by everything I said when I was little. I didn't make anything up. But back then I believed everything I was told. Now I can make more sense of it . . . for example, I was told I was put down a trap door. Now I think it was just a laundry chute with cushions at the bottom. But when you're a little kid, you think adults are always telling you the truth." - 'Tom'

The fact that the children still stand by what they said is important. These qoutes should go somewhere in the article. --Midnighttonight 09:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

One of these children, "Tommy", is the son of Joy Bander (pseudonym) who wrote a book in mid 1990's entitled "A Mother's Story". After the case senior police involved in the investigation (IIRC Hardie and/or Det Jenkins) expressed view that this child's allegations were nonsense, I can dig up cites if required. Both of these children were at centre of Satanic Ritual Abuse allegations set at an "unknown address" (but clearly 404 Hereford St). Crown witness K Zelas had no confidence in his disclosures, nor did his interviewer S Sidey. Even Eichelbaum's expert G Davies has no confidence in the allegations made by thesetwo children set outside the creche. This info should be included with any quotes from above. Go here: http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/r.christie/5.html#C5_1_1_Contamination_by_parents for examples of process "Tommy" was put through as he "recovered" his "vivid" memories of satanic abuse, the quotes are his mother's, BTW her book is still available for a price of less than $20.00- read it and understand how the case came about!

..Richard 09:43, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The Crown's Expert witness, Dr Karen Zelas on the disclosures of Tom and Katrina, also known as the "smoking gun" letter. http://www.peterellis.org.nz/docs/1992/1992-0828_KarenZelas_LetterToPolice.htm

_ Richard 11:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, by all means quote the children, then we can all see just how unreliable they are. "This accusation — that parents and counsellors manipulated the children into making up the allegations of abuse — is the cornerstone of Lynley Hood's book. It infuriates Tom: "It's bullshit that we were told what to say The parents had nothing to do with what we said; all my parents ever said to me was that I should tell the truth". This is quite different from what expert witness and psychiatrist, Karen Zelas, had to say about Tom and Katrina's allegations and how they emerged. See above for the story. Despite Zelas’s doubts about how these children’s allegations emerged, Zelas testified at the trial that both children were credible! The jury never got to see her letter.

There is a particularly illuminating evidential interview with Katrina where she is shown a doll that has pubic hair. Here is an excerpt, from Katrina’ 4th interview:

Q: What’s that? A: I don’t know, that black thing? Q: Yeah, what’s the black thing? A: I don’t know. Q: Okay. A: What is it? Q: Have you ever seen that before on a? A: No. Q: Near a penis? A: No. What is it? Q: What do you think it is? A: I don’t know. Q: Do mummies and daddies have that stuff or not? A: No, what’s this? It’s all on it. What is it? Q: Well, it’s like, you know what mummies and daddies have on their penises and vaginas. A: My mum and dad don’t have one or my mum or my daddies, or [male name]. Q: Have you seen your mum and dad’s, have you seen your dad’s penis before? A: Yeah, I’m not scared of it.

…….

Q: Show me with this doll how the man teased you with his penis. What did he do? A: Oh, I don’t want to do that. Q: Just show me.

The link below refers to a girl called Rachel, who has retracted her allegations. This is another child who has retracted, in addition to the oldest complainant who retracted in 1994.

http://www.peterellis.org.nz/2003/2003-0628_ThePress_ComplainantSeeksInquiryIntoEllisCase.htm

NZ Researcher

Worried

I'm getting worried here. Wikipedia strives towards having a neutral POV (see NPOV). Yet, this article is predominately being written by people seeking to either clear Ellis's name or hold some form of retrail. Statements on this talk page worry me - "by all means quote the children, then we can all see just how unreliable they are"; "This story has me laughing." There are numerous Weasel words in the main article and there is a lack of balance in some sections (such as on the Ministerial Inquiry). The evidence should be prevented on face value and allow people to decide for themselves (The Adolf Hitler article doesn't start of by saying "Hitler was a bad man", the neutral dissemination of ideas should be enough for people to decide that). While I welcome our new editors and thank them for the valued contribution in getting sources (and they have really put a lot of info on this article), I would like to remind them of the responsibility of Wikipedia to be NPOV. This page should not end up being cited as a failing of Wikipedia, as Helen Clark current is by Russell Brown. --Midnighttonight 23:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so worried. People are debating on the talk page, which is exactly what it's for. Edits to the article have slowed right down, because we've covered most of the basic ground, and I think people are hoping to get some agreement here before adding much more.

I would like to see a bit about Ellis' life before he worked at the creche. One of the documents cited here ([27]) said he was doing community service after being convicted of defrauding Social Welfare. That should go in the article, but I'd like more details. Most biographies have a paragraph at least about the person before they became famous. Was he born in Christchurch? Where did he go to school? Is there any of this basic biographical stuff available online?-gadfium 23:49, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Possibly best source is L Hood pages 200-218. The Ch Ch Press ran an interesting feature written sometime in 2003 by a former classmate of Ellis’ about him as a child in Nelson/Motueka? Unfortunately I didn’t keep it and it never appeared on the Ellis website, the only reasonably major feature that I know of to have escaped BrianR’s net. Off the top of my head I can’t recall any other accessible sources. _Richard 01:16, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, I got a copy of Hood's book this afternoon. I'll add a section on his earlier life tonight or tomorrow.-gadfium 03:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Midnighttonight, you say that "this article is predominately being written by people seeking to either clear Ellis's name or hold some form of retrial". I am trying to do neither. What I'm trying to do is highlight the flaws in the case, which I believe is perfectly reasonable if done so in a factual manner. It has been documented, by some of the world's leading experts, that the children's evidence is unreliable. I'm sorry if you don't like that fact. Maybe you should state your reason for complaining. Do you have a vested interest? Have you read any of the material that has been supplied here? It would be helpful if you read it all before commenting. The article on Hitler mentions that his racial policies led to the deaths of 11 million people including 6 million Jews - hardly complimentary of the man. If you think there is too much information sympathetic of Peter Ellis, there is nothing to stop you from inserting factual information that is less sympathetic of him. There is more information to be added to the article and I will attempt to do so over the weekend. NZ Researcher

Let me put my hand up as actively striving to clear Mr Ellis' name. It is a position I have arrived at after spending thousands of hours in personal research on this case. I have read almost everything on the ellis website and much more besides, often that is not in public domain for various reasons. However that should not disqualify me from editorial input, I think my edits thus far are highly neutral. To do otherwise would be to devalue the article. However I do agree with midnight that there is material here that is presented in a not-strictly-balanced matter and it is in the areas he identifies. It is not so much the information inherent, which I assure you is verifiable but probably requires a small book in order to so do, but it is presented as fact without sufficient citation or argument. Therein is the problem, L Hood spent eight years researching her book. The topic is expansive, I can already ascertain that some contributers have only a minimal grasp on the issues and even on the history of the case. It is very brave to assume one can write an article on Ellis within a fortnight. It took me two years of research into the psychological aspects alone to believe I had started to get a handle on them. I don't want to throw cold water on this endeavour but ask you to consider following, I happen to know Nz Researcher has also spent hundreds of hours on research, quite independant of myself, L Hood, and BrianR etc so there is a high probability that what he writes (I assume from comment that he contributed much of what Midnight has concerns over) has strong foundation in research. It is very difficult to put this research into an article of such scope without it appearing as pure opinion. Can those concerned be specific as to what worries them. Nz Researcher might also like to use these talk pages more fully to point others in direction to justify any new or previous material. But I warn you all, if you haven't at the very least read Hood's book or alternatively the Appeal Court judgments, Eichelbaum and Thorp Reports, then you have a VERY steep learning curve to climb in regard to this article._Richard 00:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

There's a synopsis of Hood's book in Appendix B of the Justice and Electoral Committee Report. Of course it's better to read the book itself, but this seems to be a useful summary. -- Avenue 00:25, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

here is a (cough) neutral POV :http://www.peterellis.org.nz/CityPossessed/Reviews/2002-05_MinistryJustice_ValSim.htm

Richard 09:47, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I want to back up Richard's comments that there is a lot of material involved with this case and it should be read if you want to make an informed contribution to this article. I have indeed spent a lot of time researching the case. I have communicated with some of the experts that I have cited. They have provided me with much information, little of which I have placed on here. How would I refer to this information, most of it in the form of emails, by asking you to trust me? What is on here is only the tip of the iceberg. But I agree that specific concerns should be raised so they can be debated and, hopefully, resolved. NZ Researcher

My main concern is that while highlighting the flaws in the case, the evidence which convicted Ellis is going to get subsumed. Lynley Hood's book is, in my opinion, the case for the defence in the trial and not an objective discussion of the case.

• • Your statement needs some justification. There are dozens of reviews of the book available -http://www.peterellis.org.nz/CityPossessed/Reviews/index.htm Two reviews by Masson and Davies argue details of the first three chapters of the book, dealing with an analysis of the social environment of the time (which have in turn been critiqued); but all other reviews are extremely favorable.
    • eg Alison Jones - "Ms. Hood is clearly interested in the truth, and in careful research, rather than holding a view and sticking with it through thick and thin. This is an important book - clearly written, well-researched, assiduously referenced, and a compelling read"
    • eg Dr Jim Hefford (for NZ GP) - "Anyone reading this book would have to agree there remains no further need for any new examination of the Peter Ellis case. Hood, a scientist, has done it for them - exhaustively over seven years - with the result compressed into these 600 pages"
    • eg John Prebble (Professor of Law) - "I thought the book a remarkable piece of work. It showed that the verdicts weren't safe"
    • eg Bernard Robertson (Editorial NZ Law Journal) "One of Lynley Hood’s achievements, as a non-lawyer, is an astute criticism of the shortcomings of the various methods available to review criminal convictions. Each of the reviews and appeals suffered from some limitation, self-imposed or otherwise. A City Possessed is the first attempt at a review of the whole case from the investigation onwards"
  • I know of NO criticism that has detailed how the book is not objective in any way in it's description of the details of the case. You are entitled to your opinion, and you may not like the obvious conclusions from the book, but an article in Wikipedia should not be influenced by opinion that may have no objective basis. - Brianr at wave 02:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course, being involved in promoting one side of the case does not prohibit you from editing, it just means you should be aware of that, and aim to just present the facts.

• • Those involved in seeking justice for concerns are almost fastidious in ensuring all the facts are presented. It's part of the reason that the Ellis site presents news reports and opinion from everybody. A significant issue in the case is that suppression of information - eg some of the more unbelievable claims against Ellis - contributed towards his conviction. - Brianr at wave 02:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I know that in the case of the Helen Clark article, there is a very good discussion on the talk page over changes (see the long, long talk on the Doonegate paragraph for instance). My concern is POV, I know I have one, and have breached it on the article, but that happens. I am after all, human (ish). Anyway, keep working at it. It is a huge achievement in such a short period of time, and I do thank you for the valued contribution you've made to Wikipedia (p.s., the news guys should have a look around and get into editing other things - I presume you'll have an interest in the court system and so forth, so find those pages and edit them!) --Midnighttonight 23:42, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

"My main concern is that while highlighting the flaws in the case, the evidence which convicted Ellis is going to get subsumed. Lynley Hood's book is, in my opinion, the case for the defence in the trial and not an objective discussion of the case". Well, that is your opinion. Maybe you would like to give us some facts to support your opinion. The evidence that convicted Ellis would be a good place to start. As has been documented, the case has more to do with moral panic and hysteria than evidence. NZ Researcher

POV

I find comparison the two edits 22.25 27 April 'Nz researcher' and 21.51 27 April 'Midnighttonight' highly illuminating in regard to POV._Richard 23:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The two edits are [28] and [29]. I agree that neither edit quite achieves NPOV.-gadfium 00:00, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're referring to Gadfium. I pointed out that one of the children has said that his parents did not interview him during the initial inquiry. That is demonstrably false, but this was not mentioned in the edit by Midnighttonight. Posters should try to read ALL of the available information before posting. NZ Researcher

::we are referring to this:

The continued effort on attempting to prove Ellis as being innocent has angered the molested children, and their parents. "I would have been happy to never talk about the abuse ever again..- vs -The continued effort in attempting to clear Ellis' name has angered at least two of the complainants and their parents. "I would have been happy to never talk about the abuse ever again.. _ Richard 01:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the second edit to that paragraph reduced the POV in the paragraph but possibly went the other way just a little bit. The wording ended up a little bit awkward, so I changed it.-gadfium 03:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I was having a lot of trouble with it being akward, I thought I got somewhere near a balance, but obviously didn't. I know it seems a bit hypocritical of me, and I agree, but everyone has a POV, including me. --Midnighttonight 23:34, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Bander

I am unsure of bander reference in article as it stands.

1 Is it necc to get so specific? After all there was so much scandal in acse that even Hood had to omit volumes.

2 Readers won't know who she is . Richard 07:20, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

In addition the priming of interviewers was not confined to this child alone. The edit made makes it appear so. I think the paragraph should be on general poor practice identfied by almost every expert who has examined the interviews INCLUDING Sas and Davies who both identified all these faults although Sas just excused them all.

Suggestions: Make article shorter and fix intro.

A couple of suggestions:

1. The introductory has to say a little bit about the controversy. It should be an abstract for the rest of the article. Imagine that someby just reads that and nothing else. Contrast that with the intro paragraph in Adolf Hitler which gives all the basic details.

2. This case is huge, we can't go into a process of listing everything to do with the case. There are huge external rsources that people are already using. We should possible just reference those with shorter summaries. Giving a blow by blow account of everythign won't work I feel. Also are there external resources that lean towards Ellis' guilt that we can point to or reference. - SimonLyall 13:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

• Could you please provide the external resources that lean towards Ellis' guilt? (I'm not aware of any external resources that are not already on www.peterellis.org.nz - except for what is (imo) an excellent critique of Eichelbaum on Christie's site, and books about the case (eg A City Possessed)

• If you look through the news reports section of the Ellis site you will see reports at the time of the trial, that give some indication of why Ellis was found guilty. This review will not do the subject justice unless it is able in some way to also provide the real reason why many people believe a jury was able to find him guilty - and that was the "moral panic" operating at that time. That is why, I suspect, that Lynley Hood found it necessary to include her introductory chapters in her book.

• This review article will have difficulty presenting all information as coming from "one side" or the "other side". More often the interpretation of the evidence tells us more about the reader. As an example the Toddler Testimonies (so called from the publication of such evidence by Barry Colman in the SST and then the Ellis site) gives actual transcripts of the interrogations of the children. My guess is that information in those interviews will be read by different people as providing evidence of guilt - and by other people as providing evidence of innocence. This conundrum lies at the heart of the case - Brianr at wave 18:49, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Simon said that the case is huge, we can't go into a process of listing everything to do with the case. Well, I wouldn't even attempt to do that and I don't think anyone here would either. Besides, I think Hood has already done that. However, I think it's important that we provide a lot of details as to why Ellis was charged, found guilty, and why it's apparent to many of us that there's been a miscarriage of justice. More details are still to be added, so I would suggest that we wait until we agree there is no more to add before we pass comment on the article. NZ Researhcer

I like Simon's idea regarding an abstract, but would then make the rest of the article longer, not shorter. Richard 23:06, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the introduction is poor at present, and needs to be revised to become a good lead section. I'm not so worried about people adding too much detail, since we can always hive off the longer sections into their own articles, following summary style. In fact, I think we could already improve the article by doing this for the Minsterial Inquiry section. -- Avenue 00:42, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the links that support Ellis's guilt - there aren't many (if any). But that's not to say that there aren't people that don't think he is guilty - they just don't have a motivation to write books, create websites and so forth on that. Thus, there aren't really that many. The most people do is blog post whenever something happens (eg David Farrar. But, where is the initial judgement and sentencing blurb? They would have that "Ellis is guilty" info for you.

Also, is it worth pointing out that the Select Committee inquiry was limited by the constitution convention that prevents MPs from making comments on cases before the courts and prevents direct criticism of the judicary? That does give an insight into limitations of the Select Committee. --Midnighttonight 01:08, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

No one here has denied that some believe Ellis is guilty and what I am going to write next isn't POV, it is fact. This case was built in its entirety upon the allegations of young children. That is why the enviroment from which the allegations arose and how they were obtained and interpreted was/is so important. There was no physical or corroborative evidence for the offences whatsover except for innuendo and suspicion. Colossal effort went into obtaining corroborating and the result was absolutely nothing unless character assassination, such as evidence of private conversations between adults on unrelated sexual practices, counts as corroborative evidence. Richard 01:57, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

In addition, the trial judgment doesn't include much info at all except for discription of the count and the returned verdicts. The sentencing blurb is a little more detailed but it is really only an endorsement of the verdicts from Neil Williamson J's POV. But if you refer to the trial transcripts you must consider that the courts have supressed publication of any information that may identify complainants and their families. That makes reference to such material highly problematic, Hood did a good job though. I venture that it is not the Ellis supporters that have most to loose from its publication. You might apply to the High Court Registrar if you wish to read them.

Nz Researcher

When you edit might you please include a brief description of your edits in the dialogue (?) box below the editing block as it makes keeping track of changes much much easier, Thanks Richard 23:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry don't understand what you mean. What sort of description and where? NZ Researcher

How to describe your edits is explained here: Help:Edit summary. -- Avenue 03:07, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

See this page: Help:Edit_summary , it you can see what we mean by clicking the history tab at the top of articles ( or follow this link for a sample). You need to give a rough idea what each edit you make is doing. - SimonLyall 03:34, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

What I'm trying to do is to make the article more coherent, fix grammar, add relevant facts, tc. Surely I don't need to write that every time I edit? NZ Researcher

Yes, it all helps. For instance you have on occasion deleted material without explanation, I happened to think some of it was important e.g. that there are no behavioural symptoms SPECIFIC to sexual abuse, you removed that, no explanation and that important distinction is currently not in the article. That is what the History tab is for. If anyone wants to review changes or revisit them with regard to restating etc they don't have to wade through dozens of irrelevant edits. Also I believe it pays to review all recent changes to article before editing anything, I can choose to ignore sp and gr and m if they are tagged. Richard 02:03, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Early Life

Is there anyone who knows much about Peter Ellis's early life? For instance, the Helen Clark article has a section entitled Early life. We should create such a bit as this is, technically, a biography on Ellis. --Midnighttonight 00:40, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Gadfium is also researching this based in part from Hood's book. Here is a paragraph from McLoughlin's article 1996

Ellis is the eldest of four children whose parents separated when he was nine. He picked tobacco in Motueka after leaving school, then went overseas for two years, on his return holding a number of jobs, some of them responsible positions which he apparently found stressful and set him drinking heavily. He had been unemployed for some time when he arrived at the Civic in September 1986 on a two week community service order for benefit fraud, his only prior conviction. He liked the creche and staff, children and parents liked him, so he stayed, completing a childcare certificate on the job between 1987 and 1989.

The fact that he was qualified (I'll check on what certificate) needs to be added

Richard 01:06, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Sections

Currently the sections are quite long and not clear. I propose a new structure for the article.

• Intro

pretty much what is there at the moment

• Early life

once we have this info

• Allegations of abuse

what did the children say, the psychology evidence for being accurate each way

• Trial

what evidence was/wasnt allowed, suppression, sentence, etc

• Ministerial inquiry

What was found and the criticisms of the inquiry

• Release from prison

What has he done since etc

• Ongoing debate

calls for more inquiries, on going influences, and so forth

What do people think? If this is liked, then please implement it or adjust it. --Midnighttonight 10:25, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

No objection but off top of head I at least believe another section necc

• The Investigation

Richard 11:27, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Internal links

I've gone through the intro and created internal links, but it needs to occur throughout the article. I can literally scroll to parts and not see any internal links on the page. For those new to Wikipedia place the square brackets around the word you want to link. Thus [[link]] will create link. It does get more complicated, the main other one is [[article being linked|what you want to say]], e.g. [[New Zealand general election, 2005|the 2005 election]] produces the 2005 election. --Midnighttonight 10:42, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Does it work automatically? or does one need to supply url? If not, what happens there is no internal target available? Richard 11:24, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

If there is no internal target, then you get a red-link. This is essentially an invitation for someone to start writing that article. Only add red-links when you think it is reasonable that Wikipedia should have an article on the topic, and use another browser window to try a few alternative phrasings to see if we have a suitable article to link to already.-gadfium 20:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Draft lead section to replace current.

Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis (born March 30, 1959) is a former Christchurch, New Zealand child care worker. In June 1993 he was found guilty on 16 counts of sexual offences involving children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Creche and was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment.

The Ellis case is highly controversial, with many New Zealanders believing he is innocent of the charges (Ellis has maintained his innocence throughout). The case has been subject to a Ministerial Inquiry, 2 petitions, a book and numerious articles with suppoters of Ellis continuing to press against what they believe to be a miscarrage of justice.

Include dates Trial 1993, Eichelbaum 2001, two public petitions 2003 and don't forget two Court of Appeal hearings (1994, 1999) (and what about Thorp's report to secretary of justice - then Phil Goff I pressume? - , how it can be decribed I don't know)

Actually at least four petitions have been lodged, Thorp advised on the second.

Richard 04:02, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Phil Goff was Minister of Justice 1999-2005, not secretary. If you want the secretary, i can find it out, but I'm suspecting that it would be the Minister. the current minister of justice is Mark Burton. --Midnighttonight 09:34, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, That is how its always been described, Thorp's report for secretary of (may have been "for") justice. I've often wondered when I've read it who it meant but have been too lazy to find out.

Richard 13:19, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

If it was the Secretary of Justice then I would be worried. Unless, it was a report for the Gov-Gen which had to go through the Secretary? Can you give me a link so I can see if they are using it in the British/American sense, or the New Zealand sense? Cheers, --Midnighttonight 08:07, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

A bit of digging located this, I guess Goff asked either his secretary or the secretary of Attorney Gen or Solicitor Gen?? Anyway Thorp states in his Terms...[note last sentence then I copy the first lines of the report where the "Ministry is mentioned}

"His Excellency the Governor-General has sought the formal advice of the Minister of Justice on an application by Mr Peter Ellis dated 16 November 1998 for the exercise of the Royal prerogative of mercy.

"The Minister has sought our advice and has approved our instructing you to provide an opinion on the question whether the second petition by Mr Ellis contains any further issues, which ought to be referred back to the Court of Appeal."

"The second petition canvasses a number of issues, which have already been considered in the context of the first petition. While I am interested in your opinion on these issues I would suggest that the primary focus should be on any new issues which are raised in the second petition."

"Finally, I note Mr Ellis has asked in the first instance for a free pardon and a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the case. The exercise of the Royal prerogative of mercy by the Governor-General to grant a free pardon is extremely rare in New Zealand and I have doubts about whether such an exercise is appropriate in circumstances where the Court of Appeal is already seized of the case. The Ministry is currently considering this question but I would be interested in any comment you have on this aspect of the petition and on the application for a free pardon itself."

Thorp writes: Part 2 Background

2.1 Events Leading Up to the Trial

A detailed history of these events is contained in the report furnished by your Ministry to the Minister on the First Petition ("the Ministry's Report"). It is sufficient for the purposes of this opinion to note from that history the following –

Richard 09:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

okay, so its refering to the Minister of Justice. Your use of secretary is incorrect. In New Zealand terms (as opposed to UK and US), the Secretary is the civil servant head of a department (the term Secretary is less used these days, most Chief Executive is used, but in the case of Justice it is still a Secretary due to a number of internal arrangements regarding the election administration and the Solicitor-General's office), the Minister is the politican head of a department. While the US and UK use Secretary as the political-head of a ministry/department. The UK uses Permanent Secretary for what we use as Secretary/Chief Executive. The US has no nonpolitical head of their departments. --Midnighttonight 10:07, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I doubt very much you can state that my use of the description is incorrect. But all the same I'll pass on your assessment to Lynley Hood and The Dom Post. Hood cites it as 'Sir Thomas Thorp, 'Opinion for The Secretary of Justice re Petitions for the Exercise of the Royal Perogative of Mercy by Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis' March 1999' P656 A City Possessed. You'd make quite a splash if you managed to be the first to find a factual error in her book <wink> - and did I not say I that presumed it to be Goff? Richard 10:35, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

The Dominion

March 16 2001 Sir Thomas Thorp's report was prepared for the secretary of justice in March 1999 in response to a petition for a pardon and a new Court of Appeal hearing filed by Ellis's lawyer, Judith Ablett Kerr, QC. It has never been made public. Richard 10:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Breaking this subject up

I don't have the time to work on this right now, but looking at this article for the first time gave me a headache because of long sections that desperately need breaking up. Anyone have any suggestions as to how to do this? PageantUpdater 03:00, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

why not wait until it is more complete? I did advise the topic is expansive, the article as it stands barely scrapes the surface, plenty to come yet. <smile> Richard 04:04, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I imagine the best way to break it up would be to have articles about several of the players, which can be linked to in this article. This can be done later. I do find it surprising that this article could give anyone a headache. It is a drop in the ocean compared with Lynley Hood's 600+ pages of A City Possessed. 21:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC) NZ Researcher

latest Bander additions

Although illuminating I don't think they belong in article, especially where they currently sit, they look too much like an attmpt to belittle Tom's press statement. No matter what POV is taken by readers always remember that in one way or another the children were victims. Richard 04:15, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I was intending to edit this later. However, Tom's statement is not factually correct, and I think we have a duty to point out, indirectly or directly, factual errors. 01:04, 1 May 2006 (UTC) NZ Researcher

Sorry

Sorry, I was rushing when I put up that new lead, I did not meen to put the "draft" part up :) Brian | (Talk) 04:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Paragraph integration

The paragraphs (Section: 'The Case') beginning below are badly integrated

• "Ellis’ supporters have raised many concerns about how the trial was conducted..."

• "Then recent changes in New Zealand law meant that the complainant children's testimony was provided to the court by two separate means:..."

The second serves as good into to the discussion about problems with the interviews but the first paragraph would benefit at that point by including the same info about how the kiddies gave their evidence.

I'm a musician not a writer. <smile> Richard 08:55, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I've since applied a bold scalpel Richard 09:13, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

And please, I ask again can the Tom Bander material (quotes from Joy's book) be removed from ongoing concerns by who ever placed it there. I don't want to delete other's contributions but it is clearly in the wrong place , my POV anyway. <smile> Richard 09:22, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

The Tom Bander stuff needs to be removed from the "Ongoing Influence" section, it doesn't really fit in there. - SimonLyall 09:26, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it's really out of place there. Perhaps move to "The case" section for now? -- Avenue 11:56, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I have answered this already. It will be moved in due course. How the children gave evidence will also be addressed. 01:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC) NZ Researcher

New article name proposal

Concern has been raised, with some merit, that the current name breaches NPOV by prejudicing Peter Ellis. It should be quite obvious to followers of the article thus far that the issues are wider than Ellis and complainant's experiences. Also implicated are a large number of other individuals and organisations e.g. the Staff, behaviours of Min Of Justice and Education, health workers, etc etc. The article hardly scratches the surface.

Why cannot the title be broadened rather than defined? say to

Peter Ellis and the Christchurch Creche Case. —Preceding unsigned comment added by R.christie (talk • contribs)

I agree with that suggestion. The title at the moment suggests its a biography, but it is far far more than that. --Midnighttonight 03:58, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll endorse that - I think this is a really good idea. I know the name of the childcare centre did not have the word "creche" in it, but it has long been called that in the last 15 years. _ Brianr at wave 08:28, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me.-gadfium 08:47, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Would we still keep the current structure of the article? Such sections as "Early life" (which I still intend to expand to include his excessive drinking, and his flamboyant sexuality) seem less appropriate if it isn't a biography.-gadfium 09:13, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

We could split this info off, to make a relatively short biographical article on Peter Ellis. Of course it would need to link to the article about the case. -- Avenue 22:01, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

And what would you call the split off article?-gadfium 22:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the current title, or maybe Peter H. M. Ellis to avoid any concern that we are implying he is guilty by using his full name. I'd also favour removing his name completely from the name of the wider article; e.g. call it the Christchurch Creche Case, not Peter Ellis and the Christchurch Creche Case. -- Avenue 00:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand your concern. Although your suggestion is more categorically accurate I think that people who search for Peter Ellis (H.M.)would be overwhelmingly interested in Creche case anyway, as Ellis hasn't done much else of note. Does the length matter that much? it is after all an encyclopedia, not a dictionary or compendium. Britannica didn't make its reputation on brevity. I suppose you could have a three sentence entry for Peter Ellis stating date of birth and year of conviction etc and a link to another Creche Case entry but what would you gain? That said, I haven't any strong objection to the suggestion if you insist upon it. But suggest we wait until the contributions largely cease, then take a look at how it has shaped up, then revisit this. Richard 01:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I support keeping this article with the same name Brian | (Talk) 02:06, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

If renaming to a more generic name requires a split off of a biographical article, then I oppose the more generic name.-gadfium 03:13, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the opposite is proposed. Either keep the current name and split off all the case history etc to another entry say, Christchurch Creche Case, or, use more generic name "Peter Ellis and the Christchurch Creche Case" and keep it all together". My understanding is that midnight would prefer anything under only Ellis' name to include only basic details. Upon reflection I'm happy with either, the links will be obvious.

Richard 04:39, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Well since Ellis isn't really important outside the context of the case perhaps rename the article to Christchurch Creche Case and redirect Peter Ellis to that. With a little bit of biographical about him at the top.- SimonLyall 10:00, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Cast votes here:

• agree Richard 10:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support. I don't think we would need a separate article for the biographical info, since most of it is arguably relevant to the case. -- Avenue 11:29, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose, I favour keeping one article, that contains all info (case and biographical info) on the one article under the name of Ellis, I do not think this should be called Christchurch Civic Creche Case Brian | (Talk) 21:27, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
• Oppose. I think we should stick with the name of Ellis. However,I agree with Richard and Simon that we should have another entry called Christchurch Civic Creche Case, to which some of the info could be redirected. 03:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher
• Oppose splitting the article into two pieces. I'm not sure if it's clear exactly what we're voting on here. We should keep a title which is primarily about Peter Ellis.-gadfium 05:29, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
• I support changing the name to Peter Ellis (Christchurch creche case) - in the same way that other Peter Ellis's are differentiated. Why should Peter Ellis of the Creche case be differentiated by his middle names, when Peter Ellis (architect) is not?. Information on Peter Ellis and the case is integrally linked - I favour keeping one article, which still allows inclusion of brief biographical information. - Brianr at wave 10:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
• I don't like the idea of splitting the article up, as it's unnecessary duplication - this information really does focus around Peter Ellis and this is the first and most likely place anyone would look. Peter Ellis has no claim to significance outside of the context of this case, too. I would not be opposed to a name-change, as long as it can remain as neutral as possible. Ziggurat 21:14, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Seperating prosecution and defence

Currently the case section is a bit ambiguous and doesn't need to be seperate from the trial. I propose spliting into two.

The first section is the case for the prosecution. The second section is the case for the defence. A third section could be added about evidence that came to light after the trial. Each section would be what that side argued, and not include any rebuttal from the other side.

I think this would also deal to any accusations of POV, as it would clearly show equal weighting given to each side.

What are other people's thoughts on this? --Midnighttonight 09:43, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, IMO really the section ought to be called "the investigation" rather than "The case". The manner in which the investigation was carried out is central to the controversy that resulted. The courts have never properly examined it, Eichelbaum interpreted his TOR so that he didn't have to go there. The factual details of how the case developed from initial complaint (really a non-complaint) and initial "disclosure" (by a child who never attended the creche and whose allegation, although allowing the police to make a dramatic arrest, never made it to court) isn't a matter of defence vs prosecution. I vote against trying to make this material fit that pattern. But if you want to have the two POV as argued in the trials in the trial section then I have no argument. See how I attempted same very much more briefly in paragraph on second appeal.

Richard 10:41, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Besides it risks turning the article into a contest. I think it would end up to be unfair on supporters of the convictions, in terms of the imbalance of the volume information that would probably result. I'm prepared to bet that the imbalance would be marked and would, in my view, not have the even handed outcome that you desire.

Richard 11:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC).

I think the headings are OK as they are. There is still more to be added under these headings, and I think by the time this has been done, the issue about POV won't be an issue at all. I intend to add more regarding the prosecution case and the trial. 21:12, 1 May 2006 (UTC)User:NZ Researcher

Support because at least it would get the POV into the open, rather than being weasel words and just a complete bollocking of the prosecution evidence. He was convicted. There must be reasons. I can't find them in the article --202.22.18.241 03:18, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Point out the "Weasel words" or anything that isn't established fact and I'm sure all will be happy to amend it. For what it is worth it has been my experience that many of those who support the convictions :haven't looked into the case in any depth; or have political agendas to push; or base viewpoints on personal inclination not to question authority; or use the 'I've heard from a friend or so and so 'who knows...'that he did it' line. Of course this is purely my POV and exceptions to above occur. Why not instead ask yourself why the case hasn't gone away in 15 years and ponder on the possibility that the reason why there isn't much information appearing here to support Ellis's guilt is simply that there wasn't any supporting evidence in the first place, aside from children's accounts. Richard 05:04, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

"He was convicted. There must be reasons". Yes, there were reasons but as has been mentioned (and documented), the reasons are more to do with hysteria and panic than actual evidence. Despite all the fantastic claims involving hot ovens, coffins, graveyards, cages being hung from the ceiling, urination and defecation, animal sacrifice, etc, there was no physical or supporting evidence. Ofra Bikel, a USA journalist who has studied mass allegation creches, says that when a child says they were abused in a hot air balloon, a jury will usually disbelieve the hot air balloon but believe the abuse. There are many other mass allegation creche cases. Take the Kelly Michaels case. She was acquitted of over a hundred charges but convicted of more than a hundred charges. How could a jury disbelieve children in regards to so many accusations but believe others? Even trained psychologists don't know when a child is lying or telling the truth!

There is more to come about the prosecution case and what evidence the jury heard and saw and why Ellis was convicted.

BTW, near the end of the article is the paragraph: “In 2003, Rachel, then 18…”. There should be a note at the end of the paragraph, which takes readers to the following reference. If someone more skilled than I could do that, please.

"Complainant seeks inquiry into Ellis case", The Press, June 28, 2003. See http://www.peterellis.org.nz/2003/2003-0628_ThePress_ComplainantSeeksInquiryIntoEllisCase.htm

I've added a note to that paragraph. -- Avenue 02:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Cite req

The Debra A Poole quote [Ministerial Inquiry] should be removed unless a cite is given, as is it may constitute original research. Richard 06:56, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Allegations - Case Citations?

Since I've got some spare time I thought I'd look through the judgments themselves and see if anything could be added. I have to admit finding myself lost as I tried to navigate myself through the article and see what I could add.

This paragraph particularly worries me:

A baby had allegedly been killed. Animals had been sacrificed. Three- and four-year-old children had performed oral sex on adults. A creche employee had urinated in a boy’s face. A female employee had touched a girl’s vagina with a knife, another had had sex with Ellis in front of the children. Creche workers had danced naked in a circle while children watched. Children had been photographed having sex with adults. Naked children had been forced at knifepoint to kick one another while adults wearing white suits played guitars, and pretended to be cowboys. A child had had burning paper and sharp sticks inserted into his anus. Children had been placed in "smoking hot" ovens. Children had been suspended in cages hung from the ceiling. These incidents were reported as taking place in diverse locations, including in cemeteries, private homes, the Park Royal Hotel, but most allegedly occurred at the creche.

Can these allegations be cited? Most of them sound rather extreme, but I don't yet have enough grasp on the case to make an informed decision. I took this out mainly because of the poor use of English.

From what I have read I can confirm the following:

[ Former child creche worker Tracey O'Conner ] stated that while she was working at the creche the accused spoke to her on a number of occasions about a sexual practice known as "golden showers" and said that he enjoyed such a sexual activity which involved being urinated on or urinating on other persons. -- R v Ellis (No 2) [1993] 3 NZLR 325

I've tried to read through the rest but it's making my head swim. I'll see what I can do later but if anyone wants to read the cases I can email them to you (assuming you don't already have them)... I was surprised that there are no specific case citations in the notes section? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PageantUpdater (talk • contribs) .

I wrote the original version of the paragraph you removed. Others have added details to it since. I've reinstated it with the source I initially used. While I haven't read the original interviews with the children, they are available online and I understand that this is what they say. Feel free to correct the English; also, the various people who added details should add cites to the paragraph.-gadfium 09:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. But how do you turn what is essentially a string of broken sentences into a meaningful paragraph? I tried and failed. (And I still think this needs better citations) PageantUpdater 09:48, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

All the allegations occurred, all appear in Hood's book, some in R vs Ellis trial transcripts, (but not all, due to Stanaway attempting to downplay the ritual abuse connections and purge the bizzarre claims). The Bander kid listed ALL of Hudson's indicators of ritual abuse. His Mother appeared in DSW the morning of his last interview brandishing Hudson's book (Hood p384), IMO the paragraph sits perfectly where it is, (I didn't write it), right after the reference to Hudson's indicators. I think the English is fine. Short simple statements of fact. Only some of the interviews are available online. Richard 10:21, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I've added placed a footnote for an Aynsley article in NZ Listener, here is an url if someone wants to incorporate it as well, http://www.peterellis.org.nz/1993/1993-0710_NZListener_JudgementInChristchurch.htm Richard 11:27, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Also, the following cite needs adding as footnote to Eade's quote at end of Appeal section, (I tried unsuccessfully to do it i best stick to ones without urls) TV3 Sunday, 23 November 1997

"The Case In Question - Review" Producer: Amanda Millar And Melanie Reid Reporter: Melanie Reid

at http://www.peterellis.org.nz/1997/1997-1123_TV3_TheCase-Review.htm Richard

PU, I'm not sure what the problem is with the English. If you could be more specifc, that would be great. I took most of that paragraph from transcripts of the children's evidential interviews. I agree that they do sound extreme, but such is the nature of ritual sex abuse allegations. They are extreme but typically lack any corroborating evidence. Much of these extreme allegations weren't allowed to be referred to at trial.

You mention Tracey O'Conner and Ellis allegedly told her about golden showers. Peter Ellis, when testifying, said he hadn't talked to anybody about golden showers. He had, however, mentioned other sexual matters, which he said he'd read about. 21:14, 3 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher

Hi... I think it definitely needs a lead sentence. I started reading "A baby had allegedly been killed. Animals had been sacrificed. Three- and four-year-old children had performed oral sex on adults...." and I was thinking "whaaat?"... particularly the placement of the comment about sacrificial animals (!). It should at least say "Some of the allegations were as follows:...", but I tried that and it made me want to use semi-colons rather than full stops which I dare say was worse. Just a bit of constructive criticism from someone who read one of the sections for the first time (I'm not sure about you but when I'm writing essays etc you can get so bogged down in what you think you are saying that it is hard to spot the wood for the trees. Not trying to be critical of you or anything, but just to give my opinion :) As for references etc - why not use more citations from judgments... the people making the statements made them under oath, and whether or not you believe them they can make for interesting comparisons. As for the statement on "golden showers"... again, that is simply what Tracey O'Conner testified (although be honest I was probably five years too young to fully appreciate the case when it was garnering most news time so probably don't have a full grasp of it - hence I'm leaving making any major changes to the experts!). PageantUpdater 22:20, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi. You will notice that the previous paragraph to the one we're talking about is about ritual sexual abuse. So effectively that is the lead-in for the next paragraph. I don't think it needs a lead sentence but I will have another think on it. Thanks for the criticism, though. I have written previously that there is more to be added and what you have mentioned re testimony under oath and judgments will be added, probably this weekend when I have more time. 22:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher

The trial transcripts are under supression orders, I believe you have to apply to read them. If you cite them, you may be putting yourself in an awkward position of later having to explan how you got to read them. Just musing. Richard 04:16, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the transcripts but of the official judgments. Congrats to whoever fixed that section though, because it reads perfectly now :) PageantUpdater 04:19, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

PU, I will be providing info about the judgements in due course. 20:58, 4 May 2006 (UTC)User:NZ Researcher

Richard, I don't believe there is any problem with suppression orders. Was it a problem for Lynley Hood? These orders relate to the children's names, which remain suppressed. However, their testimony and particulaly the testimony of other witnesses, to the best of my knowledge, is not suppressed. Indeed if you look at the Court of Appeal decisions, the judges quote the odd piece of children's testimony. 22:08, 4 May 2006 (UTC)User:NZ Researcher

Crown Submission/Thomas Lyon

"Lyon's work was cited extensively in the Crown's submission to the Ministerial Inquiry."

I've removed this as I don't believe it to be the case, certainly not extensively. IIRC Roger Maclay, then Commissioner for Children and vocal supporter of convictions, nominated Lyon as an expert for the inquiry. I've briefly checked Crown submission and couldn't find any ref to Lyon but may have missed it.

Richard 03:47, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

In addition to Maclay, it appears that both Crown and Parents (who just endorsed the Crown's nominees) also nominated Lyon. I still can't find his name in the Crown submission as it appears on web. http://www.peterellis.org.nz/docs/2000/EichelbaumSubmissions/Crown.htm http://www.peterellis.org.nz/docs/2000/EichelbaumCorrespondence/2000-0607_Eichelbaum_InternationalExperts.pdf Richard 04:04, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Lyon's work was cited by Crown Law, so I think it is worthy of mention. Simon France also refers to the Kelly Michaels case and asks, rhetorically, what could a jury have made of that case if applied to the Ellis case? See para 153 of the Crown submission:

"It is a false picture to suggest that a united body of opinion would now look at the Ellis interviews with similar eyes. Two pieces of very different writing make this point and are included in the materials. The first is a 1999 Cornell Law Review article by Thomas Lyon, who was one of the Crown's nominated experts. (Tab 16). In it he critiques what he calls the "new way" of suggestibility research. His three primary criticisms reflect the tenor of what the Crown submitted at the appeal". He then goes on to describe Lyon's criticisms, which are irrelevant in the context of the Ellis case. Lyon's criticisms relate specifically to the research being applied in the context of a "typical" abuse investigation. There was nothing typical about the Ellis investigation in comparison to other sex abuse cases. 22:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC) USer:NZ Researcher

I see, I note that the critique was actually supplied to Eichelbaum as material with the submission. So no excuses for not knowing where Lyon sat in the debate, no wonder Eichelbaum kept anonymous the "USA law professor" he sought advice from in his final report. Lyon's paper not only questions the direction of research but also the use made in the courts of that field of research. I've tried to add that but you'll probably have a better way of putting it across. Richard 08:46, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Ellis' age

In the judgment of Court of Appeal (R v Ellis [2000] 1 NZLR 513) it was stated that Ellis' birth date was 30 March 1958. In the article it says he was born in 1959. Can someone clear this up? PageantUpdater 04:26, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Pretty sure it was 1958 He was arrested on 30 March 1992, his 34th birthday Hood p201 Richard 05:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

footnote needed

The following is a strong claim

"Some complainant children started therapy sessions for sexual abuse before the investigation had ceased and before they were cross-examined in court."

I believe that it needs to be cited to page 9 of Eichelbaum's Report.

The claim is situated in last paragraph of "the trial" section. There are urls to MOJ website and Eichelbaum already in notes.

Thanks Richard 09:06, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Here is copy from p9 Eichelbaum From the terms of the judgment it is apparent that counsel for the (then) four accused had presented arguments based on a variety of criticisms of the interviewing of the children, including the use of direct and suggestive questions, multi choice questioning, repeated questioning, repeated interviews, the use of dolls, the continuing of the interviews after the child involved in a particular count had commenced therapy, and when he was unwell, the failure of the interviewers to explore the child’s background adequately before the interview, and the alleged contamination of his evidence by information obtained from his parents or other children. Richard 09:56, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I've shifted this to the interview section and ref it to Williamson oral judgment (No2) but if anyone can further refine the ref by proving a journal ref for the judgment then all the better. Richard 23:50, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Section Headings

Apologies for not being bold but I guess you could say I'm just keeping an eye on things here since I don't have enough information or enough of a grasp of the article to make anything but minor edits myself. Something else has just come to my attention.

Unrelated to this I was reading the information on headings in the Manual of Style and I realised that the headings in this article do not conform. I am loathe to change them myself because of the issue of interlinking (i.e. I don't know what, if anything, is interlinked and would need changing).

The relevant bits:

• Capitalize the first letter only of the first word and of any proper nouns in a heading, and leave all of the other letters in lowercase.
• Avoid "The" in headings; use "Voyage" instead of "The voyage".
• Avoid repeating the article title in headings; use "Voyage" instead of "Voyage of the Mayflower" in an article titled "Mayflower".
• If at all possible, avoid changing spelling of section titles, as other articles may link to a specific section.

At the moment we have the following headings that should probably be edited (and my proposed changes):

• "The case" > "Case"
• "The Children's Forensic Interviews" > "Children's forensic interviews"
• "The Trial" > "Trial"
• "The Appeals" > "Appeals"
• "The Thorp Report" > "Thorp Report"
• "Ongoing Influence" > "Ongoing influence"

I am currently unsure about:

• "A Mother's Story"
• "Ritual Sexual Abuse" (should Sexual Abuse be capitalised?)
• "Ministerial Inquiry " (should Inquiry be capitalised?)

If there is no opposition to this I can change them myself but I wanted to introduce this here first. PageantUpdater 09:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Go ahead and change them. It's a fairly new article so there shouldn't be too many links to sections in it from elsewhere. I don't think we have any responsibility to preserve section titles just in case someone's linked to them.-gadfium 09:27, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

The manual also says: "If at all possible, avoid changing spelling of section titles, as other articles may link to a specific section. " so I was just being mindful of that. PageantUpdater 10:06, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I also agree with most of these changes, except "The case" > "Case". Neither of these options describe the section well, in my opinion. How about "Investigations"? -- Avenue 09:33, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll go along with them and I back suggestion of "Investigations" but I consider the call to "avoid" the use of "the" to be a bit retentive. Richard 10:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually I was thinking of the same thing as PU (even though I wrote some of the headings, I've since noticed that they don't conform). 20:56, 4 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher

Ablett Kerr

I don't think Ablett Kerr is hyphenated, see http://www.peterellis.org.nz/docs/2000/EichelbaumSubmissions/jak-01.pdf Richard 04:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Tense

Can an agreement be made. The case largely is historical but still active. What is the convention used in Wiki as to tense. I prefer to use the past tense for past events, even when refering to documents. i.e. "Smart wrote " or "Thorp raised the possibility". But the article currently reads "smart writes.." or "Thorp raises the.." Help req from old hands please. Richard 12:02, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Good point. This note seems to support your preference (which is mine too), although it doesn't directly address references to documents. -- Avenue 12:32, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I pressume this to be best;

On 12 May John wrote "blah blah" in his diary.

But which of these?

-John's diary entry for 12 May reads "blah blah"/ It reads "blah blah".

or - "John's dairy entry for 12 May read "blah blah"/ It read "blah blah".

(for sake of arguement try substituting 'says' and 'said' for 'reads' and 'read')

Richard 23:13, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Quotes vs Paraphrases

I am under the impression that a quote must be exact, and text within " " must include all original grammar etc. Any editorial changes are by convention indicated within [ ]. There are good reasons for this, not least being the modern practice of pasting strings into search engines. So I will continue reverting any changes I find to quotes. Richard 02:25, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Peer review

Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis

This article has just finished being the NZ collaboration. The article needs a general peer review. Also, if it could be looked at for POV-pushing in particular due to the controversial nature of the case. Cheers --Midnighttonight 02:52, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Haven't had a chance at more than a cursory look so far, but the short third paragraph bothers me. If he was not homosexual, would that paragraph be there saying he is heterosexual. No, of course not. Is it able to be interpreted as saying hey, he is homosexual and a lot of the complainants were girls, so........? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moriori (talk • contribs)

A lot of the article seems to deny that the children were abused. It seems to be pushing a POV that Ellis didn't do it. There is little focus on the evidence that convicted him without it being a focus on why that evidence is wrong. The evidence for the defence is, however, given no qualifications and treated as fact. There is a POV being pushed in that article. --210.86.75.96 03:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

also needs to have more internal links. --210.86.75.96 03:21, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I've put more in, but its not exactly the sort of article that lends itself to this. PageantUpdater 04:44, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree a lot of the article seems to deny that children were abused. That opinion is widely held throughout NZ, but that point is not developed enough in the article, so it comes across as being the opinion of Wikipedi (which I don't think was the intention). Moriori 03:32, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the paragraph on his sexuality down into "Early life" and expanded it. I think any biographical article should deal with the subject's acknowledged sexuality. No implication or connection of this paragraph with the Civic Creche case is intended. It's quite possible that some people will have been prejudiced against Ellis due to his sexuality, but this is unprovable.-gadfium 04:08, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Since this is a potentially controversial article and uses a lot of primary source information, direct quotes should be explicitly referenced. The lead is a bit short, it really should summarise the content of the article, and I don't think that it is necessary to state he is a homosexual in the lead, unless it is placed within some sort of context. Using some ===h3=== to better group together content may be a good idea. And I agree, the article does seem to be skewed toward the innocence POV.--nixie 03:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

"A lot of the article seems to deny that the children were abused". Really? Please show where. As a matter of fact, nobody except Peter Ellis and God knows if children were abused. The case is ongoing. At the bottom of the article, there is reference to a Privy Council appeal. What if Ellis wins that appeal? Will the whole article need to be re-written? I should hope not. 20:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

OK, fair enough about "deny", but how about "infers innocence/unfair trial" rather that denial. Here's one example -- "Karen Zelas, testified at trial that there are behavioural factors, which the crèche complainants allegedly exhibited". Allegedly?. I'll eat my hat if Zelas didn't say the children exhibited certain behaviour instead of they allegedly exhibited certain behaviour. There's a subtle distinction. Moriori 22:30, 8 May 2006 (UTC)>

I think you misinterpret that sentence. I'm saying that Zelas testified that there are certain behaviours that are consistent with sexual abuse. I also say that these behaviours were allegedly exhibited by the complainants. I cannot say (and I don't think Zelas did either) that they were exhibited because I (and Zelas) weren't there. None of us were present when these behaviours were allegedly displayed. Only the children and their parents can address this issue and the parents alleged that the behaviours were displayed. We don't know that they were actually exhibited.

I think we'd be better off focusing on the facts rather than getting caught up in inferring innocence or guilt. If there are facts that anyone is unhappy with or simply think are wrong, then say what they are. 22:41, 8 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

I concede to meet you half way on the misinterpret bit. But, in the context of that whole paragraph it could most definitely be interpreted to mean Zelas said the complainants exhibited symptoms. It is difficult to see exactly who is making statements. For instance, look at the following -- "Le Page said that in his experience, children and adults who had been abused usually expressed distress when they recounted their experiences of abuse. Apparently the complainants showed little or no distress during their formal interviews. Who said the complainants apparently showed little or no distress? Le Page or Wikipedia? If Wikipedia is saying this, how is the word apparently justified? Moriori 23:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be suggesting that apparently shouldn't be used by wikipedia. Are there any other words that you don't think are appropriate? I don't see any problem with apparently. I don't think Le Page said that the complainants showed little or no distress during their formal interviews (if he had, I would've tried to quote him). But from my reading of some of the transcripts, and from my reading of Le Page's testimony, I think it is apparent that the children showed little or no distress. BTW, I don't recall Karen Zelas saying that the kids were distressed. Seeing as she was the prosecution's expert witness, I imagine she would have highlighted any distress from the kids. 00:33, 9 May 2006 (UTC)~ User:NZ researcher

The crux. You say you think "it is apparent that the children showed little or no distress". That is blatant POV opinion. Also, I don't say certain words shouldn't be used in Wikipedia, but that we should not attribute a word to someone who never used it, or use any word to support a POV. Moriori 03:07, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't like the use of 'apparently' either. The observation is nevertheless correct, thank you (Moriori) for pointing it out, I shall try to find time to find a cite in Eichelbaum's report or trial record. then it can be categorically said "the children showed little or no distress" I recall Louise Sas tried to expailn away the Bander child's lack of emotion while he detailed horrific satanic abuse, perhaps that will do? Richard 12:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

User:NZ researcher has done a lot of edits in the article I see. S/he clearly has a POV and is pushing it. The article is, at the moment, still showing this POV. Neutral language and equal weighting is needed. At the moment, it doesn't have it. Furthermore, these peer reviews are for editors unrelated to the article's creation to discuss it and to recommend changes. User:NZ researcher, people are trying to help the article, don't throw it back into their faces.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.22.18.241 (talk • contribs) .

The above comment is unsigned. The last time another writer made similar comments they went on to vandalise the article. There is a fundamental problem with reporting on the case. Those unfamiliar with its history seem to be asking why was he convicted, implying that sort of evidence isn't highlighted. In reality the conviction wasn't a result of any credible evidence, it was a result of a myriad of social and circumstantial factors that many analysts have since recognised as a describing a witch hunt. So, what was he convicted upon? Good examples have already been supplied - they are in essence children's stories, digging up Jesus, killing all the boys with axes etc. Mingled within were credible allegations 'he did poos in the bath' (scatological content featured prominently) and others that the adult interpreters coaxed out and then sifted (through arguable means) in order to create a case. Allied with that were parental anxieties about behaviours falling within perfectly ordinary range of childhood behaviours, behaviours that would be remarkable if they didn't occur in such a sample size. That's basically it. Let me repeat, the so called 'toddler testimonies' are IT in terms of evidence. The article just records the resultant fall out. Some of the language may be tweaked but the facts are facts. Those who feel something has been left out are welcome to research such and include it. That doesn't make the existent fact POV. Richard 12:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

An unsigned user wants neutral language and equal weighting. Well, who is stopping that person from doing just that if they feel offended by the article? I have tried to use neutral language and to give plenty of weight to both sides. A claim has been made but no evidence is provided to support it. If anyone has a problem with the language used, feel free to say what it is. Vagueness is not helpful. 21:16, 9 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

Moriori, yes, I do think "it is apparent that the children showed little or no distress". That is not POV at all. I have explained why it is apparent that the children showed little or no distress, an explanation which you haven't contested. If it is not apparent to you that the kids showed little or no distress, please explain why. But as it currently stands, you seem to want to ban apparently from Wikipedia and I find that truly astonishing. 21:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

Once again, YOU say that YOU think something is apparent. That is clearly your POV. Had it been stated in evidence or summing up that it was apparent the children showed little or no distress then of course we could use it, by quoting the person/s who said so. Until we can do that your personal opinion has no place in Wiki. I'm beginning to suspect you are a politician, because they are known to express astonishment at things that exist only in their minds. Like you. For the second time, "I don't say certain words shouldn't be used in Wikipedia, but that we should not attribute a word to someone who never used it, or use any word to support a POV". But you already knew that, because it is the exact information you were given a few pars above this one. Moriori 21:52, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I've already quoted Le Page who said that in his experience children would show distress when describing being sexually abused. He implied that the complainansts didn't exhibit any distress. Have you read any of the transcripts? It is apparent to me and probably others, that from reading those transcripts, the children are not distressed. It has got nothing to do with my personal opinion and everything to do with facts. If you can refute these facts, please do so. And where exactly do I attribute apparent to anyone? If Le Page had said apparent, I would've quoted him. He didn't, so I haven't. By all means remove apparent if it bothers you so much, but I'm not sure what you hope to achieve by doing this. 22:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

Goodness gracious me! Le Page implied the complainants didn't exhibit distress? What? Here's a quote from the article, attributed to LePage -- ".........there was no evident stress from any child in relation to any of these things until they were questioned. Got that? LePage says they showed distress when questioned. But then, only four sentences further down, Wikipedia states - "apparently the complainants showed little or no distress during their formal interviews." Has the penny dropped yet? Wikipedia is contradicting a statement made by the defence expert. That whole sentence needs the axe. Moriori 00:57, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Good gracious is right, you're like a dog with a bone! You haven't even read Le Page's testimony, yet you claim to know what he said and what he meant. Le Page was talking about when the children were being interviewed by their parents. Some parents said their children were uptight or had behavioural problems, but these alleged problems occurred when the kids were questioned by their parents, not before. Despite the fact that children were allegedly being urinated and defecated on, they showed no "evident stress". Le Page said that if the children's behaviour was out of the ordinary (and we don't know that it was), that could be due to a whole lot of reasons. When the children were formally interviewed, which is the only factual record of what the children were asked, they apparently showed no signs of distress when describing horrific acts of abuse. That's why we should use apparently, because although it seems there was no distress, we cannot say it as a matter of fact. 01:51, 10 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

Please don't debate the issues on this page. Commnents on the article should be directed towards improvement which can be made to it. If you feel a comment is unjustified, then add a very brief reply suggesting the discussion be pursued at Talk:Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis.-gadfium 06:35, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

You are correct. This should be debated elsewhere and I should be ashamed of myself. However, as this is the peer review page where editors will come to review the article, I must point out something they should know about the content of this article. Following my last post above (at 00:57, 10 May 2006 (UTC)), User:NZ researcher removed from the article "there was no evident stress from any child in relation to any of these things until they were questioned". That was a quote of evidence given by Le Page, the defence expert, saying the children were distressed when questioned. It was chopped because it is contradicted by the POV opinion of an editor/s in the article which says "apparently the complainants showed little or no distress during their formal interviews." The expert's verbatim quoted testimony gets chopped, an editor's POV rules. Sheesh. You gotta fear for Wikipedia. Moriori 09:42, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no ojection to the wording Moriori added. In fact I think it highly relevant. Put it back in. Richard 11:26, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. -- Avenue 12:25, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Moriori, you are wrong. Le Page didn't say the children were distressed when questioned. If you can show that the complainants showed distress during their formal interviews or at trial, please do so but so far you haven't been able to. You haven't even read Le Page's testimony, so I suggest you don't comment until you've read it. BTW, who was the person who originally inserted the quote that was chopped? Me!!! So much for POV. 20:57, 10 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

Sexuality

I added the following paragraph, as an expansion of the original one-line para which said "Ellis is openly homosexual", to the "Early life" section. User:NZ researcher removed it with the edit comment "last para removed because I don't think particulary relevant. Ellis' homosexuality is mentioned later in article".

Prior to his imprisonment, Ellis had sexual relationships lasting for periods of two to five years with both men and women. He told Lynley Hood "In a relationship with a woman I was, for want of a better word, bisexual, and with a man I was monogamous". When working for the Civic Creche, Ellis was described by Hood as "blatently homosexual. He had long hair, long fingernails, and rings on almost every finger. He walked with a mincing gait. He had a sharp tongue and an outrageous sense of humour".

As I said in the Peer review, I think the article should be trying to cover more about Ellis' life than just the Civic Creche case, and I think this paragraph is entirely appropriate, although perhaps "Early life" isn't the most appropriate section title. That is currently the only section of the article which isn't about the Civic Creche case.-gadfium 00:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure of the relevance of Ellis' sexuality and whether he walks with a mincing gait. I doubt we'd see articles talking about heterosexuals in the same way. The fact that he is homosexual, as well as what sexual comments he is alleged to have made, are already mentioned (in context) in the article. I think few readers would want to know Ellis' life story. I understand that since leaving prison, Ellis has had a heart attack. Maybe some details could be added about his time since his release from prison, but I don't think we should devote much space to it. 03:05, 9 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

User:NZ researcher deleted gadfium's version; I have restored it pending further discussion here.

Personally, I feel that his behaviour at the Creche is very relevant and should be mentioned before the details of appeals, inquiries etc. Many other commentators (e.g. Hood) seem to think it's relevant too. I'm not so sure about whether we need to cover exactly when he was bisexual and when monogamous. -- Avenue 04:58, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think perhaps NZ researcher sees this as an article primarily about the Christchurch Civic Creche case, whereas I see it as an article about Peter Ellis. A similar debate arose earlier today at the Helen Clark article about whether a photo of her taken long before she became notable was worth including in the article. I said it was, because the article was on the person, not on the current Prime Minister (although I didn't put it in those terms in that debate).

The exact details of the paragraph are open to rewrites. I expanded that paragraph as I did because the bare one line paragraph was criticised in the peer review, and the quotes from Ellis and Hood seemed a reasonable summary.

I was planning to also add a paragraph on Ellis' excess consumption of alcohol in the years leading up to his employment at the creche, and perhaps a paragraph about staff criticism of him for being reluctant to take part in the toileting of children. The purpose of these paragraphs would be to fill out more of a description of him as a person, and not to lead in to the case. If it turned out that he was the Canterbury Chess Club champion, I'd add that too. If others involved in this article think it should largely restrict itself to the case, then I won't bother writing these paragraphs.-gadfium 06:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the article should cover Ellis' life beyond the case, but personally I wouldn't want to include details of his sex life unless it was potentially relevant to the case or otherwise notable somehow.

There are a few news reports on Ellis' heart attack at the bottom of this page.[30] -- Avenue 08:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it was seeing reports of his heart attack over a year ago that made me write myself a mental note "must get a wikipedia article on him" over a year ago. Eventually I added the article request to Portal:New Zealand/Opentask, and then I looked at that to get ideas for NZCOTF!-gadfium 09:47, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't like the paragraph. Just don't like it. Don't think it relevant if he was polygamous or monogamous, that's invasion of his privacy. That he was homosexual is OK to mention because it might explain why some singled him out, the rest is simply a tad tabloid. Richard 11:39, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The paragraph is almost entirely quotes from his biography. The bit you're objecting to is a quote from him. How is that invasion of his privacy? Anyway, feel free to suggest a better wording.-gadfium 19:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the relevance of the paragraph at all. It is exclusively about Ellis' sexuality. Should we include a similar paragraph about Helen Clark, including comments by some that her marriage is one of convenience? Even though I'm no fan of hers, I would strongly resist inclusion of such material. It is tawdry and serves no real purpose. Would you expect to see such material in an encyclopaedia? 00:15, 10 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

As it happens, there is currently a debate at Talk:Helen Clark on precisely that point (whether we should report on comments about her marriage). I personally think it should be reported on there. I don't see covering it as tawdry, but rather as useful background on the compromises she may have made to become a politician, and on how conservative the NZ public was in those days. -- Avenue 00:38, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I read the Clark article and thought it very poor. What does it relate? the bare facts of her career, a sly dig at her sexuality and then the paragraph about so-called "scandals" (give us a break <groan>). Just the sort of thing Kenneth Starr, special prosecutor, would have written. Richard 04:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I have replaced "Early life" with "Personal" and have included mention of his heart attack. I have also excluded paragraph about his sexuality. 00:40, 10 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

Well, Helen Clark has said that she didn't want to get married and that was a compromise but I fail to see how a person's sexuality is relevant. Anyway, Ellis' sexuality is referred to later in the context of a child who is explaining why she believes Ellis was convicted. I don't think we need to go beyond that. 00:43, 10 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

The current version of the article does not mention his sexuality at all. His sexuality is relevant and in my opinion its complete omission distorts the overall view of the events. It is a common opinion held by many New Zealanders (including myself) that were he not gay the investigation would probably have not been so obsessively relentless. Any man working at a creche would have been at risk of such allegations at that hysterical place in that hysterical time. But were he not gay, the initial denials by the children that anything out of the ordinary happened might have been believed. Hawthorn 01:16, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I have removed italics from "blatently homosexual". The quote from Hood needs to read in full context (or fully quoted) in order for her use italics to be meaningful. RichardJ Christie 01:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Nominations for ministerial inquiry

Avenue has said that Karen Saywitz was selected but refused. Don't you mean she was nominated? Many experts were nominated. Amye Warren, a suggestibility researcher, says she was approached by the Justice Ministry and after giving the ministry a copy of her CV, she didn't receive a reply. Should that be included? 21:06, 10 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

No, I didn't mean Saywitz was only nominated. I meant Eichelbaum selected her as an expert ahead of Louise Sas. These two letters [31] [32] show that Eichelbaum was seriously pursuing Saywitz's involvement as an expert, and only turned to Sas in response to Saywitz turning hm down. NZ researcher has twice reverted my version, which said "Only two of the selected experts agreed to provide opinions", to simply say "Two experts were selected". So our article now says that only two experts were selected, Davies and Sas, and criticises Eichelman for not considering others. In light of the above facts, I believe this is misleading. -- Avenue 12:46, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

You're missing the point. It's a fact that Eichelbaum selected only two experts, but his terms of reference allowed him to select more than two. Remember the budget for the inquiry was $500,000 but less than a third of that was spent. So Eichelbaum could have selected a dozen experts if he'd wanted two. Why he selected only two, including a child advocate who believed in satanic ritual abuse, can be debated. I'm sure that Eichelbaum did consider other experts but we don't know why some of them were rejected. Debra Ann Poole was second on Val Sim's list of three, but wasn't selected. There is no indication that Poole was unavailable. Do we conclude that Eichelbaum didn't like her "profile" and "research direction"? BTW, the article doesn't criticise Eichelbaum for not considering other experts. It simply says that many of the world's leading experts were overlooked. 21:57, 11 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

I agree there isn't a passage directly critising his not considering other experts, but I think there is clearly an implicit criticism. We start the paragraph by saying that "at least two internationally recognised experts (if possible with experience in mass allegation child sexual abuse)" were required, go into Sim's involvement, and later note that one of the two experts selected (Sas) did not have experience with mass allegations. I agree some criticism of the selection of experts is warranted (both of the outcome and the process), and your point about why only two were selected is a good one (although "appointed" would be more accurate than "selected"). However I believe that our current version is too strong, because we emphasise Sas's lack of experience, but the reader would have no idea that Eichelbaum selected someone else ahead of Sas and that Sas was a last-minute substitute. -- Avenue 00:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, it's a fact that Sas didn't (and doesn't) have experience in mass allegation creche cases. Given the vast number of experts, especially in North America, that do have experience in mass allegation creche cases, I don't think it would have been difficult for Sim to appoint someone with such experience. However, Sim, in deciding to reject Ceci's nomination, needed a reason (or excuse) and this reason (and others) caused potentially dozens of experts to be ineligible. As for Sas being a last-minute substitute, we don't know that that was the case. We know that other experts were nominated. For example, Kim Oates, Debra Poole, Amye Warren, James Woods were all nominated. Warren says she has no idea why she was rejected. We don't know why the others were rejected. Eichelbaum may have been thinking of appointing Sas for some time. I don't believe anyone was selected ahead of Sas, although Debra Poole was second on Sim's list and we don't know why Poole was rejected. If you're talking about Saywitz, Eichelbaum was simply wanting to know if she was available. She wasn't. 20:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

I have no argument with the statement about Sas's experience. However the letters clearly indicate that Sas was only approached as a result of Saywitz being unavailable. This seems highly relevant to any judgement about the selection of experts, but our passage says nothing about this. How about this: instead of saying "Two experts were selected: ...", replace this with "Other experts were approached but were not available. Two experts were eventually appointed: ...". -- Avenue 23:51, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, some where unavailble. Some were available. Not withstanding, the appointment of Sas raises many questions. OI Act requests for illumination as to how her name arose have been fruitless. MOJ state that they don't know where/when her name came into consideration. I hazard a guess from Eichelbaum's general knowledge of subject matter that it didn't arise from him. It is of interest that Loiuse Sas had prior knowledge of case via personal interaction with Wendy Ball, friend of Sally Ruth, who laid the first complaint. No charges arose from that complaint, (Ruth's name is not subject to suppression orders, although writers involved with the case have thus far not named her, her name appears in Appeal Court rulings and in Williamson's oral judgments, possibly elsewhere as well). Ball has also taken on the role of complainant spokesperson (search News reports Ellis site). Ball attended and analysed aspects of the Ellis case at a conference in 1997 in Canada (Second International Conference on Children Exposed to Family Violence, held in London (Ontario)). Sas was on speaker's platform with Ball at very same workshop)

I think the wording ought to be "other experts were approached but not all were available....". Richard 07:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The fact remains that only two experts were appointed but more could have been appointed if Eichelbaum had wanted. It's also a fact that Sas's selection was inappropriate given that better qualified experts were available. 22:26, 15 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

POV tag

I put on the POV tag. The peer review (included above) gives a description of the problem. Do not remove the tag until there is a consensus that the article is no longer POV. --Midnighttonight 22:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Surprise, surprise! You have had clear opportunity to address any POV statements in the article yet you haven't moved at all to do so, not one iota. Instead you unilaterally decide to dispute the article. Your action does not impress.Richard 03:22, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, some specifics would be good. And those who complain have the opportunity to correct any perceived bias by editing the article, so I really don't see what the problem is. 22:17, 11 May 2006 (UTC) NZ Researcher

---

I've removed a comment about the NPOV tag from the article. We do not need consensus that the article is POV before an editor can place the tag. Midnighttonight has every right to place the tag. Such a tag needs justification, and Midnight (I hope you don't mind me calling you that) has pointed to the peer review discussion, which I agree is adequate justification.

What happens now is that people continue to edit the article, and can from time to time (within reason) ask Midnight if his/her concerns have been met, and if they have not been met, to restate them in light of subsequent edits. It's reasonable to expect him/her to also edit the article to reduce any POV. If there's a strong feeling amongst the majority of editors that the NPOV tag is not warranted but one person insists on keeping it, then there are various dispute procedures that can be used. We certainly do not require such procedures at this point.-gadfium 04:12, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

---

New readers of this discussion ought to know two things about the placement of the NPOV tag. The dispute is not about fact. The ‘disputer’ has yet to specify any errors of fact. So the dispute must be over presentation and perceived imbalance. When considering this dispute it is essential to remember that Wiki guidelines acknowledge that articles do not have to give equal weight to all opinion. Merely because the weight of evidence presented tends toward a certain conclusion does not constitute bias, if it did ALL decisions made on balance of evidence are flawed due to bias.

I am fully in support of removing language that isn’t strictly neutral for example words such as ‘seems to’; ‘apparently’; that 'so and so' is ‘controversial’ (without citation).

I will vigorously oppose excising any material that is citable.

I am also irritated that the tag has been placed without specific reference nor peer consensus. I suspect that the call for peer review was made soley in order to provide excuse for placing the tag. Richard 08:56, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Assume good faith. I think the call for peer review was made at least partly because I suggested it at Wikipedia talk:New Zealand Collaboration of the Fortnight#Peter Ellis. I now think the peer review was premature as the article was and is still under active development. A peer review may be more useful once it has settled down.-gadfium 09:38, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

---

Do I detect a general pause to collect thoughts? Richard 11:26, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

The Peer review process is standard for collaborations. And yes, a cooling off/pause is needed. I can't spend a great deal of time on Wikipedia over the next little while (uni work is burying me in), so if there is a feeling that the article is balanced and the concerns of the peer review are addressed, then remove the tag and I will eventually be able to come back and give my thoughts. Sorry for not replying earlier, but I needed to take a break from the argument and have a lot else on. --Midnighttonight 22:56, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

While I'm impressed by how far the article's progressed in just a few weeks, I'm not convinced that it is as neutral as it should be. Three reviewers said that the article seemed to favour the innocence viewpoint, and I hope we all agree that we don't want most readers to have that impression of our article. Given the extent of the published material arguing his innocence, it's naturally easier to cover that side of things well. But this could lead to that view being given, or at least appearing to be given, undue weight. I think there's still some way to go before we have an article that is evidently fair to both sides.

I'm currently short of time too, and I only have a couple of specific criticisms at present (one being discussed above, and one which I'll add in a moment). And I can sympathise with people being annoyed when a POV tag is attached without mentioning specific concerns that they can work to address. From my perspective, a {{POV-check}} tag would seem more appropriate than the current {{NPOV}}. -- Avenue 01:33, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Given the comment by Midnighttonight above, I'll remove the POV template.-gadfium 03:36, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Placement of Satanic ritual abuse section

Why is the section on Satanic ritual abuse placed above the Trial section? It starts by mentioning a seminar that took place months after the trial. Also, placing the litany of unbelievable accounts by the children immediately before our coverage of the trial could give our article the appearance of trying to discredit their testimony. I would be happier if this section was moved further down, e.g. to just above "A mother's story". -- Avenue 02:00, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Good points Richard 03:38, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I've moved it down to just before "A mother's story" for now. These two sections are now the only ones out of chronological order, which seems reasonable since they don't quite fit into the broad investigation->trial->appeals->reexaminations flow in their current form.

Another possibility would be to split these sections up, moving the children's claims (which occurred before the trial) into the Children's forensic interviews section, and the ritual abuse info into the Aftermath section. This would maintain the chronological ordering better. -- Avenue 15:22, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The material on SRA was placed before the trial because the SRA allegations had obviously been made before the trial. More importantly, many of these allegations were not heard at the trial. It's not trying to discredit the kids' testimony, although if you think the kids' testimony is discredited by these allegations, then maybe the jury would have thought so too. I agree that this section could go in the section on interviews, or it could be mentioned in the trial section with the proviso that the SRA allegations were given little attention at trial. I don't think everything needs to be in chronological order. 21:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ researcher

suggested POV edits

I believe the following needs change -

Section: Forensic Int

“The interviewers generally didn't try to disprove the children's allegations. According to Ceci, it is impossible to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate allegations when children are repeatedly interviewed over a long period of time.”

The term 'disprove' surprises me. Most sources I’ve read refer to ‘challenging’ or exploring the source of allegations as part of ‘source monitoring’. Can the writer of above passage clarify.

Section: Other crèche workers

Re: Rosemary Smart suggests that staff might have covered up abuse at the Civic Creche.

I originally wrote this sentence with wording to the effect that Smart’s report raised the possibility that the workers may have covered up abuse. The sentence has been changed to above, which I think is an overstatement. The report does not directly suggest Civic staff covered up abuse, it critcised workers for not detecting it and raised the spectre of cover-up by including quotes such as the Finkelhor one. I’d like the sentence reverted to my original.

Re: Karen Zelas the following need citation: “She had previously advised judges on how best to prosecute alleged child sexual abuse cases”.

Section: Ministerial Inq

Re “Gail Goodman's career had been controversial, but Goodman was Sim's first choice”

The controversial description demands justification

Re Lyon: “This seems to misrepresent the work of the "new wave".”

This is writer opinion and cannot remain as it is without elaboration.

Re: “ Ceci and Friedman (2000)”

The source needs to be in the refs or footnote:

Re: “Sas agreed with several children who claimed that they had been placed in cages which were hung from the ceiling.”

Better wording needed What does “agreed with” mean exactly?

Richard 10:37, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Ceci refers to "proof by disproof". The interviewers didn't try to prove the allegations by disproving them. I guess it's the equivalent of falsification or maybe verifiability.

Is it an overstatement that Smart "suggests" that staff might have been involved in a cover up? Smart has said that: "[the staff’s] knowledge of the detection and response to sexual abuse was minimal to non-existent". Clearly that would not be a fair comment if there was no sexual abuse to respond to. Smart provides no evidence of sexual abuse. But the clear implication is that there has been abuse and that staff were directly or indirectly involved.

re Smart: yes it is overstatement, not detecting and reporting abuse could be down to many factors, eg incompetence or lack of training. Deliberately covering up is another thing altogether. However what she wrote could certainly have fueled or sown seeds of suspicicion on that score (IMO it did). I see the sentence has been improved.

I don't agree about Zelas and Goodman needing citations. I recall reading that Goodman has said that her career has been controversial, and will link that in due course. Hood can be used for the Zelas citing.

The reader doesn't necc. know that about Goodman's career, if such judgments are not cited the reader may infer they are reading opinion and the article looses cred. Fair enough about Zelas.

Re Lyon: I'll remove "seems to".

Re Sas: she believed those children that talked about cages.

21:23, 13 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher

Re Sas: how do we know she believed this? Can we point to something she said? This needs to be verifiable. -- Avenue 23:59, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

It's bound to be in her report to Eichelbaum. It has been over two years since I last read it. It's an amazing essay, so full of bias that it is almost a joke. Read what M Corballis ONZM says about it here

http://www.peterellis.org.nz/2003/2003-0906_Listener_MemoryAndTheLaw.htm

Richard 08:28, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The only part of Sas's report that mentioned the cages is where she discussed possible contamination of Child X's testimony. I have reworded our paragraph about this, including a quote from Sas, and cited the report as the source. -- Avenue 09:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Regards Gail Goodman, here is a link. You will have to tab down a little to find the biography of Goodman. She was one of only three experts, out of 48, that refused to sign the amicus brief on behalf of Kelly Michaels, presumably because she believes that children never lie about abuse. Ironically, her own research has found that children can and do lie about sexual abuse.

http://www.ap-ls.org/students/Biographies%20from%20Psychology.pdf

00:31, 16 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher

Thanks for the link. I think what we say ("Gail Goodman's career had been controversial, but Goodman was Sim's first choice") seems a little too strong based just on her comments there. Goodman wrote "It has never been my view that either children or adults are unsuggestible, but my students and I have found that many children, by age 4 or 5 years, are typically less suggestible about taboo abuse-related acts than about many other types of information. This was quite controversial at the time." This appears to refer to sometime in the late 1970s or a little after. If this was the only controversial issue in her career (and I currently have no idea whether this is true), it might be better to qualify our statement slightly. For example, we could say "Gail Goodman's early findings were controversial, but ...". I have searched for more about Goodman, but so far haven't found anything bearing on this. -- Avenue 01:40, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

As I say, I think Goodman is not and never has been part of the scientific mainstream in relation to research into child sexual abuse. Even when her research shows that children can and do lie about sexual abuse, she tends to minimise or ignore her own results. So I definitely think she has had a controversial profile. I would say there's more controversy around her than other experts that weren't appointed. Ceci and Friedman (2000) have reviewed some of her work, which is more recent than the 70s. This article is on the internet. 03:14, 16 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher

Just to be sure, is this the Ceci and Friedman (2000) article you mean? Ceci SJ, Friedman RD. The Suggestibility of Children: Scientific Research and Legal Implications. Cornell Law Review 2000; 86(1): 33-108. [33] I haven't had a chance to read it properly yet, but it looks very relevant.

I have found another article that contrasts Ceci and Goodman's approaches (Myers 1994 - see page 86), which does not seem to cast Goodman as outside the mainstream. However the author is castigated as a revisionist (along with Lyon) by Ceci and Friedman, so I'm not sure that gets us much further. -- Avenue 04:18, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

How times change, I note Myers cites Roland Summit's Child Sexual Abuse Accomodation Syndrome, small wonder Ceci castigates him. Richard 06:00, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the article is Ceci SJ, Friedman RD. The Suggestibility of Children: Scientific Research and Legal Implications. Cornell Law Review 2000; 86(1): 33-108.

I suspect that Myers is outside the mainstream judging by his unfounded criticisms of Ceci and others. Ceci and Friedman also refer to Myers in the above mentioned article. But Goodman is discussed in some detail.

Myers is not an expert in suggestibility or mass allegation creche cases. Like Thomas Lyon, he's merely a lawyer and I don't think his opinion should be given much weight. He quotes the work of Snow and Sorenson, who have been heavily criticised by London et al (2005). Myers repeats the myth that few children disclose abuse, thus necessitating suggestive and leading questions. In fact, when children are asked about abuse in a neutral manner, the vast majority tell. 00:30, 17 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher

I was surprised by all the alleged(ly)s. While I'm inclined to agree that this conviction is not very credible, I was under the impression that upon conviction, you're supposed to stop using alleged(ly). Is this not so? It looks somewhat POV to me, but I could be mistaken?24.131.12.228 02:18, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

This case is very widely believed to be a miscarriage of justice. Before a court ruling the convention is that the word `allegedly' is used to indicate the unproven nature of the assertions. After the conclusion of the case the allegedly's may be dropped since the assertions are regarded as having been proved in court. However in this case the court ruling has not settled the issue because the case is widely regarded to be a miscarriage of justice. Dropping the word allegedly would commit wikipedia to asserting that some very dubious allegations indeed were indisputable fact. I would hope that wikipedia has much higher standards for determining what is fact and what is not than this. In particular I (and probably the majority of New Zealanders) believe these allegations to be false. Stating them as undisputed fact in wikipedia under such circumstances would seem to be a case of following convention right off the edge of a cliff. In this case dropping the word allegedly would be much more NPOV than retaining it. The word allegedly merely indicates that the truth of something is disputed. Since indeed that is precisely the situation here the word 'allegedly' should be retained. Hawthorn 05:33, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Paragraph with loosely related points

How does first sentence relate to second- from "Trial" -

"Ellis said that on visits outside the creche, he and the children would walk. He said he didn't know the bus timetables. He later said he been mistaken and that sometimes, when it was raining, he would catch a bus."

He testified to much more than walking - eg buying icecream, playing in the leaves in the gardens, picking up creche mail etc. The bus travel is highly important testimony but needs a better lead. Richard 11:39, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to fix this. I think it reads better than it did. 00:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC) User:NZ Researcher

category NZ people

The only way I found to access Peter Ellis from the main cat. 'NZ people' was through the subcategory 'NZ criminals'. This category defined Mr Ellis' "occupation" as being a criminal. I am of point of view that 'NZ criminals' shouldn't even be defined by using criteria "occupation" unless it can be demonstrably shown that the person has made a career out of criminal behaviour. That can not be justified in Ellis' case, no matter what your position on the case may be. I can't argue against Ellis being technically defined as being a criminal (or at least having a criminal conviction) as long as the conviction stands (which won't be for ever, google 'Bernard Baran' for recent developments in historic day care abuse cases), so yes the NZ criminal category technically stands. But Mr Ellis should be listed in the main list as well. I suggest the cat NZ criminal be severed from the test 'occupation'. Richard 11:25, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Ellis is known for his criminal conviction. I can't really see an obvious alternative. People like Barry George , Ruben Cantu , Lawrencia Bembenek and other in Category:Disputed convictions are in categorys like Category: American murderers. Suggest an alternative category. - SimonLyall 12:30, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that is what he is known for. I restate the definition of criminal being an 'occupation' coupled with fact that it is the only route through the main category doesn't allow for much of an alternative viewpoint. I don't object to Ellis remaining in NZ criminal category, but only object to that defn as being his "occupation", I also think he should be listed in NZ people regardless of his inclusion in NZ criminal (is this a problem i.e. are the categories mutually exclusive?). His occupation was actually (fully qualified) child care worker. If cat. criminal can't be severed from definition "by occupation" then yes, I vote for removal from the category. Richard

I'm going to be bold and remove the "occupation" categorisation from Category:New Zealand criminals. We'll see if anyone complains. I note that the broader Category:Criminals is not classed as an occupation. -- Avenue 13:22, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Thats one (bold) solution <smile> solving my concerns above. Further to above I'm saying that in highly disputed cases such as this there should be room for the main viewpoints. Before my rv, cat NZ people offered the only defn of Ellis as being a criminal by occupation. There is no sub category 'NZ disputed convictions', perhaps one could be created and Ellis can sit in both, but to my mind it is simpler if he just resides in cat 'NZ people' only. Richard 13:26, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks good, I'm temped to remove him from the toplivel 'NZ people' cat since he's in the subcategory. - SimonLyall 01:53, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Why can the targets not be included in both? That gives the browser an option, look in entire index or go for sub-category to narrow the search IF ONE KNOWS what sub-category they might be classified under. If I was a browser and I couldn't find someone I was interested in within the general list then I'd assume looking in sub-categories would be a waste of time. I think the article should remain indexed to both. Richard 09:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Because then we'll have 10,000 people in the category "New Zealand People" which will take around 50 screens to list. - SimonLyall 11:17, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll accept the 10,000 figure and argue that it is quite acceptable, there is facilty for narrowing it down by alphabetical listing etc. There ought to be a complete general index regardless of subcategories.Richard 11:57, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I ask that Sir Ed Hillary be removed from general list and appear ONLY under Mountaineers, I want Hotere removed and placed only under Artists. Get my drift? Richard 12:02, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) While I would usually be keen to remove redundant categories, I think that the label "criminal" is such a poor fit (at least in some people's minds) that listing him under NZ people aw well is probably justifiable. If the article was listed under more than the current seven categories, that might tip the balance the other way for me. I don't agree with the argument that we should accommodate people who simply don't want or don't know to look in sub-categories.

The only problem with an "NZ disputed convictions" category is its size. I understand that usually at least five members are needed for a sub-category to be considered worthwhile, but I can only think of two potential members; this article and David Bain. (We don't have an article on Arthur Allan Thomas yet, and that would be classed as a wrongful conviction anyway.)

Ed Hillary is not a good example; we don't seem to have an "NZ mountaineers" category. Hotere should just be under NZ painters, yes. There are a lot of unnecessary listings in "NZ people" that should be cleaned up. -- Avenue 12:43, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

As it stands all entries within NZ people can be put into differing categories depending on what is in essence a subjective evaluation. We argue and debate (needlessly) which category they belong to, and perhaps wait for someone to cleverly notice that "hey, there are five that can go into such and such" category. Currently this is a nonsense system. No wonder after a while we wake up and notice that it needs cleaning up. Well I can only argue that the whole point of subcategories is to make seaching easier. It seems to me logically poor not to have a general index, in this case that is NZ people. Better to have a general and complete index and then have subcategories to allow for targeted browsing. Don't understand the opposition. Richard 13:22, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

A general index display facility (showing all members of a category and its subcategories) has been requested,[34] but the software doesn't support this yet. I agree Wikipedia's category system isn't ideal, but there are some accepted guidelines on how it should best be used, and removing overly general categories is one of them. (See Wikipedia:Categorization for details.) And yes, the whole system often seems quite subjective and labour-intensive, although I wouldn't describe it as "nonsense". -- Avenue 14:16, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, yes nonsense is too strong, I must learn to rein in the hyperbole when a tad frustrated.Richard 11:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Eichelbaum report in References

I know this isn't the correct category but I think that the report of Thomas Eichelabum should be included in the references. --User:NZ_Researcher

I agree, it's cited often enough. I'll go ahead and add it. -- Avenue 01:24, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

ISBN - L Hood 'A City Possessed'

Smackbot requested on 8 Sept 2006 that a check is made of the ISBN for A City Possessed by L Hood. The ISBN in the book reads: ISBN 1 877135 62 3 --RichardJ Christie 12:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll fix the typo in our article (too many 8's). -- Avenue 00:06, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Interview stress

This is revisiting the discussion of use of apparently and stress exhibited by children (circa 8 May under the heading 'Peer Review'). My understanding of point made by User:NZ researcher was that LePage testified that most children exhibited no stress until interviewed by parents and that his testimony infers that most if not all children did not exhibit undue stress when describing abuse in court or in interviews. However this lack of emotion when detailing abuse was noted by Sas (in relation to Bander child), and by Parsonson. Nor does Davies detail overt emotional responses from children, so I see no need for the term "apparently". That might also satisfy those editors who object to the word as being POV language. There are descriptions in transcripts (and in Hood) of one child exhibiting unusual behaviour (from memory it was hiding under chair or similar) when making accusations, at the time this was interpreted as indicative of trauma - but this child later recanted so it was more likely behaviour was due to her telling untruths. In the interview section the article already states one child did show anxiety (she wanted to terminate interviews), however the wiki article failed to differentiate this type of distress from that of showing little or no emotion when actually recounting incidents of what would have been traumatic abuse. I have amended to hopefully make this difference a bit clearer. RichardJ Christie 00:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

The fact is that experts have not seen all of the children's interviews. Furthermore, the children were interviewed by their parents, of which we have few details of stress or otherwise. So "apparently" seems to be the correct term to use because we simply have no idea in many cases what happened. We are relying on the word of parents, interviewers, and experts. User:NZ Researcher 29 December 2006

I'm also unaware if Lynley Hood viewed any of the children's interviews although she did apparently read transcipts. Again, few experts have seen the interviews and those that have viewed any interviews have seen only a relatively small number. User:NZ Researcher 29 December 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.150.120.56 (talk) 21:58, 28 December 2006 (UTC).

assessment

This article was recently assessed as B class, the only rationale given (in talk History) was that it needed a photo and infobox. Well, It has two photos already. What is an infobox?

Class B articles are, supposedly,:

Useful to many, but not all, readers. A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic, but a serious student or researcher trying to use the material would have trouble doing so, or would risk error in derivative work.

i.e. article is not comprehensive enough

And Class A:

Useful to nearly all readers. A good treatment of the subject. No obvious problems, gaps, excessive information. Adequate for most purposes, but other encyclopedias could do a better job.

It is hard to justify other encyclopedias carrying more comprehensive information on Peter Ellis than this Wiki article. Such articles simply don't exist. Only one book (Lynley Hood's) and one or two magazine articles (dealing in specific phases of the case) exist that surpass the scope of material supplied in this article. The article is well sourced/cited. Maybe the solution is to be less comprehensive, but whoops no - do that and it's back to class B again.

So what's the problem? Is presentation given greater weight than substance in Wiki projects? Pretty pictures etc. I requested the rating but find the result quite bewildering and the rating process highly unhelpful in improving the article. RichardJ Christie 11:43, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that ratings are a very crude measure of establishing an article's value. However, adding an infobox would not be too difficult. Choose an infobox from Category:People infobox templates. If there's nothing more specific, then use {{Infobox Person}}. Help for filling it out is at Template talk:Infobox Person (almost all fields are optional), and you can see what it should look like from any of the articles from this list. Effectively, the review was saying that the article wasn't in a standard format. Once you've put the infobox in place, try asking for another review. I don't know the etiquette involved, but you may be able to ask the person who did the original review directly if they could review again and give more detailed comments.-gadfium 20:29, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I note that the requested assessment modifications have been met. I requested the rating and have now removed the obsolete result. IMO it was highly cursory in any event. RichardJ Christie 11:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)