Part 5 of the Newsroom series Peter Ellis, the Creche Case & Me is an up close and personal look at what remains one of New Zealand’s most notorious High Court trials.
In never-before-seen footage and interviews, our new series takes you inside one of New Zealand’s most controversial legal cases, when a kind of madness gripped Christchurch, resulting in a miscarriage of justice that would take 30 years to put right.
“You say you still like them, but they’re the very same people who are trying to put you behind bars.”
It was June 1993 and the night before the verdict in a case that had consumed the nation with its far-fetched claims of satanic rituals and children being sexually abused with needles and sticks.
Accused childcare worker Peter Ellis spent it with young reporter Melanie Reid. They sat in his flat recording the very last of their remarkable clandestine interviews, hours from finding out whether he would be locked away.
Most of these secret recordings have never been seen, until now.
Right up to the moment of the verdict he staunchly believed he would be found not guilty, “I’ve got no concerns. I know there’s going to be a good result,” he told Reid.
Surrounded by a circus of media, families, lawyers, witnesses, cops, Ellis looked straight ahead when the verdict was read out. His mother left the court room and took the long walk down the three flights of stairs. A group of creche parents shouted “Witches!” at his four female co-workers, and in the week before sentencing one of the top police detectives shared his support for anti-homosexual activists. It was, in every sense of the word, a total fiasco.
A city divided, marriages split, friends estranged.
In this episode, it is hard not to see the establishment's bias.
Coming up next week... Part 6 In prison and trying to get out
