Guest Post: Peter Ellis Case Blows Up New Zealand – Twice

A guest post by Peter Lynn:

In the 1980’s and 1990’s there were sporadic hysterias about paedophile rings and satanic abuse in various western countries.

In 1993, 35-year-old homosexual Peter Ellis, who had been working at the Christchurch Civic Childcare Centre was tried for offenses against children and found guilty.  Four female workers were discharged.

The problem with the trial was that the children’s evidence had been contaminated by questioning that directed them towards what the prosecution wanted.  But even worse, when their testimony strayed into absurd fantasies, this was kept from the jury.  If these fantasies had been exposed, there’s zero chance the children’s other evidence would have been taken as credible.

Straight away, this case was widely regarded as a failure of our justice system.  Even officers of the court who were polled anonymously in the aftermath of the trial overwhelmingly considered it a miscarriage.

Appeals were made, petitions lodged, and a best-selling book written on the travesty, but still the justice industry could not bring itself to admit to error.  Not doing so brought our justice system into disrepute.  Their reasons for being so obdurate can only have been institutional ego and protecting their own.

Eventually when the policemen, prosecutors and various judges involved had either died or retired, and one of the child witnesses had re-canted, in 2022, Ellis was exonerated.

One immediate effect of the Ellis saga was a clear message to males that working in childcare and teaching was unsafe.  Consequently, from this and other such signals, the male share of childcare and teaching professions fell off the cliff.   At primary school, I had male teachers in every standards class.  Now they are exceeding rare with 85% of primary school teachers being female (2022). 

This matters because boys need male role models- even more so because approaching 20% of NZ boys now live in female only households.  Consequences are societal dysfunction and rising crime.

It matters even more because female teachers are interested in art, music and other soft subjects, while males tend to be more interested in science, technology, engineering and math.  This difference is inherent and observable in all cultures, as evidenced by the proportion of women who qualify in STEM subjects being higher in countries where women are repressed (Pakistan and Iran for example), and lowest in countries where women have the greatest equality (like Norway and Denmark).  Where women are shackled to domesticity, STEM careers provide an escape.  Where women have more equality, they’re less likely to choose STEM subjects because this is not where their interests lie.

 Female domination of the teaching profession is not only contributing to the widening educational gap between girls and boys (because boys are not being taught what they are interested in) but is damaging our economy by constraining the supply of STEM educated boys. 

Fewer engineers and scientists- and rising crime- are not the only consequences of the Ellis case, nor necessarily the worst.  It has also changed our legal system.

Sitting on top of the legal system are Judges.  They are protected, privileged and highly paid- but have a difficult job: fenced in by laws, rules and precedent- and intensely scrutinised. 

Only in the higher courts is there some freedom of action, a chance to make law, not just apply it, and these rare opportunities are where reputations are made.  I recall the rock star status that UK High Court judge Lord Denning acquired by establishing a small change in the law with his “High Trees” judgement.

Zealand has no written constitution, but it has various unwritten constitutional conventions.  These provide a fertile field for judges to make their mark.  This is useful when it keeps law relevant in a changing society but requires that judge’s views are representative of broader society.  Unfortunately, in NZ over the last 20 or so years they have diverged sharply.  Our judicature, especially its upper echelons, have become agents of the Wellington centred progressive urban elite with views far to the Left of the wider population.  Wellingtonians live in a bubble, either unaware of how much their values differ from those of wider NZ, or fully aware but on a crusade.

Our senior justices have taken up a particular Left cause: Māori underperformance.  Rather than address the reason for this (dysfunctional aspects of Māori culture), they are attempting to level the field by elevating Māori to a position of legal privilege, 

Justice Cooke’s novel 1987 description of the Māori Crown relationship as “something akin to a partnership” was a significant step in this direction.  It has since been lifted to a full partnership and become established usage in government departments (also in the Wellington bubble).

But where does Peter Ellis come into this?

Peter died in 2019 while NZ’s Supreme Court was considering a final appeal.  When deciding whether to allow the appeal to continue, the justices turned to Tikanga (Māori custom), creatively declaring it to be “—the first law of New Zealand and not secondary to the colonial common law—”    This became a factor in enabling the appeal to proceed, even though Peter Ellis was not a Māori.  

In their 2022 decision Peter was finally cleared, his convictions quashed.

But this strengthening of Tikanga is ominous for New Zealand.  Although the Justices were careful to contextualise their decision, it is increasingly quoted as established law and is being used to advance Māori supremacy. 

Which will further fuel an inevitable destructive backlash from the non-Māori majority whose citizenship is being downgraded as Māori are elevated.

Not a hopeful future for any of us unless parliament can soon find the courage to rein in this activist judiciary.