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David Harcourt
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Posted: 2 Apr 2007 03:53 am |
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Last week there was a three-day conference in Christchurch which focused on the problem, if it is a problem, of under-representation of males in child care in this country.
In 1986 three percent of all child care workers in New Zealand were males.
In 2007 one percent of all child care workers are male.
This, of course, is because of Peter Ellis.
I understand that there was little mention of Peter Ellis at the Christchurch conference. Just as Basil Fawlty enjoined his staff when dealing with German guests not to mention the War, so at last week's conference there was a similar, unspoken injunction:
Don't mention Peter Ellis.
I have no idea whether or not Peter Ellis is innocent of the child abuse for which he was sent to prison for ten years (he served seven years of this sentence before being paroled) but my answer to the implicit question about the case in one of the pro-Ellis websites - "Did it make any difference that Ellis was homosexual? - is that it almost certainly did.
I suppose he could be innocent.
Anything's possible.
It's nevertheless strange that one man's involvement in an industry should have permanently reduced its male workforce by two-thirds. One of my staff is currently attending a childhood education course at university here in Wellington. Over 300 students are involved. Just three are males. Clearly, the Peter Ellis factor is still at work.
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 2 Apr 2007 04:07 am |
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Meanwhile, Ellis's alleged innocence is a major industry, more than 20 years after the saga began:
* There is, for example, a long - an amazingly long - Wikipedia entry, which trumpets Ellis's innocence throughout. (So much for Wikipedia's neutrality on contentious issues.)
* There is a pro-Peter Ellis website - see http://www.peterellis.org.nz/ - which meticulously documents the Ellis side of the story.
* There are strange groups like the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance - see - http://www.religioustolerance.org/mail.htm - which have taken up the Ellis case with unbridled enthusiasm from many thousands of miles across the sea.
* And I'll bet Denis Dutton and his colleagues in the New Zealand Sceptics Society have a lot to say on the subject, too. (Don't take that bet: I just googled Dutton + Ellis and got this: http://www.religioustolerance.org/mail.htm and this http://www.peterellis.org.nz/1996/1996-0930_ThePress_SkepticsCandidateBackCallsForCrecheInquiry.htm )
In each case one side of the story - Ellis's - is told at considerable length, and the other side lampooned and derided.
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TopRank
Member
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Posted: 2 Apr 2007 04:25 am |
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The lack of male teachers at any level is a real shame. It is especially so for boys who need as many strong males in their life as possible. The less male teachers boys see in schools, the less likely they are to consider teaching/early childcare as a possible career.
Unfortunately many segments of society believe that all men are rapists, child molestors or just need a chance alone with a kid and they'll become one. Men are slowly becoming like women were 30+ years ago...
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 2 Apr 2007 04:41 am |
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A few thoughts about this which occurred to me today:
* Peter Ellis had a history of non-conformist behaviour before he began working at the Civic Creche in 1986. He was a petty fraudster: his working at the creche was part of a sentence of 80 hours' community service for benefit fraud. He was bisexual. He had had a fairly unstable employment history. None of this means that he was guilty, but if you were profiling a child abuser, as the Police presumably did, Ellis probably looked the type.
* Although there were many inconsistencies in the children's evidence against Ellis, one has to ask what else might reasonably have been expected. Here were children aged four and five being asked to recall what a grownup had done with and to them. Children as young as this expect - and have a right to expect, of course - adults to behave normally. In other words, if adults do something unusual or even unpleasant, so far as a four- or five-year-old is concerned, it's "normal" (even if it's unusual or even unpleasant), so it's accepted, and the child or children cope. This is what children do. (I speak with some personal authority here, having been sent to boarding school when I was four years of age, and survived, more or less.)
* The facts of the case have been the subject of many reviews, at least some of which seem to have been balanced and fair. On every occasion the conclusion reached has been the same: that Ellis was involved in the abuse of children at the Civic Creche.
* The fact that the Employment Court awarded Ellis's female co-workers a vast sum for wrongful dismissal - an award which was largely overturned by the Court of Appeal (which reduced the amount of the award from $1 million to $170,000) - probably says more about New Zealand's employment law than it does about the extent to which children were being abused in the Christchurch Civic Creche.
* And here's an interesting one: The option has always been there for Ellis to say "I didn't do this thing, but I've spent enough of my life trying to prove this so I'm now going to shut up and try to enjoy the rest of the time I have on this earth". But he hasn't done this. The Peter Ellis is Innocent Campaign rolls on, at high personal cost to Ellis himself. (He had a heart attack in 2005, at the very early age of 37.) I wonder whether an innocent person would behave as he has been doing. It all seems a little, well, unbalanced.
So it comes about that in this year APE20 - the twentieth year after the advent of Peter Ellis - the number of men who want to work in the child care industry in New Zealand remains very, very tiny. Why am I not surprised?
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