Men in danger

First published in Column Eight on the 16^th of June, 1993

When I began my column last week, Peter Ellis had been found guilty, but continued to act as an innocent man.

As the days moved on, it became obvious that there was more to the matter than we’d previously heard. Guilty or not, Peter Ellis’ behaviour had often been foolish, and the staff at the centre had allowed it to be so. We can now see why Ellis wasn’t – at first – the only person incriminated.

In the end, he took the brunt of the blame. and his conviction will add fuel to a volatile debate.

The debate is about a good deal more than the rights or wrongs of a particular childcare worker’s case. It’s about men working in childcare. I have no doubt there are some members of the community who now believe more than ever than men should not work with young children.

If Peter Ellis was guilty, and a long trial and jury decision say he was, then male childcare workers will have an uphill battle to maintain their jobs. Their behaviour with young children will become suspect in even the most innocent of situations.

The whole vile matter of child sexual abuse has poisoned the atmosphere of modern communities. We have the paradox that while society is now more generous in what can constitute a man’s role, men’s ordinary behaviour is treated with increased suspicion.

What was regarded in the past as part of wholesome normal relationships is even under a cloud. Bedrooms and bathrooms have become places where men can find themselves in danger.

Men can be in danger when cuddling children on their laps, or in having children in close proximity to the lower half of their bodies. Men can be in danger if they take children for walks in back streets or go into native bush areas.

And when men are put in the harrowing situation of being accused of sexual abuse, falsely, the discolouration of their lives extends to men in other, similar situations.

Do I exaggerate? Sexual abuse has so damaged many women’s view of men that not only are the guilty condemned (as they rightly should be) but the innocent are tainted.

If Peter Ellis is guilty, then he deserves punishment; there’s no doubt about it. He himself has said he regards sexual abuse of children as a disgusting thing, and it is.

But what if Peter Ellis is not guilty? What if the jury was wrong, and the prosecution was wrong? Worse, what if the social workers were wrong (as they were in an infamous case in England, when the families of half a village lost their children for a time because of the obsessions of social workers)?

Worst of all, what if the parents were wrong because their children told lies, or half-truths, or were led to say things by adults determined to find something sinister?

I worked in childcare when I was younger, in a climate that believed pre-school children needed males to relate to. It had taken years for men to be accepted in this area, an area where men are now needed more than ever.

I’m glad I’m not starting out in that work now: a man could quite innocently step into quicksand.

Sexual abuse, for all its publicity, its court cases, and all the suppressed hurts of people who are now speaking out, is not something the majority of men do. At a time when children need fathers in their families, and when they need men in daycare centres, it would be tragic if we began to believe it was.

 

Some years after the first trial and all the subsequent appeals and so on, an immensely well-researched book appeared on the case: Lynley Hood’s A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case. (October 2001). Dunedin: Longacre Press. ISBN 1-877135-62-3. This book produced extraordinary evidence that case was exceptionally badly handled by the police, that there was an large element of hysteria amongst the parents (a copycat of similar hysteria going on in the States at the time), the people who interviewed the children frequently believed things that the children made up, and much more. The book is hugely detailed, and makes for difficult reading, but it was in part instrumental in turning Ellis’ conviction around. There’s more information on the book in the link above.