Peter Hugh Mc Gregor Ellis - A Mother's Story

A Mother's Story

In 1997, Joy Bander published a book about the case. Joy Bander says that after she had heard about allegations of abuse at the creche, she asked her son, Tom, who had attended the creche, if Peter Ellis had abused him. He said he had not and referred to Ellis as his "friend". Bander said she felt "relieved". She said that Tom "would have told us if anything had happened, by asking him directly I had satisfied myself completely". She said she continued to question him "about once a week". His answers didn’t cause "the slightest alarm in me, I felt more and more reassured". While Tom was being questioned by his seventeen-year-old brother, he made an ambiguous allegation of abuse. According to Bander, Tom told his brother that Ellis had "’smacked my bottom really, really hard. I couldn’t hear the smack but it really hurt’".

At his first evidential interview Tom stated that "he was alright when I did go there... and now he's not". Tom repeated his claim that he had been smacked by Ellis. It had allegedly occurred when Ellis took him to the toilet after he had soiled himself. Bander, who had attended the Knox Hall meeting, continued to question Tom after his first formal interview. Three months later, after an incident during which Tom allegedly swore at his mother, Bander and her boyfriend arranged with Tom "to sit down and talk about the creche. I believe you’ve got a lot to tell me, and now it's time to talk". During that discussion, Bander says Tom made more allegations of abuse. He later told her that he had killed a boy. "Tommy said he really was killed and lots of blood came out of him", said Bander. Tom also said he had been buried in coffins and tied up in cages. He spoke of various places outside the creche where he had allegedly been abused. After one of his evidential interviews, Bander says she was advised that Tom "was probably adding in a story to please the interviewer, and to please me". Bander did not accept that was the case. Bander said that she questioned Tom on a weekly basis until the completion of his fifth and final formal interview in August 1992. Police requested prosecution expert witness Karen Zelas review these later interviews to determine the credibility of the information disclosed in them and to advise upon matters which might be further investigated. On 28 August 1992, she wrote that Tom's parents had "subjected him to intensive interrogation pertaining to 'ritual' abuse... could make it easy to dismiss statements as having little probative value whether or not they might be accurate". She also said that Tom had been subject to "highly leading questioning" by his parents. The jury never saw this letter. Ellis was found guilty on three of the four charges pertaining to Tom.

In 1994, after the trial, Bander was instrumental in founding the End Ritual Abuse Society Incorporated. Its rules stated "The purpose of this society is to educate the public on ritual abuse and to provide written, audio and visual information on the subject matter." A condition of belonging was that an applicant must be "believing of the existence of ritual abuse". Any member who "discredits those who accept the existence of ritual abuse" was liable for expulsion.