What are yours?

(facepalm) “there were” Para 4, 2nd sentence.

No, and neither did Peter.
The point is that the term “free pass” might serve to trivialise the harm they consequently suffered.

Your point that dropping the charges served the system as much as, or more so, than it did the women is probably correct.

What disgusts me is the Supreme Court’s “no one is to blame” flannelling. Their were plenty to blame and heading the lists are the Williamson J; Crown Prosecutor Brent Stanaway; the Judges on the benches of two Appeal Courts; Tom Eichelbaum; Phil Goff; N Smith; L Dalziel; Det. Colin Eade; Police officers Ell, Pearce, and others; Rosemary Smart; K Zelas; Sally Ruth. Many more. They don’t get a free pass.

The mad woman with revived memory of sexual assaults roaming the community for rapists. The Dept of Social Welfare for buying into her madness and launching that massive investigation, the Smart report from Christchurch City Council that pinned this on Ellis and others and off the back of these so called experts evidence, the police, who fell for it hook line and sinker. And the parents who panicked and joined in the witch hunt,

Then the trial that denied Ellis’s lawyers the ability to put the more insane accusations to the jury to show how insane the whole thing was, because the Judge deemed this highly relevant material, irrelevant, to the appeals process that appeared so up its own arse in its own judicial self importance that missed the bloody obvious.

And with the extreme pressure from feminist groups of this me too era for male scalps, it could easily happen again!

Very hard to have faith in our justice system!