Anonymous Host

All 13 of its staff members were made redundant.

By now, the case had become a media circus.

Rumours about what had been going on at the creche were running rampant.

Some reporters heard that creche employees had been importing live snakes from Australia for use in rituals and stealing terminated fetuses from an abortion clinic, then eating them.

It was said that children were being trafficked for, quote, ''Asian sex rings''.

Peter Ellis and now his female colleagues became the targets of public rage.

One Kreisch employee who was in her early 20s was told of the supermarket that she and everyone else who'd worked at the Kreisch should have the words Child Molester tattooed across their foreheads.

Police from the Child Abuse Unit obtained search warrants for the homes of the four female Kreisch workers who had been implicated in the abuse, as well as another employee who hadn't been.

Rather than go to the district court nearby, they opted to travel to the Christchurch suburbs to obtain permission from an elderly judge.

He signed their warrants, which indicated that they would be looking for address books, pornography and the remains of human babies, amongst other things.

Nothing of significance was found, though at Debbie Gillespie's house, police recovered a handwritten note that joked about children watching through a home's window at a couple having sex.

In Gay Davidson's office at the Kreisch, police found two letters, both of which were declining job applications.

One of the letters joked that, as the Kreisch already employed one pedophile, they didn't need another.

Despite the lack of physical evidence, all four female suspects were arrested on Thursday October 1 in publicly televised events.

Not wanting any of their former colleagues to fall under suspicion, the four female suspects opted against having their names suppressed.

Their faces were splashed across newspapers and the daily news, revealing that they all looked very different from one another.

39-year-old Gay Davidson was a mother of two with streaked hair who'd worked at the creche for eight years and had been its supervisor for the last four.

Marie Keyes, 44 years old, was the assistant supervisor and had two teenage daughters.

She was petite, described as kindly, and dressed conservatively.

Mother of four, Janice Buckingham, was also 44 with a tall, strong build.