Thirty-seven former patients of the Lake Alice psychiatric hospital’s child and adolescent unit have received individual compensation payments of up to $600,000.
The government last year announced its redress scheme for children and teens tortured with electric shocks without anaesthetic or through being injected with paralysing drugs at the unit in the 1970s.
One hundred and five survivors opted to receive $150,000 rapid payments.
Another 37 negotiated their compensation.
Independent arbiter, former High Court judge Paul Davison, KC, determined the amounts these survivors received and he has released a summary of his work on Thursday.
The majority received payments between $175,000 and $250,000, but the total band of payments spanned $160,000 to $600,000, as Davison worked within a “fiscal envelope” of $8.39 million.
The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care found that many of the 362 children who went through the Rangitīkei unit didn’t have a mental illness, yet were still subjected to electric shocks or injected with paraldehyde.
The unit’s lead psychiatrist, Dr Selwyn Leeks, moved to Australia shortly after it closed in the late 1970s and died in 2022 without facing justice.
In his report, Davison said survivors had shown great courage and resilience in opting to negotiate their compensation.
“Recalling traumatic events and recounting them for the purposes of the torture redress assessment process has been acutely painful and difficult and serves to underscore how deeply traumatic their time at Lake Alice was for them, and how indelible their memories are of what they were subjected to.”
Davison said in determining the compensation amounts, he also took into account the solitary confinement and sexual abuse the survivors suffered.
Most survivors were 12 or older when admitted to the unit, but some he’d spoken with were as young as 9 when they were sent there and given electric shocks without anaesthetic or paraldehyde.
Davison said he adopted a “survivor-focused and trauma-informed approach” in generally accepting the survivors’ accounts of what happened to them, while also examining records where available and previous statements from the survivors.
“The survivors quite understandably see their lives as having been blighted by their Lake Alice experiences and how they were ill-treated and tortured,” he said.
“Whatever behavioural, psychological or mental problems led to them being patients at Lake Alice, from their accounts it appears that these problems, rather than being treated therapeutically, were aggravated and compounded by how they were tortured and ill-treated, in what was a cruel and malevolent process.
“For most of them, the opportunity to tell someone in a position of responsibility, willing to listen and acknowledge the authenticity of their account of what they were subjected to and how it has affected them, appears to have been a cathartic experience, at least to some degree.”
Erica Stanford, the lead co-ordination minister for the response to the Royal Commission, said it was important survivors had a choice between negotiation and the rapid payments.
“We know no amount of money can ever undo or fully recognise the harm and abuse survivors were subjected to,” she said.
“No government before now has acknowledged torture or apologised for it happening in New Zealand.
“In July last year, we formally acknowledged that torture occurred at the Lake Alice unit as defined in the United Nations Convention Against Torture. A specific redress scheme was established in December for survivors who were tortured at the unit to serve as an expression of our regret as to the many ways in which they were failed.”
Survivors had also received individual apologies and other support as required.
rnz.co.nz
