Terrible Legacy of Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital - I Have Been Given Electric Shock

Written by SIMON COLLINS New Zealand Herald

In one community in Finland, he says, the incidence of schizophrenia was cut by 85 per cent over 10 years by sending in a team of mental health professionals to help families as soon as trouble started.

But Stabb also believes that there is still a place for asylums: "A place of rest and peace away from the community for a short period of time can be a healing experience."

The president of the Psychological Society, Dr Barry Parsonson, says "aversion therapy" is no longer an accepted procedure because people tend to revert to their old behaviour as soon as the punishment stops. Instead, he recommends finding ways to positively reinforce good behaviour.

None of these changes can restore peace of mind to the 150 teenagers, such as Hake Halo, whose lives were traumatised forever by what they experienced at Lake Alice. But perhaps the full realisation of what happened there may be a spur to finding better ways to help young people who get into trouble.

Lawyer Goes After Lake Alice Doctor

27.10.2001
By SIMON COLLINS
New Zealand Herald

The lawyer who won a $6.5 million payout for 95 former patients of Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital says he is now "highly likely" to seek a criminal prosecution of the psychiatrist who was in charge of the hospital's adolescent unit, Dr Selwyn Leeks. The move, if accepted by the police, would mean extraditing Dr Leeks from Melbourne, where he now practises.

It follows a formal Government apology this month to the former patients, who all claim to have been given electric shock treatment or injections of a painful sedative, paraldehyde, as punishment for misbehaviour in the clinic during Dr Leeks' tenure between 1972 and 1977. Their Christchurch lawyer, Grant Cameron, has written to all the patients seeking their consent to pass their files to the police. "I believe there is a prima facie case to show that he [Dr Leeks] committed either 'assault on a child' or 'cruelty to children', both of which are offences under the Crimes Act," he said. "There are other offences relating to 'assault' which may also apply.

He said the case did not come under any of the categories where time limits on prosecutions apply.

"In a lot of these cases, the direct evidence of individuals is compelling, and in many cases it is corroborated.

"I think it is highly likely we will be lodging a complaint with the police."

He said complaints may also be laid against half a dozen other staff "who assisted in the application of ECT [electro-convulsive therapy] or gave it directly without a doctor, or gave paraldehyde in cases where they shouldn't have, or physically assaulted claimants or locked them away in solitary confinement in circumstances where there was no justification."

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