‘There must never be a repeat of Lake Alice’: College of Psychiatrists apologises
Auckland barrister Rosemary Thomson remembers Thursday, September 29, 1976, vividly.
And she remembers every day until Friday, October 5, that year.
That’s because she was, for eight days as a 13-year-old, a patient at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital near Marton.
“It was the worst eight days of my life.” In Palmerston North on Tuesday, she joined other survivors from the hospital’s child and adolescent unit for an in-person apology from the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.
The apology, delivered by college president Dr Elizabeth Moore, was for the torture inflicted on children in the unit in the 1970s under the watch of lead psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks.
It was a shameful chapter in New Zealand’s history and its effects were still being felt, the college said.
Leeks, who died two years ago, never faced criminal charges nor professional action for what went on at the unit and was only recently stripped of his college fellowship posthumously.
In the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care in 2021, former patients, many of whom never had a mental illness, detailed abuse at the unit, including rape, sexual abuse and staff administering paralysing drugs and electric shock therapy as punishments.
This week’s apology met an angry reaction from Lake Alice survivors.
“It sounded like it had been prepared – careful chosen words that just didn’t ring true,” Thomson told RNZ.
She wanted to hear more honest language, such as “psychopath on the loose” to describe Leeks.
“It needs to have more emotion in the apology. Otherwise, it’s just words. They’re just meaningless.”
Lake Alice survivors are calling on the Crown to advance moves to compensate them.
“At the end of the day, the true apology will come from the Government,” Thomson said. “When they pay money, that will be the true apology.
“Words are words, but let’s do something real that the survivors can do something with for the last years that they have left.”
Thomson’s memories of Lake Alice include the regular screams of fellow patients when they were given electric shocks and seeing the effects of children injected with drugs.
“I remember witnessing a nurse harpooning a child across the room with the paraldehyde drugs. That was a game among the staff.
“As a result [the children] became immobilised. They’d be lying on the floor writhing in agony for hours. They couldn’t move. They couldn’t crawl anywhere.
“I saw it all. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing or hearing. I haven’t been more terrified in my life than the eight days I spent at Lake Alice.
“To this day I think about it every day.” Thomson returned to school after Lake Alice and eventually studied law. She has been a barrister for more than 30 years.
Former Lake Alice patient Robyn Dandy said the college tried, and she did not want to shame it, but she wanted to focus on the future.
Fellow survivor Karilyn Wildbore said the college representatives who simply read their notes when delivering the apology did not come across as genuine.
She compared the apology to a fairytale, where something bad happened “once upon a time”, a long time ago, when in reality former Lake Alice patients still lived with the consequences.
“Unless something comes from the heart, I’m not interested.”
Malcolm Richards, who along with Paul Zentveld won a United Nations ruling that their treatment was a breach of New Zealand’s international anti-torture obligations, said the apology would be a waste of time unless something tangible came out of it.
Steve Watt said the apology sounded thin, rather than authentic.
Although not a Lake Alice survivor, Keith Wiffin, who was abused in state care, told the meeting about Rachael Umaga, who died last week. Her funeral was on Tuesday.
She was an example of people abused by psychiatrists who were no longer alive, he told the college members.
“She suffered terribly at the hands of your members at Porirua Hospital.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s led to her demise. She’s another person that’s gone to the grave without any sort of justice.”
When delivering the apology, Moore said it covered “the torturous actions carried out and directed by Selwyn Leeks”.
“The barbaric abuse conducted by Leeks at Lake Alice was not psychiatry of any form.
“It is not and never will be condoned. That this harm occurred at all, under the guise of treatment, is a travesty.”
She said the college had called for an investigation into allegations of abuse against Leeks since the 1990s, but it was unable to act in the absence of any finding or legal action against him.
It acknowledged that stripping Leeks of his fellowship and apologising only now came too late.
“For our organisation’s part in this failure to bring Leeks to justice at the earliest opportunity, we again offer our unconditional apology.”
Leeks was allowed to work in isolation. Now, the profession had peer-review systems in place so all work was monitored, Moore said. “There must never be a repeat of Lake Alice.”
Leeks left New Zealand when the child and adolescent unit closed and practised in Australia for more than 20 years.
He stopped working only when due to face action from a professional body.
During this week’s meeting, Dandy told Moore she was angry that Leeks was able to live a normal, happy life, while survivors coped with the aftermath of his abuse.
She said many survivors were not meant to be in an institution – they were simply children from dysfunctional homes.
The college’s apology mentioned how cries for help were ignored, and Dandy said police laughed at her when she tried to raise the alarm.
She escaped from Lake Alice, running across fields in her nightgown, fearful of returning.
But police officers took her back. Leeks was not charged after police investigations in the late 1970s and 2000s. Police have since apologised for deficiencies in the latter probe.
After their third investigation, police confirmed in late 2021, shortly before Leeks’ death aged 92, that there was enough evidence to charge him but he was not fit to stand trial.
Charges were laid against former nurse John Richard Corkran, known as Dempsey Corkran, but that prosecution ended last year because of Corkran’s health.