Ministry used ‘template’ to apologise to abuse survivor
Awoman whose intellectually disabled brother was battered, bruised and left with broken bones in a residential care facility says she has received a ‘‘template’’ apology from the Ministry of Health that wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
Gay Rowe told the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care this week that the legal action involved three years of fighting on behalf of her brother Paul Beale. She described it as ‘‘very, very tiring’’.
She said she felt the Crown lawyers for the Ministry of Health were constantly hoping she would just go away.
Eventually her brother received a cash payment and an apology that lacked any empathy or real feeling.
Early years at Kimberley
Rowe said her older brother spent 44 years in Kimberley Hospital in Levin.
She said every time he visited the family home in Hastings on holiday, he seemed to have a new scar on his body.
‘‘We were told this was from ‘fighting’. His body to this day still carries scars from there.’’
On one occasion Beale had a broken arm.
Rowe recalled staff saying Beale had fallen, but there was no report of how this actually happened.
She said if there was a fight between residents, staff would hang back and only get involved if theywere sure they were not going to get injured.
Rowe said her brother was frequently medicated, which made him dribble and look like a ‘‘zombie’’. His chin rested on his chest and he seemed unable to move his neck.
‘‘The medications he was on, formy mind, were horrendous.’’
Rowe said she got ‘‘a little antsy’’ and was eventually able to have her brother put on different medication.
The move to Parklands
Beale was eventually moved to Parklands, in South Auckland, when Kimberley Hospital was shut down.
But Rowe said she later learned the Ministry of Health had raised ‘‘serious concerns’’ about the facility following a series of audits. She was not warned about those concerns before agreeing to send her brother there.
Rowe said she had questions about how Parklands managed her brother’s money.
However, it was the assaults that worried her most.
On one occasion an ambulance and police were called to Parklands after Beale was assaulted by a fellow resident. He had scratches and cuts down his face.
On another occasion Beale complained of a ‘‘sore leg’’, which later turned out to be broken bones in his foot.
Parklands staff explained it away as a fall, but Rowe took her brother to her doctor, who told her the injuries were more likely the result of someone stomping on his foot.
There was another occasion when a fist size bruise was found on his chest.
A staff member attempted to explain away a second fracture, this time an arm, as another fall.
A Parklands record of the incident said no more than ‘‘somehow’’ the injury had occurred.
In 2006, Rowe made a complaint to the police about a Parklands staff member who had assaulted her brother.
The staff member was charged with assault and was forced to leave Parklands.
The Ministry of Health took over the management of Parklands, but the change in management did not stop the facility from finally closing its doors.
The legal fight
Rowe contacted the human rights law firm Cooper Legal in 2013.
She told the Commission she saw the Ministry of Health as being responsible for the abuse suffered by her brother because the ministry had decided where to send her brother, had paid for the so-called ‘‘care’’ and carried out audits of the ‘‘care’’.
But for a long time the ministry denied responsibility and said no-one in Parklands was in the ministry’s care.
Rowe was asked how she felt about that. ‘‘I felt as though the ministry… They kept putting things in the way in the hopes that I would go away.’’
There were various meetings and letters between lawyers.
Eventually Rowe, on behalf of her brother, accepted a compensation payment of $55,000, an apology letter and a contribution to their legal aid debt.
The letter from theministry said it hoped her brother would be able to find ‘‘a sense of peace’’.
‘‘Even reading it now, I just want to get it and screw it up and throw it in the bin.’’
She doubted her brother would understand much of the language used in the letter.
The Ministry of health has said the apology was a ‘‘template’’. Rowe said that made it worse. ‘‘Therewas no real empathy or true feeling that went into it.’’
She became emotional as she told the commissioners that she had come to give evidence on behalf of all thosewho are unable to speak for themselves.
Rowe said it was likely her brother was one of many who had been abused by the very people responsible for caring for some of the most vulnerable members of society. She called on the ministry to put in place formal qualifications for those who care for the disabled.