The United Nations committee against torture has urged the government to compensate a former patient of the Lake Alice psychiatric hospital.
Lake Alice psychiatric hospital survivor Malcolm Richards says justice was denied victims. Photo:
It found Hawke's Bay man Malcolm Richards was tortured at the child and adolescent unit there in the 1970s.
Richards was 15 years old when he was sent by his mother to Lake Alice, near Marton, for two months in 1975.
He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and administered drugs and given electric shock treatment, often without anaesthetic, the results of which still affect him.
Richards has successfully taken a case to the United Nations committee - the second former patient to do so after Paul Zentveld.
The committee's ruling in Richards' case has recommended timely consideration by the courts about allegations of torture; providing appropriate redress; and making public its decision and distributing it widely.
It also criticised the authorities' failure to charge anyone over allegations of ill-treating children until last year.
"I haven't been able to have a life because of treatments, so for what little time I have got left I'd like enough redress to actually get past some of this stuff I'm still dealing with and be able to have a life," Richards told RNZ.
Lake Alice psychiatric hospital. Photo: Supplied
He said the UN decision showed more people agreed patients at the unit were tortured.
Richards said for years nobody took such claims seriously, and when he first complained to police in 1980 he was threatened with arrest for wasting their time.
"Because the process has taken so long we haven't got any real justice, because Leeks is dead," he said.
"Justice delayed is justice denied. I can't think of any reason why they can't start giving us some sort of rehabilitation now for all the drama we've been through.
"They just keep pushing it under the carpet and hoping that we will drop dead, so they don't have to do anything."
Former Lake Alice lead psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks died in January 2022, before being charged. Photo: Fairfax Media / Getty Images
The Zentveld ruling in late 2019 led to police launching a third investigation into allegations of child cruelty at the unit, and the laying of charges against former staff member John Richard Corkran. The 90-year-old has pleaded not guilty. Richards is not one of the six complainants named in court documents.
Police said there was enough evidence to charge the former lead psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks, but he was unfit to face trial and died earlier this year.
Police first investigated in the late 1970s and again from 2002-2010, but no charges were laid. They have since apologised for shortcomings in the second investigation.
In the early 2000s the government issued an apology and ex gratia payments to settle a civil claim.
Then, last year, harrowing tales from survivors of the unit, including Richards and Zentveld, were heard at the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care.
Watchdog group, the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights, helped Zentveld with his UN claim and also assisted Richards. It has investigated Lake Alice since 1976.
Commission director Mike Ferriss said the question of redress was the big issue to be wrestled with.
"How do you compensate people for what actually happened, and taking into account the very long delays in regarding what they said was true?
"Redress should be in accordance with what the UN expects redress should look like for victims of torture, and that's to do with the rehabilitation of the person and restoring to them the life they possibly should have or could have led were they not subject to that torture."
Ferriss also wants to make sure the government follows the committee recommendation to widely distribute the UN decision, which he said did not happen in Zentveld's case.
The committee said the government had 90 days to inform it of the steps it had taken in response.
Richards said if nothing substantial happened he would seek a UN rapporteur come to New Zealand to ensure compliance.
In a statement, the Crown Response Unit said: "Officials are considering the implications of the report."
