Lake Alice staff restrained children during electric shock therapy to avoid dislocated joints

Monday, 21 June 2021

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A jolt from electric shock therapy forced on children at Lake Alice was more severe than a defibrillator, says a former worker at the psychiatric hospital.

Gloria Barr worked at the psychiatric hospital near Marton as a patient aide in 1976 and 1977, and spent several months in the child and adolescent unit.

In Auckland on Monday she spoke at the Royal Commission of Inquiry examining the unit, which operated from 1972 to 1978.

Barr said she was involved in an incident where a boy who soiled his pants due to stress was then given electric shock therapy as punishment.

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Dr Selwyn Leeks, the unit’s lead psychiatrist, asked staff to escort the boy upstairs, where they held his limbs. They would do this because children’s bodies would jerk to the extent their joints could dislocate.

“The jolt is more severe than when someone has paddles applied to their body to restart their heart.”

Barr said it was common knowledge among staff and children that shock therapy was given as punishment. Many staff members seemed unmoved and detached by what was happening.

Paraldehyde injections left the children like zombies for days.

“I never thought these teenagers were treated respectfully. They didn’t seem to have people formally advocating for them, and I’m sure that if their parents and caregivers knew what went on there they would never agree to have them stay.”

Barr said she never complained about the use of paraldehyde because she was not a registered psychiatric nurse.

She did not feel comfortable about the treatment, but assumed the registered staff and doctors knew what they were doing.

“Most of these teenagers had suffered horrific abuses of all sorts prior to entering Lake Alice. I was in no professional position to question the doctors' methodology.”

Nurse says Lake Alice not as bad as portrayed

Brian Stabb, a psychiatric nurse, said he believed 50 per cent of the electro-convulsive treatment carried out at Lake Alice was clinically appropriate.

He worked in the unit for two years, after emigrating from England in 1974.

In at times contradictory evidence, Stabb said he never saw or took part in the aversion treatment programme at Lake Alice, but the regime was conducted in an air of secrecy with no records.

“I consider this to have been a barbaric, cruel practice, which would have been as damaging to those who administered it, as to those who received it.

“It was torture, nothing less.”

But Stabb also said the unit, under the charge nurse Dempsey Corkran between 1974 and 1976, was caring and progressive.

He said Corkran made it clear that treatment would involve no physical punishments, other than legitimate forms used in mainstream psychiatry.

He said Leeks would visit on Fridays, when treatments were scheduled, and patient were given anaesthetic.

However, Stabb said he witnessed unanesthetised treatment about a dozen times.

“After any ECT treatment, it was like the patients had been hit by a train. They were confused, disorientated and had aching limbs.”

Leeks gave one boy unanesthetised shock therapy for depression after he ran away several times, but Stabb said the boy had been active and sociable.

“During the chase I recall Dr Leeks running around with the ECT machine under his arm. He was joking with us all in the process. It was bizarre.”

He expressed his discomfort to Leeks afterwards, who said it was not Stabb’s place to question his judgment and he would arrange for a transfer if it continued.

Stabb said some complaints from patients were questionable, believing some had “jumped on the bandwagon”.

Two allegations have been made about Stabb administering paraldehyde injections.

Lawyer uncovers abuse, leads class action

Grant Cameron was approached by a fellow lawyer in September 1996 about a client who alleged he had been abused at Lake Alice in 1972 when they were 13.

Cameron met with the client, who described physical symptoms, believed to be the consequence of electric shock therapy and paraldehyde injections.

Within a week he received another phone call about a client with similar experiences from Lake Alice in the 1970s.

“Given these similarities, [the other lawyer] and I became concerned that there may be other former Lake Alice residents who might have been similarly treated and affected.”

The pair found a private investigator to find more former residents. It soon became apparent there were many with almost identical complaints.

The Government decided in March 1999 it would not agree to a settlement, because the issue of compensation and liability should be properly tested in court.

Two claims were filed in the High Court at Wellington, one with 56 plaintiffs and the other with 32.

“The sheer gravity of the allegations suggested that urgent action should be taken to confront the issues for whatever they may prove to be,” Cameron said.

Until Helen Clark was elected [as prime minister in 1999], the Crown took quite the opposite approach.”

In 2001 the Government approved a settlement sum of $6.5 million.

The inquiry continues throughout the week.