Lake Alice electric shock treatment 'pure pain', survivor recalls

Friday, 25 June 2021

GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING:

Over three years a teenage boy was subjected to countless rounds of electric shocks, administered drugs and locked in solitary confinement at a psychiatric hospital.

But there was nothing wrong with him. Paul Zentveld was not mentally ill when he was admitted to Lake Alice as a 13 year old in 1974, nor was he ill during his five admissions over the next three years.

What he was subjected to amounted to torture, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care in Auckland heard on Thursday.

Zentveld was the final Lake Alice survivor to give evidence during the inquiry’s examination of Lake Alice’s child and adolescent unit, which operated from 1972 until 1978, near Marton.

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**

After giving evidence he received a standing ovation, an acknowledgement of his fight for justice.

His efforts down the years include taking a case to the UN’s Committee against Torture, which upheld his complaint. Early last year it urged the Government to investigate allegations of torture at Lake Alice.

He also complained to the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria about Lake Alice psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks, who administered electro-convulsive therapy. In the late-1970s he moved to Australia.

Leeks resigned his right to practice on the eve of a hearing in Australia.

And in the early 2000s Zentveld, who has made a life as a fisherman, won a court battle to reclaim legal costs deducted from ex gratia payments to Lake Alice survivors.

When he was living in Palmerston North, Zentveld, then known as Paul Dixon, was sent to Lake Alice for the first time when he was 13 in 1974.

“I thought it was like Sunday camp, the first week there, and then I started getting all drugged up.”

The punishments started, for bed-wetting, pillow fights or not talking during group therapy sessions. These punishments included solitary confinement, getting injected with drugs, such as the sedative Paraldehyde, and electric shocks.

The first time he was taken for electro-convulsive therapy, Zentveld had no idea what it was about and willingly walked into the room. Leeks came in, introduced himself and told Zentveld he would teach him a lesson.

Electric shocks were administered with and without anaesthetic. Without the drugs it was “pure pain”, and Zentveld had it administered to his head, genitals and knees.

The children were terrified at the prospect of getting shocks and sometimes were left in a room listening to the screams of others being shocked next door.

On one occasion his nursing records show he “got a blast” after he and another boy acted up.

Unlike other patients, Zentveld said he was not sexually abused at Lake Alice, but the electric shocks kept coming.

In 1975, after challenging a female nurse, Lake Alice staff decided he was dangerous, so Leeks ordered two rounds of shocks without Zentveld being drugged. Staff records said Zentveld’s “behaviour is much more vindictive and impulsive since the completion of his recent ECT course”.

He understood he was admired because he was given shocks so often. “I showed the staff I didn’t care. I was strong and stubborn. I remember once I was locked down for two weeks and just sat there glaring at the wall.”

Zentveld said one staff member would use boys for “target practice”, throwing needles of Paraldehyde at them like darts.

His final admission was as an “involuntary patient” in 1976, aged 15. Later that year he was transferred to the adult section of the institution, where he was in the care of Dr Bill Carr, who became Zentveld’s life-saver.

“We’re throwing you out. You don’t need to be here,” Carr told him. “There is nothing wrong with you.”

Four decades later Zentveld had his medical records corrected removing erroneous diagnoses from Lake Alice.

The inquiry continues.