Grieving boy in need of a hug instead subjected to cruel punishments

Tuesday, 27 July 2021

A 13-year-old boy grieving for his mother was denied the love and care he needed and instead sent to a psychiatric institution where he was subjected to cruel punishments.

And those punishments were worse for Māori or Pasifika children at Lake Alice’s child and adolescent unit, he says.

Leota Scanlon was admitted to the unit in April 1976. The five months he spent there had a profound effect on his life.

Giving evidence to the Royal Commission into Abuse and Care's Pacific inquiry in South Auckland on Tuesday, Scanlon said he wanted to share his story to ensure children were never treated as badly again.

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“I was a grieving kid,” he said of his mother’s death when he was 11. Scanlon’s father, who conversed in Samoan and struggled to speak English, was a violent alcoholic.

Scanlon would get into fights at school and other trouble. After a meeting with his Whanganui school principal and a social worker he was taken to Lake Alice, near Marton.

“I’d lost my mum and all they needed to do was give me a hug and [ask] me, ‘Are you OK? Do you need help? Do you want to talk?’ That didn’t happen.”

Instead, Scanlon joined other terrified children as young as 6 subjected to electric shock treatment – he had it three times – and injected with drugs to make them groggy or painfully paralysed. He was also sent to seclusion rooms.

Māori and Pasifika children were treated more harshly than white children. “The Pākehā kids, they didn’t get as bad treatments as what we got. I thought there was a punishment for them and a punishment for us. We got more.”

On Scanlon’s first night he was injected with paraldehyde and couldn’t walk for two days.

He said the electric shocks and injections were given as punishments, not to help children get better.

“The nurses, I think they enjoyed what they did. They didn’t minimise any of the pain that was caused… I just couldn’t understand why they were giving us kids that kind of treatment.”

Scanlon was angry Lake Alice staff would get to go home at night, while the children would cry themselves to sleep in their dorms. “I remember spending my time when I was awake crying for my mum.”

After Lake Alice life was hard as Scanlon turned to crime to provide food for him and his little sister.

He tried to return to high school, putting on his uniform and turning up to enrol, but was shown the door.

He spent time in foster care, living rough in Auckland and then two tough years in borstal.

Without the education he wanted, Scanlon was an angry and sometimes violent man when he was younger.

He had trouble with alcohol and four years ago was jailed for a drink-driving offence, 23 years after his previous conviction.

“I couldn’t believe it,” his statement to the commission said. “I know many Palagi people who have worse drink-driving histories, but they get a slap on the hand.”

Now living in Masterton, Scanlon said had been drug free for 23 years and, in his 40s, trained as a chef. But he becomes anxious around groups of people and describes himself as a loner.

Scanlon would like to see the Lake Alice unit’s lead psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks prosecuted and for changes to be made so caregivers and other workers were screened for their suitability to be around children. If there were to be a formal apology it needed to come from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

For years Scanlon didn't tell anyone about what happened at Lake Alice apart from other survivors he’d kept in touch with. They had a code phrase for it: Hotel California.

“Dr Leeks, he’s got a lot to answer for. He could go home. He didn't care about what was happening to us. We were experiments. We were guinea pigs.”

The hearing continues.