A TELEVISION programme has refuelled the worst nightmare for Wanganui couple Maria and Kenneth Rangitaawa, and they have joined the growing chorus demanding the extradition of a former Lake Alice psychiatrist from Australia.
Mr and Mrs Rangitaawa's son Kenneth was a patient in Lake Alice for a year when he was a 15-year-old and during that period he was subjected to electro-convulsive treatments (ECT) on six occasions in November and December 1976.
The parents were unaware their son had been given the shock treatment and since the late 1970s have been hoping someone would eventually be held responsible.
Tv One's Sunday programme interviewed Dr Selwyn Leeks, the psychiatrist who headed the Lake Alice Hospital's child and adolescent unit in the late 1970s.
In 2001, the Government gave apologies and compensation to a group of former patients of the unit.
It later extended these to a second group, bringing to $10.7 million the total paid to 183 people.
The Sunday programme interviewed former patients of Dr Leeks at the former mental hospital north of Bulls. They told of being punished by the use of electric shocks (ECT) and painful drug injections.
Dr Leeks was interviewed and secretly filmed in his Melbourne home and he told of using ECT as a form of therapy.
Detective Superintendent Malcolm Burgess told the programme police were making inquiries and would decide if any further action was warranted.
The Rangitaawas, who were living in Marton at the time their son was in Lake Alice, have been seeking justice for him for almost 30 years and they haven't given up the battle.
After seeing the Tv programme they said their determination has been rekindled.
In the late '70s they had taken their concerns about their son to the Ombudsman who later ruled that Kenneth had been held at Lake Alice, without either his or his parents consent.
Mr and Mrs Rangitaawa acknowledge their son had behavioural problems when he was at school and later ran into trouble with the police.
He was diagnosed as having a "depressive, schizo-affective illness".
But his parents say that their son definitely "changed" after his time at Lake Alice.
Kenneth Rangitaawa is now 46 and living in a halfway house in Palmerston North and is on constant medication.
His parents saw him a few weeks ago when he visited Wanganui with a caregiver.
"Kenneth told us he was getting shock treatment at Lake Alice, but we just didn't believe him, Mrs Rangitaawa told the Chronicle.
"He told us it was terrible to watch when other kids were getting it (the treatment). But then a cousin who was working in the hospital kitchen told us that she used to hear the kids screaming." "She was afraid to speak out because she knew if she did she'd lose her job."
Mr Rangitaawa said the treatment changed his son.
"When he left the hospital I got him a job on the Railways but he didn't last long. Something had happened to him at that hospital," Mr Rangitaawa said.
Kenneth spent a short while living with them in Marton but was committed to an institution under the Mental Health Act after he damaged their home.
"Kenneth was acting funny. I was scared of him. But then one day he went berserk. We didn't know it then but he had stopped taking his medication," Mrs Rangitaawa said.
Before he was sent to Lake Alice she said her son had some behavioural problems but "he wasn't violent".
Their son was among those who had received compensation in a class action taken against the health authorities in 2001.
However, his parents say their issue isn't about compensation but about seeing justice being done.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) said it and a group of former patients were exploring a private criminal prosecution if the police failed to take action against Dr Leeks.
CCHR executive director Steve Green said allegations of torture and punishments by staff had been corroborated by nearly 200 people, a damning report by retired High Court judge Sir Rodney Gallen and official apologies from the prime minister and health minister.
"The evidence of children being punished is compelling and therefore there is every reason that the police should become involved," Mr Green said.
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