No way out: the hospital that became a childhood hell

• The Age
• By BILL BIRNBAUER Sunday 14 October 2001 
• Leslie Kiriona, who was given shock treatment as a patient there in 
• 1973. Picture: JOHN DONEGAN 
• The New Zealand Government has apologised to 95 people who were 
• repeatedly treated with electric shock "aversion therapy" in the 
• 1970s while under the care of a psychiatrist now practising in 
• Melbourne. 
• The formal apology, by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and 
• Health Minister Annette King, comes with a $5.3 million pay-out to 
• settle a class action launched by the group, all former "patients" 
• of Lake Alice Hospital, near Palmerston North, north of Wellington. 
• While at the hospital in the 1970s, the "patients", aged between 
• eight and 16, were given electric shocks and painful injections for 
• minor breaches of discipline, and lived in a state of "extreme fear 
• and hopelessness", according to former New Zealand High Court judge 
• Sir Rodney Gallen. 
• He said: "Statement after statement indicates that the children 
• concerned lived in a state of terror during the period they spent at 
• Lake Alice. All were in need of understanding, love and 
• compassionate care. That is not what they received at Lake Alice." 
• Most were taken to Lake Alice Hospital because their parents or 
• state carers could not cope with their unruly behavior. 
• Once at the hospital, a sprawling mental institution with 
• dormitories, a school and a maximum-security facility for the 
• criminally insane, they came under the care of Dr Selwyn Leeks, a 
• tall, quietly spoken man who once described electro-convulsive 
• therapy (ECT) as "fairly definitive treatment". 
• Dr Leeks has a practice in the bayside suburb of Cheltenham. He 
• established the 46-bed child and adolescent unit at Lake Alice 
• Hospital in 1972, but left in the late 1970s after two inquiries 
• into his use of ECT. 
• A Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria spokeswoman said the board 
• was concerned, and would investigate to see if further action was 
• required. 
• Electro-convulsive therapy, during which an electric shock is 
• administered to the brain, normally is used with anaesthetics and 
• muscle relaxants on patients suffering severe depression or 
• psychiatric conditions. But at Lake Alice it was used without 
• anaesthetics or relaxants and was given to the head and other parts 
• of the body. 
• Sir Rodney said that ECT was "in constant use" at Lake Alice 
• hospital - administered on children as a punishment for unacceptable 
• behavior, low school grades or running away. 
• "The ECT was plainly delivered as a means of inflicting pain in 
• order to coerce behavior," he says. "ECT delivered in circumstances 
• such as those I have described could not possibly be referred to as 
• therapy, and when administered to defenceless children can only be 
• described as outrageous in the extreme." 
• Statements by the former patients, which Sir Rodney accepted as 
• true, showed they had received ECT on their heads, legs and even 
• their genitals in cases where they had been accused of unacceptable 
• sexual behavior. The statements referred to two incidents in which 
• children had administered ECT to other children under the 
• supervision of staff. 
• Dr Leeks came to Melbourne in 1978 and was the director of child 
• psychiatry at a child guidance clinic. In 1986, he worked briefly as 
• a part-time psychiatrist at the Children's Court outpatients' 
• clinic. 
• Dr Leeks refused to comment on the New Zealand apology and pay-out. 
• He still faces separate court action by two former Lake Alice 
• residents. 
• Last week, the 20/20 television news program in New Zealand showed 
• Dr Leeks telling a former Lake Alice resident with a hidden camera 
• that the electric shocks were "a form of aversion therapy". When the 
• children administered shocks to another child it was "a behavioral 
• therapy thing". 
• One of the victims involved in the class action, Melbourne resident 
• Kevin Banks, told The Sunday Age he was relieved the case was over, 
• and welcomed the apology. However, he said he still had migraines 
• and nightmares, and relived his experiences daily. He could not work 
• and still suffered throbbing pain on his temples, arms and legs 
• where the electrodes were clasped more than 20 years ago. 
• He estimated he received more than 100 ECT treatments, as well as 
• pain-inducing injections of the sedative paraldehyde. 
• Sir Rodney described paraldehyde as a particularly unpleasant and 
• extremely painful injection that was used to punish children. 
• "There can be no doubt that paraldehyde was used by staff members on 
• their own initiative, without any instruction from medical 
• personnel, whenever the staff member concerned wished to impose a 
• punishment and, on the basis of some of the statements, it seems to 
• have been administered on quite a capricious basis." 
• Other punishments were being kept naked in solitary confinement, and 
• threats of being placed with criminally insane adults. Several 
• former patients complained about sexual abuse from other inmates. 
• Sir Rodney said that perhaps the most appalling story involved a 15-
• year-old boy who claimed he was locked in a wooden cage with a 
• seriously deranged adult. 
• "He describes a situation where, for a considerable period, he 
• crouched in the corner being pawed by the particular inmate, 
• screaming to be released and unable to get out or to get away from 
• the contact to which he had been exposed." 
• Sir Rodney said that even those not subjected to behavior 
• modification lived in terror because of the random nature in which 
• ECT was given. 
• He had read all 95 statements and had interviewed 41 of the 
• claimants in order to determine the amount paid to each claimant. 
• "Claimant after claimant indicated that on one day in the week 
• children were gathered together in the day room where they sat 
• waiting for those to be selected to whom ECT would be applied. Both 
• boys and girls spoke of young children lying in a foetal position on 
• the floor in attempts to avoid being taken up for ECT, and of 
• children who, in tears and through sheer fear, had lost control of 
• their bodily functions before any application had taken place. 
• Whether they received ECT or not, they all lived in fear of 
• receiving it. 
• "There were allegations, which I accept, that it (the ECT machine) 
• was brought into the dining room and placed in a prominent position 
• in order to encourage children to eat their meals if they were 
• reluctant to do so." 
• Complaints were made to police, welfare officers and probation 
• officers, but they were not believed. "There was literally no way 
• out for them," Sir Rodney said. 
• An investigation by The Age in 1999 found that, in December 1975, Dr 
• Leeks wrote to New Zealand welfare authorities about his use of 
• shock treatment on a 13-year-old boy from the Polynesian island of 
• Niue. 
• He said the boy appeared "to be a living memorial to the 
• inadequacies of the immigration system in New Zealand. He behaved 
• very much like an uncontrollable animal, and immediately stole a 
• considerable amount of money and stuffed it into his rectum. 
• Incidentally, the amount of money which he had pushed into his 
• rectum was retrieved along with a considerable amount of interest, 
• which will be forwarded when he returns to you". 
• An investigation by an ombudsman in the late 1970s found that a 15-
• year-old boy was given ECT against his will and without the 
• knowledge of his parents or welfare officers. This might have been 
• contrary to the law and was a grave injustice, the investigation 
• found. 
• In July 1977, Dr Leeks told Wellington's Dominion newspaper that his 
• unit was full of murderers, rapists and liars. He had not used ECT 
• in a punitive way, and defended it as a useful treatment when a 
• patient was dangerous. 
• In a statement, Prime Minister Helen Clark said that, whatever the 
• medical practice was at the time, "what occurred to these young 
• people was unacceptable by any standard, in particular the 
• inappropriate use of electric shocks and injections". 
• "The people involved were young - some of them children - and many 
• from troubled backgrounds, including wards of the state," she 
• said. "Some were sent to the child's adolescent unit primarily 
• because there was nowhere else for them to go."