The Big Lake Alice Cover-up

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, children's minister Tracey Martin and chair of the Royal Commission Sir Anand Satyanan announce the extension into church care of children. Photo: Lynn Grieveson
Aaron Smale

Aaron Smale is a freelance journalist and photographer who has worked for Radio NZ, The Nation, Mana, North & South, NZ Geographic, Al Jazeera and The Spinoff. Twitter: @ikon_media

Lake Alice

A little historical digression is in order to give some context.
In the late 1990s, a class action suit was taken against the Crown on behalf of more than 40 former patients of the adolescent unit of Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital. The adolescent unit ran from 1972 until 1977 and has all the hallmarks of a barbaric experiment. The claim made allegations of serious abuse, including rape and sexual abuse by both staff and adult patients (many of whom were criminally insane), torture through the use of electric convulsive therapy, serious assault, illegal detention and other serious crimes.
When Labour came into government in 1999 (there’s that date), Helen Clark and Annette King promised to make things better and eventually the Crown settled by paying out $10 million.
In the process, they explicitly acknowledged the truth of the allegations. Helen Clark’s letter of apology to victims, counter-signed by Health Minister Annette King, said: “What happened to you in the Child and Adolescent Unit at Lake Alice was unacceptable. What occurred to children there should not have happened. We very much regret that it did.”
The apology and payout were supposed to make it all go away. It didn’t. The second batch of former patients also made a claim and was also paid out.
To complicate matters further, High Court judge Sir Rodney Gallen was asked to assess how the payment should be divvied out for the first group of claimants. Strangely, that was all he was asked to do. But being a man of some curiosity and integrity, he asked to speak to the claimants and also examined documents and other evidence.
He was so horrified by what he heard and saw that he felt compelled to write a report, which was then duly leaked and which the government fought in court, unsuccessfully, to prevent the media quoting from.
Gallen’s report was stark and unequivocal. In a particularly telling line, he described what he had discovered as “outrageous in the extreme.” He stated bluntly that the allegations of sexual abuse were not merely allegations but, in his view, had indeed happened. He arrived at the same conclusion on the other allegations. To paraphrase, the state was guilty of running a den of torture and abuse.

Police and Crown Law
The allegations were then the subject of police complaints, which involved more than 40 former patients (this number later grew). For reasons yet to be explained, the police failed to interview these complainants. After dawdling for around eight years they finally announced there was not enough evidence to prosecute, demonstrating a blatant example of willful blindness.
All this despite a High Court judge finding conclusive evidence of serious crimes against children; despite Helen Clark acknowledging in a formal letter that it did happen; despite this legal opinion not being based on any serious examination of the evidence; despite the UN repeatedly asking why the Lake Alice allegations had not been properly investigated (ironically it was still asking this when Helen Clark was applying for the top job).
So who instructed the police to not do their job? Was there any political interference? Sorry, the Royal Commission can’t answer those questions because it can’t ask them. Post-1999 you see.
While the police were busy not doing their job, Crown Law was very busy doing theirs. Officials advising government ministers as far back as 1998 were ringing alarm bells. Not only was the government at risk of serious liability for what happened at Lake Alice, but there were also other institutions that had come to their attention.
Most of the Lake Alice claimants were wards of the state and had been through other institutions – Kohitere, Holdsworth, Hokio Beach, Owairaka and the like – which were under the Department of Social Welfare. They had made similar allegations about those institutions. Lake Alice was simply a Pandora’s Box that officials wanted to keep a lid on. In documents going back as far as last century officials were flagging the potential liability.
Keeping the lid on
In the first story I did on state abuse in 2016 I spoke to Ros Noonan, the previous Chief Human Rights Commissioner. Among other things she told me that when the Lake Alice issue arose previous Attorney-General Margaret Wilson came under pressure from Crown Law officials to “shut it down”.
Margaret Wilson has refused to give an interview on this.
But what I have been told is that she tried to resist the pressure of her own officials and was inclined to deal with Lake Alice in a more open and transparent way. It appears she ran into opposition from her fellow Labour MPs, particularly Helen Clark and Annette King, who did not want such an investigation into what happened and why.
The upshot of all this was Crown Law got its way. It devised and carried out a legal strategy that used all technical legal defences to defeat claims by those who had been abused in state institutions. That strategy has not been revoked.
This might sound dry and technical but it has had some ugly consequences and inflicted further harm on people who have already suffered terrible abuse. I have seen some spectacularly immoral arguments that were put forward in our courts by Crown Law (paid for by you, the taxpayer) to defend the indefensible. These attitudes have permeated the whole state apparatus dealing with these claims. These attitudes started at the top.
And it is this attitude that has meant the redress scheme the government has persisted with has been grossly unfair. It has left a festering sore that is one of the main reasons there was a need for a Royal Commission in the first place.
I’ve yet to pin down all the details of how this happened and how it played out because I’ve been constantly refused access to relevant documents under the guise of legal privilege, despite the Lake Alice case being done and dusted (there are a litany of other bullshit excuses that are too dreary to repeat).
But it is clear that at some point this legal strategy was signed off at the highest levels of Government.
Helen Clark must have been in the loop and had oversight – she was in charge.It wasn’t a trivial matter as it had major fiscal and political implications. Michael Cullen was most definitely involved after Margaret Wilson was shifted sideways into the Speaker’s role and he took over as Attorney General (just to be even-handed, this strategy was vigorously pursued without significant deviation by John Key’s National-led government, particularly by Attorney General Chris Finlayson and Ministers for MSD, Paula Bennett and Anne Tolley).

Who was involved in those discussions and what were their decisions around how to respond to victims of abuse at the hands of the state? Well, the Royal Commission won’t be able to find out because the 1999 cut-off date prevents it from asking those questions.
More questions
Here some further questions I’ve been trying to get answers to.
What part did Peter Hughes (currently the State Services Commissioner) play when he was boss of MSD in the 2000s? What advice was he giving the minister and what instructions was he giving to his staff about how to handle claims of abuse by wards of the state?
Again, I’ve had endless difficulty getting answers. But MSD’s behaviour gives some clues – it has hired private investigators and top QCs to bulldoze victims into the ground in a court of law. Or if you wanted to avoid being shredded by a QC, you could accept a lowball offer.
But the Royal Commission is currently blocked from investigating Mr Hughes’ decisions and actions.
I’d also be interested to know what role Una Jagose (currently Solicitor General) played in Crown Law’s response to state abuse. I’ve seen a letter where she dismissed a victim’s claim out of hand in her role as a Crown lawyer, despite Crown Law knowing the alleged perpetrator had previous convictions for sexually abusing children. Some of those offences happened at Epuni Boys Home, where the claimant had been a resident.
Was this part of a deliberate strategy of denial, even in the face of clear evidence, knowing the invasive nature of a court trial would be too traumatic for many victims to face? That evidence, ironically, led to further police charges and court convictions against the same perpetrator.
Technically the Royal Commission won’t be able to explore these questions because they happened after 1999. Out of scope, in bureaucratic parlance.
That date
If that date stands, the Royal Commission will be able to do less than I can as an individual journalist. At least I can ask those questions. On the face of it, the Royal Commission is being prevented from even doing that.
If I am wrong and the government and public servants have nothing to hide, why don’t they simply remove the cut-off date of 1999 and let the Royal Commission have a look at what happened over the past two decades? Why is Ardern and her government clinging so stubbornly to the 1999 cut-off date when so many experts have made submissions asking for its removal? Why is a Royal Commission of Inquiry into state abuse not being allowed to investigate the state’s response to that abuse when victims started to talk about it, which largely happened after 1999?
It makes no sense, especially when it can take decades for victims of sexual abuse to come forward. Many victims of state abuse when they finally mustered the courage to speak up were told by Crown Law in cold legal language that they were lying, adding further distress. Who authorised that? We won’t find out under the Royal Commission’s current terms of reference.
In a previous piece, I wrote I characterised the state as a psychopath – completely lacking in remorse or empathy, manipulative, narcissistic, no insight into their offending, a high risk of reoffending, etc. In its handling of state abuse, I argued that the New Zealand state is a textbook case of a psychopath.
And yet again that diagnosis is proving to be frighteningly accurate.
Justice Gallen got it right. The abuse that occurred in places like Lake Alice was “outrageous in the extreme.” But so is the state’s cover-up over the past 20 years.If the Royal Commission can’t examine that cover-up, it will simply be another chapter in it.
It won’t be a Royal Commission. It will be a Royal Omission.
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https://kiwijustice2blog.wordpress.com/2018/03/27/sir-rodney-gallens-report-on-the-rape-drugging-and-torture-of-nz-children/