Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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The demons of Lake
Alice still haunt the people who lost their childhoods there. Lee Matthews talks to a
survivor. "We were doomed
people in Lake Alice because nobody helped us. We soon learned not to
complain. We knew nobody would listen." Stephen McMahon * is a
survivor. From age 13 to 16, he says he was raped and tortured. He was also
injected with gut-wrenchingly painful paraldehyde and put through unmodified
electroconvulsive treatment--shock treatment with no anaesthetic. Routinely. To punish
him. To modify his behaviour, because he seemed to live in a world of his
own. This happened not
because Mr McMahon * needed psychiatric treatment but because he was a boy
with no place to go when he was 13, back in 1973. For family reasons, he
needed a place in a boys' home, but there was no place. He ended up a ward of
the state at Lake Alice Hospital's open child and adolescent unit, villa 11. He's spent the past 30
years thinking about what happened to him and brothers-in-suffering at Lake
Alice. He was part of the group that in 2001, after 15 years of trying to
make people believe what happened, received a public apology and a share of
$6.5 million in government compensation. Mr McMahon *, now 45,
is tall and quietly spoken. Horror seeps into his eyes when he talks of Lake
Alice. He has health problems: muscle cramps, migraines, night terrors, other
damage to his body. Right now he's in acute pain, a side effect of withdrawing
from the morphine prescribed by Australian doctors. He also has depression
problems. "I know I need to
do serious work to overcome what has happened to me. Coming back to
Palmerston North is the first step," he said. "This is fresh-start
time." The first time he went
to Lake Alice was in March 1973. His affidavit for the class action court
case records what happened. On his first day, he
was taken to villa 11 and into a day room where there were about 15 boys, all
his age or younger. They were crying. "I asked one of
them why and he said, `You'll find out.' There was screaming coming from
upstairs and I was confused. I didn't know what was going on." What was going on was
unmodified electroconvulsive treatment. Mr McMahon * was called upstairs, told
to lie on a bed and electrodes were slid onto his temples. A rubber gag was wedged
into his mouth, then unit head psychiatrist Selwyn Leeks "played with
the dial" on the ECT machine. "They told me I
wouldn't feel anything. All of a sudden I got hit with a sensation like a
sledge hammer. I can't put the pain into words. Absolutely nothing compares
with its intensity. Dr Leeks turned the dial down low and then up high. "It was like
having little sledge hammers and then big sledge hammers hitting my
head." Mr McMahon * woke up in
a warm bath. One of the other residents was playing with his genitals. A diary was kept at the
unit. Anyone caught smoking, answering staff back or committing any other
trivial transgression had their names put in the "blue book". Then,
on Fridays, those transgressors got unmodified ECT. Sometimes the
youngsters had to help set up the ECT equipment. When this happened, Mr McMahon
* tried to convince himself he was just a helper and that he would not be
shocked--but generally the helpers got ECT. "Normally the
smoke doors were kept closed (between the day room and the shutter cell room
in villa 11, where ECT took place), but when Dr Leeks performed his ECT
sessions, the doors were left open. "This was so the
boys downstairs could hear the screaming and muffled cries of pain from the
boy being tortured upstairs. "We were all
terrified for each other. We were controlled by this fear. We just sat in the
day room and waited," Mr McMahon * says. The staff used that
fear. "The words they
used for it were to `ride the thunderbolt', `the national grid' and `the
zappidy zap'." He was also given
unmodified ECT in the left shoulder by Dr Leeks, who said it would help Mr McMahon’s
* asthma. This made Mr McMahon * too frightened to get his inhaler and
medication from the office. Shock treatment was
also administered during the week by other staff to the boys' knees, buttocks
and testicles. One boy was shocked as he lay in bathwater. These staff also
gave paraldehyde injections as a punishment. Paraldehyde is a
psychiatric drug used to subdue out-of-control patients. It hurts as it is
administered, leaving a feeling like hot, burning acid. It has a foul smell
and leaves a sickening taste in the mouth for several days. Sometimes staff would
"harpoon" the boys, throwing paraldehyde syringes at the their
naked buttocks from across the room. Sexual abuse was also
common, not only from staff but from some of the residents themselves. Some
staff threatened that raped residents would get the thunderbolt if they
complained. After residents
complained about one resident, Dr Leeks set up a punishment session where the
complainants were told to administer unmodified ECT to the abuser. Mr McMahon * was also
beaten and kept in solitary confinement while at Lake Alice. On one occasion
it was for refusing to scrub a floor with a toothbrush. Mr McMahon * left Lake
Alice in 1975 and says his release and "rehabilitation" were
typical. He was given his medication as usual that morning, then taken to
Wellington, where a staff member booked him into a YMCA hostel and jacked up
a labouring job at the old cigarette factory. Mr McMahon * was then given
$100. End of rehabilitation. The job didn't last
long. Co-workers taunted him about coming from the nuthouse. He was also
cold-turkey withdrawing from medication and had no idea how to be responsible
for himself. "One minute I was
at Lake Alice, woken up in the morning with an air raid siren, being told
what to do every minute of the day and being governed by fear, and now I
found myself suddenly expected to fit into the workforce." He ended up jobless and
homeless, sleeping in a Courtney Place bus shelter. A homosexual transvestite
picked him up. Eventually, Mr McMahon * fled to Australia and to England. "To this day, I
wake up crying, with nightmares about Dr Leeks and Lake Alice," he says.
"The situation has not improved over time. It irritates me immensely
that I just can't seem to get Lake Alice out of my life."n -------------------- Fear at first sight -------------------- The first sight of the
old water tower rearing out of trees makes Stephen McMahon * shiver. "I hate the sight
of that thing," he says. "It's so ugly. It used to be the first
thing you'd see coming back after a weekend's leave. It meant you were going
back there." Mr McMahon * was a ward
of the state at Lake Alice Hospital's open child and adolescent unit from
1973 to 1975. He was 13 when he arrived. He went back last Friday
for the first time in 30 years, to the place where he was tortured and raped
while staff either participated or turned a blind eye. Driving there, he
talked quietly of what has happened to him since Lake Alice, how the
experiences there had shattered any chance of joy or a happy life. "I've got to go
back there. I'm having a lot of difficulty dealing with this. I tell you, if
it wasn't for my family, I would have taken my life over this," he says.
"I know the place
is all closed down now. I know that, but I don't believe it. "I've got to go
back there and make sure that those people aren't still torturing children in
those rooms. "I've got to be
able to walk through those rooms without feeling scared." The remains of Lake
Alice Hospital sit a bare kilometre off the main road between Bulls and
Wanganui. The hospital closed in 1986 and the national secure unit closed in
1999. Services shifted to Auckland. What's left now lurks
behind locked gates and warning signs about guard dogs. Trees are overgrown
and long grass invades the drive. Cows graze peacefully. Mr McMahon * goes to
the caretaker's cottage. He quietly explains that he nearly died at Lake
Alice as a child and he must see villa 11. His voice carries 30 years of
conviction. The caretaker--who
wouldn't let in the Manawatu Standard because it's more than his job's
worth--warns that the place is wrecked. Vandals have got in. There's nothing
left. This is what Mr McMahon
* needs to hear. He also needs to see it. He goes with the caretaker. Half an hour later, Mr McMahon
* comes walking back. He's carrying a cracked old wooden plaque-style sports
trophy, recording the efforts of the Lake Alice bowling teams. "Look," he
points out one of the little silver shields on the trophy. "S. McMahon *.
1974. That was me." There's a pause. He
lights a cigarette, sits down. "I must have done
something right while I was out here." His hands are shaking
as he describes how good it felt to stand in villa 11, the place ruined and
empty around him. Gutted. Reduced to a building nobody wants. "It's all covered
in graffiti inside. Everything's broken. Even the toilets are broken. "It's a bit of a
shock to the system, but I had to come here and see this, to be sure." The caretaker told him
other survivors of his era have come back. It's not a pleasure trip for
anyone. Mr McMahon * takes
another look at the neglected grounds. "I've carried this
place around the world with me, wherever I've been." He nods slowly. "That's all blown
apart." But he says it has made
him stronger to go back, to face the Goliath. "I will never
understand why they did this to us." * Name changed on
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