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Allegations of Abuse
in Institutions |
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Rebecca Matthews, 63, said
yesterday that she first learned of the police re-opening their investigation
into the 1968 death of 11-year-old Clement in last week's Weekend Herald. While investigating some of the
flood of complaints over treatment of ex-patients of former mental hospitals,
the newspaper found that the police were looking again at Clement's case
after another former Kingseat patient, Stephen Lindsay, said he saw a male
nurse kick him in the back. Ms Matthews, who has 17
grandchildren, four great-grandchildren and works in a car-polish factory, wants
to speak to the police. She had planned to approach them
on Thursday night, but was prevented from doing so by the death, from cancer,
of another of her eight children, 43-year-old Caroline Matthews. Yesterday at her Takanini home,
where family photos cram the walls, Rebecca Matthews told, with an occasional
tear, of never understanding why her first-born was taken into a psychiatric
hospital. "He was a good boy ... just
like just like any other 5-year-old' He caught tuberculosis around the
time he started school, was taken to He went home for a time, to the
house where Ms Matthews still lives, before becoming sick again and returning
to Auckland Hospital and then, in 1965, Kingseat. He went to Mangere
psychopaedic hospital and in 1966 returned to Kingseat. A coroner found he
died of pneumonia. "He wasn't mental or
anything," said Ms Matthews. "He just had TB-meningitis." This is when tuberculosis bacteria
inflame the lining of the brain and spinal cord. The bugs earlier infected
his hip, according to Kingseat records, which also described Clement as being
mentally subnormal, with disturbed behaviour and an aggressive manner. Ms Matthews, who is divorced, repeated
that her son was "not mental" at any time. "It was all those drugs they
were piling in him." She also blamed the medication for
what the hospital called Clement's "gross obesity". Clement behaved well at home. The
problems occurred in hospital, where he was locked into a ward with elderly
patients, Ms Matthews said. She thought her son was
well-treated at Kingseat and was surprised by Mr Lindsay's allegations. Ms Matthews said she was called by
Kingseat staff after Clement's death. His body, after undergoing a
post-mortem, was taken to their home in Takanini before being buried at a
Maori cemetery in Mangere. "I've started to think about
it again - when he was lying in bed and all that. But I didn't see any
bruises or anything on him." When asked if anything had made
her suspicious at the time, she said: "No, just that they were drugging
him up all the time." Ex-patients who were put into
mental hospitals in the 1960s and 1970s have continued to come forward this
week alleging mistreatment. They follow nearly 200 people, mostly aged 8 to
16 at the time of hospital treatment, who have lodged complaints with Their allegations include beatings
and sexual assault by staff and patients, inappropriate use of electric-shock
therapy and drugs such as paraldehyde as punishment, and excessive use of
other drugs and solitary confinement. The
claims initially centred on |
