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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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A group seeking redress
for alleged abuse in psychiatric hospitals hopes huge public response will
bolster its calls for Government action. Helen Gilbert, a spokeswoman
for psychiatric survivor groups, said calls had been flowing in to groups
around the country following the coalition's July call for a new method of
compensation. The coalition believed
a redress process would bring a much wider understanding of historic abuses
in the mental health system. It would also offer opportunities for healing
and closure not necessarily available in a more adversarial court system. "Many of these
people have survived some fairly horrific things themselves. To put people like
that into a standard court environment is pretty rugged," Gilbert said. Instead, the coalition
had called on the Attorney-General to investigate an alternative redress
system. "Whatever the
redress process is, it needs to be safe and have really good support for
survivors; you need a safe place for people to tell their story,"
Gilbert said. "You need an
acknowledgement from the Crown that, yes, these things did happen: you need
an apology and it needs to be some kind of public forum because it's really
important to a lot of survivors that these things don't happen again. "For a large
number of people, there also needs to be a compensation mechanism." Last month,
Attorney-General Margaret Wilson said she was exploring ways for former
psychiatric patients to avoid court cases while seeking compensation over
abuse claims. Widespread allegations
surfaced this year about alleged mistreatment at most of New Zealand's mental
hospitals in the 1960s and 1970s. At the beginning of
August, Wilson said 68 individual claims had been filed in the High Court,
with more than 300 people still to file. However, the coalition
was disappointed by the lack of a "substantive" response and was
seeking a meeting with Wilson. The coalition
represents groups in Wellington, Porirua, Auckland, Hamilton, the Bay of
Plenty, Christchurch and Rotorua. It has recently been joined by a number of
other groups from around the country. |
