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Allegations of Abuse
in Institutions |
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One of the lawyers representing
around 350 former psychiatric patients seeking compensation from the
Government says the first cases will go before the courts next year. The first two cases have been set
down for October 2007. The former patients are alleging
they suffered physical, sexual and mental abuse at mental institutions, while
in state care. In 2001, the Government apologised
and paid compensation to a group of former patients of the Lake Alice
Hospital child and adolescent unit, near Marton, which closed in the late
1970s. It later extended this to a second
group, bringing to $10.7 million the total paid to 183 people. The group of around 350 former
patients who were cared for in other state-run institutions say they too
should be paid compensation. Lawyer Sonja Cooper told TV3's
Campbell Live show last night that if these patients had been at Lake Alice,
"pretty much all of them" would have been eligible for
compensation. "The claims that are being
made by our client group are essentially exactly the sorts of claims that
were being made by the client group at Lake Alice," she said. The former patients were being
forced to go through the courts process – which was "extremely
traumatic" for them, time consuming, and expensive. Ms Cooper said the explanation for
the exclusion given by the Crown in 2004 – when the group was trying to get
an out-of-court settlement – was that there were factual and legal issues in
dispute. The Crown had argued these issues
needed to be resolved before the Government could consider compensation, and that
court was the best forum for those issues to be resolved. Factual issues had also been in
dispute with the Lake Alice settlement, Ms Cooper said, but had been accepted
on the basis of what the claimants said. "So why our claimant group is
in a different position is actually hard to understand." The patients represented came from
Oakley near Auckland, Kingseat south of Auckland, Porirua and other
institutions. At least two-thirds of the client
group had been children or adolescents when they were at mental institutions,
Ms Cooper said. They largely corroborated each
other's accounts of their treatment regardless of which institution they were
at. The accounts were similar to those
told by former Lake Alice patients, she said. |
