Allegations of Abuse in Institutions
	Psychiatric Hospitals: Home 2007 Reports
	The Dominion Post June 1 2007 Ex-patient to get day in court, 50 years on Woman first of 230 plaintiffs to put mistreatment case A former psychiatric patient looks set to get her day in court - 50 years after she says she was mistreated at Porirua Hospital. The woman, whose name is suppressed, will be the first of more than 200 former patients to have a full hearing of their case. She is due in the High Court at Wellington on October 24, while representatives of about 230 other former patients are headed for a Court of Appeal hearing on pre-trial issues. In the meantime, some of the plaintiffs, and witnesses, are so old or sick that they could die before their claims are heard, Justice Warwick Gendall was told in the High Court yesterday. The Crown says some of its potential witnesses, now in their 80s or 90s, might also die before the hearings. Already the evidence of a former nurse has been taken and Justice Gendall gave permission yesterday for the evidence of another woman to be taken before October's hearing formally begins. This former patient has a social phobia and will not leave her home so the lawyers and judge will either have to go to her or have a video link set up between her home and the court. Yesterday the Crown had asked Justice Gendall to strike out the whole of the first woman's case, which he refused, but he did refine her claim. Crown lawyer Hamish Hancock had criticised the legal and factual basis of the claims. He said the Crown could not respond to many of them because the woman could not name the staff members - and some fellow patients - she accused of abuse, or say when it happened. The woman's lawyer, Sonja Cooper, said the woman was doing her best to give details of her claims but electroconvulsive therapy used on her repeatedly had affected her memory. She was elderly, damaged and somewhat fragile, and trying to remember events 50 years ago. Justice Gendall accepted it was difficult for both sides. "Of course it's difficult. I can't remember last month, let alone 50 years ago," he said. One of the legal hurdles the woman faces is that psychiatric hospital staff were immune from civil claims for acts done, or intended to be done, in the course of treating patients. Many former patients say they were put in solitary confinement, given electroconvulsive shock treatment, and prescription medicines, as punishment. One area of dispute is whether some actions the staff took were truly treatment. A judge has ruled that the woman whose case begins in October was not able, through disability or inability to formulate the grounds of her claim, to have brought proceedings before 1998.