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Accusations of Abuse in Institutions

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The Dominion
March 11, 2002

Where nightmares begin

A former child psychiatric patient who is taking legal action against Porirua Hospital talks to Fran Tyler about the abuse she suffered in the 1960s

At 11 years of age, Gina was locked in a tiny cell in a mental hospital. For three years she was subjected to sexual, physical and emotional abuse, injected with painful drugs and given electric shock therapy without anaesthetic.

Gina (not her real name) doesn't know why she was put in Porirua Hospital. Her records don't show any good reason either. But she does remember vividly the terror and the torture she went through in her tiny locked cell.

Now in her late 30s, she has been left emotionally scarred and dependent on drugs as a result of the treatment she received, and she wants someone to be held accountable.

Gina is one of a small group of former psychiatric patients planning to take a case against the Crown for the alleged abuse they suffered at Porirua Hospital in the 1960s and 1970s. She agreed to speak to The Dominion with her husband Bob and lawyer Jane Hunter in support in the hope that her story may give others who suffered similarly the courage to join the legal battle ahead.

Gina's story began in the early 1970s, when she lived in Wellington with her mother and four brothers and sisters. She recalls that, before that time, her mother was often ill and the children were frequently put in foster care. Gina's hospital records show it was possible that her mother was suffering from depression. She was having a difficult time with Gina, who was also having problems at school. The records don't refer to any particular mental illness.

Regardless of what the paperwork says, 11-year-old Gina had no idea what was going on when she was dropped off at the hospital.

"No one told me what was happening. I was taken down to a bathroom, made to undress and have a bath in front of a man and a woman. After that I was changed into hospital gear and locked in a cell," Gina says.

The cell, which was to become home for much of the next three years, was barely wider than the door that kept her locked in. "There were mattresses there, but I didn't always get one, sometimes I got a blanket. There was nothing on the floor."

Though there were no bars on the small, square window that over-looked the staff car park, the glass could not be broken. Toys and photographs of her family were not allowed.

Her daily routine allowed her to leave her cell only briefly each morning, for a bath and to use the toilet. Each time, she had to be accompanied by one or two nurses. Occasionally, she and the other children in the cell block were taken to a geriatric ward, where they were forced to make beds and empty bed pans.

After several weeks in the cell, she was moved to a women's ward, but was soon moved back after she refused to take her medication.

"The medication made me feel sick and gave me headaches," she explains. "I tried to tell them."

As a punishment, Gina was held down and injected with paraldehyde, which caused immense pain.

"It was an all-over pain, like maybe having broken glass injected into your veins, and going all over your body. To me, the pain seemed to last a long time. I had no way of telling time, but it seemed like forever," she says. Nights in the cell were particularly traumatic. Along with the noise of other patients kicking at their doors to be let out to use the toilet, Gina would lie awake listening for the telltale jangle of keys. The keys signalled the arrival of a male staff member, whom Gina believed was a nurse, who sexually abused her and a girl in the neighbouring cell.

"I tried not to listen if he went into her cell, but you could hear everything." The abuse went on almost nightly, and, Gina believes, with the knowledge of a female nurse who worked with him. If she tried to fight him off, he would hit her, she says.

She was regularly strip-searched by the same man for no apparent reason and was also sexually assaulted by another male staff member. Gina complained to other nurses about what was happening, but was punished for "telling lies".

"That's how I realised you didn't say anything."

For five to six weeks, when Gina was aged 12, she was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, administered without anaesthesia. Her treatment was different to other patients in that she was not told it was coming, not prepared for it and it was not administered with a doctor present. After the first time, Gina says, she would listen out for them.

"Until they got to your cell, you didn't know if they were coming for you. If there were two or three or sometimes four of them, you knew something bad was going to happen. "I worked out that, if I was given extra drugs earlier, something was going on. After the first time, they'd have to drag me there – no one's going to go there willingly, not after the first time." Gina said staff would drag her by an arm or a leg, with her kicking and screaming down the long hospital corridors.

Once inside the room, they would hold her down on the bed and attach the electrodes to her head. She was never given anything to bite on.

She described the shock treatment as very painful. "It was like lightning in your head and hearing the thunder".

Afterward she would be returned to her cell, where she suffered headaches and blackouts for several days.

Then one day, again without explanation, Gina was moved to a ward and had full privileges restored. A few weeks later, her grandmother, grandfather and mother arrived to pick her up.

The treatment she received at Porirua has left Gina permanently scarred emotionally and physically. She suffered flashbacks and had to take sleeping pills as a teenager.

She continues to have back problems, which she links to being kicked in the back during her stay at Porirua. As a result of all the prescribed drugs, she has ended up drug-dependent.

Gina has also been unable to work. "I've never had the chance to have a job, to know what it's like to earn my own money. It's really hard to get up every day to do the things that other people find really easy. I get upset really easily and I get angry. There are days that I just can't cope with normal life."

Bob was forced to give up his job to look after her and their three children.

Gina says she knows there are other people who suffered similar things at Porirua and wants them to speak out and put their cases forward.

"They have a right to put the blame where it belongs. It's really hard to do it on your own. It's taken a lot of courage to come forward, but it helps you deal with it."