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The Age
March 17, 2002
Psychiatrist
faces new probe
By William Birnbauer
Melbourne
psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks is being investigated by New Zealand police after
34 former patients claimed they were abused in his care in the 1970s.
The patients say they were given electric shocks and pain-inducing injections
when they were children at Lake
Alice Hospital
near Palmerston North.
Late last year almost 100 former Lake
Alice patients received
$5.3 million in compensation and a public apology from New Zealand Prime
Minister Helen Clark in settlement of a class action.
Lawyer Grant Cameron, who handled the class action, last week lodged criminal
complaints with police in Wellington.
He said most of them referred to Dr Leeks, but that other staff were involved
as well. Mr Cameron believed many more former patients would be willing to
outline their experiences at Lake
Alice if contacted by
police.
A Wellington
police spokesman confirmed the complaints had been received and said the
national crime manager, Detective Superintendent Bill Bishop, would examine the
material and seek legal advice on it
He said the complaints mainly involved Dr Leeks and the type of treatment the
children received.
On Friday, Dr Leeks said he did not want to comment on the police inquiry, but
that he was "not particularly worried" about it. "It's something
that seems to happen every 25 years," he said. "It's all happened
before."
Dr Leeks was referring to two New
Zealand inquiries into his practices in the
1970s, one of which rejected that electro-convulsive therapy was used to punish
a 13-year-old boy. The second inquiry found a boy, 15, was given unmodified
ECT, against his will, without his consent and without his parents or welfare
officers knowing. The inquiry found the boy had been dealt a grave injustice.
The Victorian Medical Practitioners Board also is investigating Dr Leeks, whose
practice is in Cheltenham. The board recently
received statements from about 50 former Lake Alice
patients.
Dr Leeks said he had not yet been contacted by the board.
He established the 46-bed child and adolescent unit at Lake Alice Hospital in 1972, but left in the late
1970s after the two inquiries into his use of ECT.
Using a hidden camera, a New Zealand
current affairs show late last year showed Dr Leeks telling a former Lake Alice
resident that the electric shocks were "a form of aversion therapy".
A report by former New Zealand High Court judge Sir Rodney Gallen last year
found the Lake Alice "patients", aged between
eight and 16, were given electric shocks and painful injections for minor breaches
of discipline, and lived in a state of "extreme fear and
hopelessness".
He said: "Statement after statement indicates that the children concerned
lived in a state of terror during the period they spent at Lake Alice.
All were in need of understanding, love and compassionate care. That is not
what they received at Lake
Alice."
Most were taken to Lake
Alice Hospital
because their parents or state carers could not cope with their unruly
behaviour