Lake Alice ex-patient reveals shock therapy torture

A man was held down by four staff members and shocked with electricity when he was 13 years old at a Rangitıkei psychiatric institution.

The Royal Commission’s Abuse in Care Inquiry is investigating what happened at the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit, which operated from 1972 until 1978, near Marton.

Hakeagapuletama Halo said, on day one of a two-week public hearing in Auckland, that the shocks felt like a sledgehammer and his body was jolted upright from lying down.

The 58-year-old gave the commissioners a journal that detailed his experiences of abuse at Lake Alice, including electroconvulsive therapy and sedative injections.

‘‘By holding this journal in your hands, I hope you will get a sense of the effect Lake Alice has had on me.’’

Halo was born in Niue, and raised by his grandparents. He came to New Zealand aged 6, and did not speak English. He was transferred between schools, but unable to understand, he was labelled handicapped and violent. He moved in with his birth parents when they arrived in the country, and left school at 12.

He went to youth court for shoplifting and the judge admitted him to Owairaka Boys’ Home in Auckland in 1975 before he was transferred to Lake Alice at 13 years old. Halo said he received electric shocks the first time he met Dr Selwyn Leeks.

Leeks’ lawyer Hayden Rattray appeared at the hearing yesterday and said Leeks was 92 years old, had cancer, heart disease, kidney dysfunction, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Rattray said the former doctor was unable to understand proceedings, and was incapable of responding to accusations.

Leeks and three staff members would put Halo on a bed, a mouth guard in his mouth and electrodes on his head.

Halo said the first time he received the shocks, he was knocked unconscious. He was not given any muscle relaxant or anaesthetic and staff held him down.

‘‘I would always be conscious and feel the sledgehammer-like pain of the shocks repeatedly forcing my body up, and then falling down on the bed again.

‘‘I would be crying my eyes out and begging them, telling them I did not want it, but still Dr Leeks would give it to me. He did not seem to care. He was a man full of hatred.’’

Halo said the after effects were headaches, loss of memory, anger and fear.

He received paraldehyde injections, a sedative for bad behaviour, in his bottom, which he said felt like ‘‘having a burning steel bar up your backside’’. He said he received the injections every week, and was once given it for laughing too loud.

When Halo went home for Christmas, his sister was murdered by her boyfriend in the bedroom next door. He was the first to find her, still holding her baby, who was alive. He was returned to Lake Alice in February 1976. He received more shock treatment before being released later that year, aged 14.

A family member invited him to church to help, and he was now an elder there. ‘‘My faith and my church helped me with my recovery and still helps me today.

‘‘I think I would have had a normal life if I had not been to Lake Alice.’’

Halo said his personal relationships suffered and he was unable to maintain employment.

He participated in the 1977 Mitchell Inquiry and talked at a Citizens Commission on Human Rights investigation. He received $76,023 in compensation, but was given only $40,000 after legal fees were taken.

‘‘I would be crying my eyes out and begging them, telling them I did not want it, but still Dr Leeks would give it to me.’’ Hakeagapuletama Halo