Thursday, July 10, 2003

Lake Alice Psychiatrist in Australian Abuse Inquiry

Dr Selwyn Leeks at Lake Alice Hospital, near Wanganui, faces an inquiry into his conduct in Australia. Leeks is already the subject of a number of criminal complaints in New Zealand by former patients, who allege punishment with electric shock treatment or drug injectionsm and is now the subject of allegations of abuse. Lake Alice is notorious as the site of other psychiatrict patient abuses in recent years

Ah, the picture is much clearer with this story in the Australian Paper, the Age:


    A Melbourne psychiatrist who oversaw the punishment of children with electric-shock therapy at a New Zealand hospital 30 years ago could be struck off after the Medical Practitioners Board of Victoria yesterday decided to investigate his conduct. Cheltenham psychiatrist Dr Selwyn Leeks, 74, is alleged to have allowed children to be punished with electric-shock treatment from 1972 to 1977 when he headed the now-closed child and adolescent unit at the Lake Alice psychiatric hospital on NZ's North Island. In 2001 the New Zealand Government formally apologised and paid millions of dollars in compensation to 95 former patients of the hospital. Most of the patients were children in the 1970s who were admitted to the hospital because of behavioural difficulties. An inquiry in 1997 found they were subjected to various forms of punishment including electroconvulsive therapy, locked away with adult patients, or given painful injections of the sedative paraldehyde. The Age has confirmed that Victorian police are also investigating claims made by several patients treated by Dr Leeks after he moved to Australia.
The long arm of the law at last

No comments: