Kāti rā, ā te tākiritanga mai o te ata,
ā te huanga ake o te awatea,
kia tau he māramatanga,
kia ū ko te pai, kia mau ko te tika.
Koinei ko te tangi a te ngākau e Rongo,
tūturu ōwhiti whakamaua
kia tina, tina!
Hui e, tāiki e!
(And so, as dawn rises, and a new day begins,
let clarity and understanding reign,
goodness surrounds you and
justice prevails.
Rongo god of peace, this the heart desires,
we beseech you,
let it be,
it is done.
– Waihoroi Paraone Hōterene)
I watch what happens in the Whare Pāremata (Parliament) an awful lot. In this case I’m glad I did.
I’ve always known that I qualified as a ‘survivor’ because of the experiences we all had at Lake Alice in the 1970’s under the watchful eye of Dr Selwyn Leeks.
I discovered recently though, that while I am a survivor, there was a reason I didn’t make a submission to The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care and I hadn’t realised until now just how profound (to me) that reason was.
It’s actually simple and somewhat obvious if you know me at all, and the epiphany I had was thanks to Hon Willow Jean Prime in the Whare Pāremata on the day of the Prime Minister’s apology to the survivors.
Let’s forget the Prime Minister’s apology though, it was shameful, a perfect example of how he can use normal words and yet still ensure that they never actually touch anybody, certainly not deeply, but are just a weird, unemotive lexicographical word salad. This apology should have touched the country, certainly the people affected and I’m one of them, but it didn’t so let’s just leave out all reference to it because it was an utter waste of time.
The debate afterwards, however, was quite interesting – Hipkins apology was everything Luxon’s wasn’t – and I was particularly drawn to the comments made by Hon Willow Jean Prime who reminded everyone that there were survivors who, for reasons known only to themselves, chose not to make submissions.
I was one of them.
I convinced myself at the time that it was because there were so many who’d been worse affected and for longer than I had and that it was best not to muddy the waters with my seeming trivia so, while superficially noble, this disguised the real reason which was far deeper buried.
Deep down I believed that, despite the ugliness and the months long abuse, I’d brought it all on myself and my presence at the Lake was due to my own actions and that any punishment meted out to me was thoroughly deserved and that I should just shut up and be silent about it.
Willow Jean’s remarks reminded me that I had been ensconced in Lake Alice at the direction of the courts and not as a voluntary patient as all the other men in my villa were. It was a period of my life I’m not proud of and I’m grateful that the courts gave me a chance at rehabilitation even though there have been times when I’ll freely admit it didn’t feel like any form of rehabilitation previously known to humankind.
In case you don’t know, dear reader (and why should you), Lake Alice Hospital was a rural psychiatric facility at Lake Alice in the Manawatū-Whanganui region of Aotearoa New Zealand. It opened in August 1950 and had a maximum-security unit. Like many New Zealand psychiatric hospitals, Lake Alice was largely self-sufficient, with its own farm, workshop, bakery, laundry, and fire station. It also had swimming pools, glasshouses, and vegetable gardens, not that I got to see much of them.
The facility slowly shut down during the mid-1990s, finally closing its doors in October 1999.
And good riddance.
It’s arguable that I should have been in the ‘secure unit’ – a lovely kiwi euphemism for gaol – but, while I was definitely a criminal and an addict the secure unit was designed to house the criminally insane and insane was a bar I apparently failed to reach.
For once, the police also seemed up to giving me a break and I think often of the Youth Aid Officer who came to my rescue. I had been caught with the boot of my car full of Class A and Class C drugs and with a .308 rifle on the back seat and it’s hard to pretend that this wasn’t exactly what it seemed to be but, strangely, it was somewhat less sinister than it appears at first glance.
I arrived home on the night in question to find the building my flat was in surrounded by armed police. I parked my car on the side of the road and went and asked one of the cops what was going on. He asked my name and when I told him he arrested me on the spot. He told me a ‘member of the public’ had dobbed me in and I didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out who the snitch was. I was arrested and charged with drug and firearms offences and put in a cell in the New Plymouth Police Station but, because I played cricket with the desk sergeant, they didn’t lock the door. I was told where the kitchen was and invited to go and make myself a coffee if I wanted to.
I was doing just that when the Youth Aid Officer came in and, after friendly greetings, he asked what I was doing there. I told him and his response was ‘hold tight I’ll be right back’. It’s not as if I was going anywhere anytime soon.
At the time I was working a lot with emotionally and behaviourally challenged young people, so I knew the Youth Aid Officer well – my kids were always in trouble – and we got on well.
Long story short, the drug charges went away, and I was only charged with the firearms offence on the understanding that I would be remanded to Lake Alice pending a trial date being set an that I would be driven down by the Youth Aid Officer who would then be in charge of my case. The judge was someone I knew from my theatre work, and he knew of the mahi I was doing with disadvantaged kids so instead of sending me to gaol which he would’ve been within his rights to do he instead committed me to Lake Alice and specifically to the mental hospital section. I have to admit that the local theatre folk were among my most substantial customers, and they certainly kept me busy.
Over that, however, I will politely draw a veil
The ease with which the drug charges went away has always interested me because of a parallel story that I was also involved with. I was just a baby dealer, but I was on the network and my supplier kept me informed – ‘be in the lounge bar of the Empire at 4 on Thursday. There’s a shipment of Buddha Sticks coming in from Thailand’ so I’d turn up with a bunch of others and we’d have a few drinks and be kept informed.
‘Shipment has arrived, and the cops have raided and confiscated the cargo’.
Naïve me thought ‘bugger, that’s that then’.
No-one left though, and the drinking continued.
‘Cops have destroyed the shipment’ was the next message, and within an hour those same drugs would be on the street. I asked no questions about any off it – I’m naïve but not stupid. I’d go home and my supplier would bring my share around later in the evening and I’d bury them in my hidey hole in the garden for future distribution.
I spent many months at the Lake in a villa next to the villa where the children were housed many of whom I knew. Rumour was rife about what was happening to the kids in the child and adolescent unit with Leeks rumoured to be using electric shock treatment and paralysing drugs to punish them for any misdemeanours but, to my discredit, I stayed away from all that. It was exactly what was happening in my villa, and it was terrifying. Staff would provoke the patients and when there was a response that patient’s name would be on the treatment list read out at breakfast the following day and we all knew that no breakfast meant that person would be up for ECT later that day. There was little logic to whose name appeared on the list and we waited each morning in fear and trepidation to hear whether we were for the zap or not.
I was focussed solely on my own survival and getting clean which was fraught enough. I managed to stay clear of Leeks and only saw him once in the first six months of my incarceration. I did an awful lot of walking in the grounds, occupational therapy, writing, and staying clear of the staff who were monsters.
When my court date came around, I was returned to New Plymouth on the understanding that I would be discharged without conviction for the firearm offence which, from memory, was something like ‘having a licensed firearm in a public place without lawful excuse’. A discharge without conviction would have meant no police record and I could have gone back to teaching but, as misfortune would have it, I was found guilty and sentenced to return to Lake Alice and to remain there until such time as I was discharged by the lead psychiatrist Dr Leeks.
The following day, my father died, and while my probation officer refused to allow me to go to Christchurch to be with my family even on compassionate grounds, I went anyway. I’ll always be grateful to Nan and David Ludbrook for helping me get away to the funeral and to the cops who looked the other way.
Some days after the funeral, the police came to my parent’s house, and I was instructed to return to Auckland and to return to Lake Alice, which I did. It was a good few months later, at least six, before I was finally discharged, and then only because Dr Leeks saw me wandering the grounds of the hospital and couldn’t work out why I had returned. That says a lot about the management of the hospital that they had a committed patient, an addict and a convicted criminal, on the premises that no-one knew was there, or why
So, you see, I’ve always believed that being committed to Lake Alice was my own fault because of the drugs, the firearm, disobeying my probation officer, and all the rest, and that anything that happened to me while I was there, was directly down to me, and that this was actually why I didn’t make a submission.
Wow, did I get that wrong!
That should never have been the reason because, while my behaviours got me put away, what the staff did to me and others like me while I was there was still reprehensible and had nothing to do with any legitimate punishment that they had any right to impose. It was over and above what was reasonable, and I now know that.
Willow Jean Prime’s speech made me realise that the behaviour of the staff at Lake Alice under the direction of Dr Leeks was an absolute disgrace, illegal, and that perhaps I should have made a submission.
I didn’t, it’s too late now, the rest is history. C’est la vie, in’shallah, such is life, and that’s how the cookie crumbles. I simply don’t care anymore.
This epiphany was really important to me because it has enabled me to process all that happened to me in those months at The Lake, so that’s a big positive for this year. I understand now how that all played out, who the main players were, and how it has impacted the rest of my life.
I’ve also now got a better handle on why I do what I now, and even why I did what I did then.
It’s not enlightenment, but it’s a bloody good start.
For the record I took the time to get clean and sober and have been clean and sober since apart from a couple of occasions, years ago, where circumstances got the better of me and I momentarily used again.
That’s approximately 19,000 days of ‘one day at a time.’
I gave up dealing as well, not that I was ever any good at it. I did it purely to maintain my own supply in the first instance and it just grew from there.
I’m proud of how I managed all that and it is quite a lot to get your head around. I sincerely thank the judge and the cops for keeping me out of gaol, for all the people who put their lives on the line to get the Royal Commission up and running, and to those who enabled me, eventually, to get my career back.
Thank you, Willow Jean Prime, I will be forever grateful.
Thanks Chippy, for your words
But no thanks to the Prime Minister for his shitty faux apology, and none to Erica Stanford who took time out from her role fucking up the education system and mouthing platitudes about immigration to be in charge of the inquiry.
Poor form, all round.
Big thanks to Kenneth Clearwater whose persistent mahi continues to shine a fine light in this darkness.
dykiegirl 