Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital. File photo Photo: Supplied
A former patient of the Lake Alice psychiatric hospital's child unit will ask the United Nations to come to New Zealand to investigate the government's response to a ruling that he was tortured.
Malcolm Richards endured horrific abuse during his two-month stay at the unit, near Marton, in the 1970s.
This year the United Nations Committee Against Torture urged the government to compensate him.
Three months after the committee ruled in his favour, Richards has finally read the government's response to the decision.
The 62-year-old said he would ask for a UN special rapporteur to come to New Zealand to investigate the situation, because the response wasn't good enough.
"It's just a pile of BS. It's just gutting," he said.
"They talk about being kind, caring and empathetic, and they won't even speak to us about it."
Richards said he had made unsuccessful attempts to speak to the prime minister and other ministers about his case.
At Lake Alice in 1975, aged 15, Richards was given electric shock treatment when he was awake, injected with a painful paralysing drug, paraldehyde, and sexually assaulted.
In its June ruling the UN Committee urged the government to consider a torture prosecution.
In its reply, which was not sent to Richards and which he was given by another party, the government said New Zealand's laws of the time in the 1970s didn't allow this.
It noted a former Lake Alice staff member, John Richard Corkran, had been charged with ill-treating children and was facing trial.
Richards was not a complainant in that case
"While this trial will not directly relate to the abuse Mr Richards suffered, the fact that prosecutions in the New Zealand criminal justice system are conducted publicly should afford Mr Richards some sense of vindication that justice is being done regarding the events in the child and adolescent unit," the government's response said.
Richards said that wasn't the case and he was frustrated charges weren't laid against the former staff member who injected him with paraldehyde because he couldn't name them.
He was also disappointed police never charged the unit's lead psychiatrist, Dr Selwyn Leeks.
Police have apologised for mistakes they made in their 2002-2010 investigation into the unit, which led to no prosecutions.
An investigation that finished last year found enough evidence to charge Leeks, but that he was unfit to face trial. He died earlier this year.
The UN committee also urged the government to give Richards "access to appropriate redress, including fair compensation and access to the truth, in line with the outcome of the trial".
The government said a redress process was being developed to implement recommendations from the Royal Commission into Abuse in State Care, which looked at the Lake Alice unit.
For Richards, that was not enough.
"The redress process isn't up to what the UN expect redress for torture survivors to look like.
"It can't be a group redress. It has to be tailored to the individual. You can have three people who were in there exactly the same amount of time, had exactly the same abuse, and yet you get three different outcomes."
Richards was clear about what he needed, and couldn't see any reason to delay this further.
"I'd like some sort of special counselling to come to terms with what happened to us.
"From the time I got out of Lake Alice my body's ached and it's only aching worse as I get older. Something to address that would be good."
Fellow former Lake Alice unit patient Paul Zentveld, who has also won a UN claim of torture, was likewise disappointed with the response.
"I think they need to wake up and stop being little children and show who's the adults here, if they can be adults," he said.
"With dragging the chain it's just hell, and it's been like that for 50 years."
An international group, Citizens Commission on Human Rights, helped Zentveld with his UN claim and was also assisting Richards.
Director Mike Ferris said there were moves the government should make now, such as reimbursing former patients legal fees taken from class action payments they won 20 years ago.
"I think what they're really missing out on is a sense of urgency about this whole process.
"From a survivors' point of view this is just more trauma. They think, 'oh, here you go again, we're being ignored'. They're not wrong.
"They feel ignored in not being communicated to, and the government just seems to be this faceless bureaucracy that's impenetrable."
Ferriss said anyone else who mistreated children as Leeks did would be swiftly arrested and charged, yet Leeks never faced prosecution.
Ferriss was also critical of the government's response to the UN urging that its decision be widely circulated.
The government noted media coverage, as well as it being posted to some government websites, but Ferriss said more was needed.
Torture victims in New Zealand can only be awarded compensation at the discretion of the attorney-general, David Parker.
His office said it couldn't discuss individual cases for privacy reasons.
In a statement it reiterated that a redress process was being developed and said "individual cases will be resolved in accordance with those processes", which included taking into account the UN committee's recommendations.
"As the government outlined in its response to the UN committee against torture, it is currently undertaking work to improve the redress available to survivors of abuse in state care, both as regards certain immediate steps recommended by the Royal Commission into Historical Abuse in State Care in its interim report, and as regards a future redress system."
