529.    Discriminatory attitudes towards those with learning, sensory, mental or physical impairments is a form of ableism. It gives rise to the stigma, or mark of disgrace, associated with a particular circumstance, place or person. Survivors told us they felt the stigma of being placed in Lake Alice and labelled with a mental illness.

530.    As we noted in He Purapura Ora, he Māra Tipu, when tūkino, has occurred, mana is affected.^[1154] Words we use to convey mana include authority, control, influence, prestige, power, psychic force.^[1155] Te Aka Māori Dictionary explains that mana is a supernatural force in a person, place or object.

“Mana goes hand in hand with tapu, one affecting the other. The more prestigious the event, person or object, the more it is surrounded by tapu and mana … Almost every activity has a link with the maintenance and enhancement of mana and tapu.”^[1156]

531.    Conversely, the more atrocious the event, the more it will impact negatively on mana. Mana can be understood to have three aspects: mana atua – god-given power; mana tūpuna – power from the ancestors; and mana tangata – authority derived from personal attributes.^[1157] Everyone is born with and possesses mana, reflecting their actual or potential place in and contribution to their world. This is mana tūpuna – mana inherited from parents and ancestors. Mana tangata is acquired through personal achievement and can rise and fall. The mana of tamariki in traditional Māori society and the great care and affection for tamariki means any action that harms a child or fails to respect the child’s mana is significant.

532.    Tā Hirini Mead explains that personal and group relationships are always facilitated and guided by the high value placed on mana. “Mana has to do with the place of the individual in the social group. Some individuals are regarded as having a high level of mana and others have varying levels.”^[1158] The Waitangi Tribunal has said rangatiratanga and mana, “are really inseparable … ‘rangatiratanga’ denotes ‘authority’. ‘Mana’ denotes the same thing but personalises the authority and ties it to status and dignity”.^[1159]

533.    Being separated from their whānau and the abuse survivors suffered were horrific enough, but the subsequent stigma from having been at Lake Alice and the lack of any accountability or redress from the Crown compounded the effect of that abuse, continuing the assault on survivors’ dignity and mana.

534.    Ms McInroe said the label of being at Lake Alice would forever be with her.

“No matter what, I will always have the stigma, the shame, the trauma, the battle to overcome [Dr Leeks’] abuse, as well as the abuse from the Crown, and the ongoing impact and lasting consequences of being held unlawfully in a mental hospital. That is my reality. I cannot undo that.”^[1160]

535.    Mr Peter Henaghan said the stigma of Lake Alice had stayed with him his entire adult life. “All I have to say is that I was at Lake Alice and people treat you a different way. They treated you horribly.”^[1161] Mr Hendricks said he felt embarrassed about his time in Lake Alice and worried people might judge him. He told us he had never had a mental illness, but “people don’t know that, and they don’t know my story. All they see is that I was in Lake Alice for seven months”.^[1162]

536.    Survivors recounted their experiences of being ridiculed or humiliated by others for having been at Lake Alice. They experienced this humiliation from people close to them, such as family, friends and partners, as well as from colleagues, employers and medical professionals.

537.    In the report by Ngā Wairiki and Ngāti Apa, whānau talked about the stigma of mental illness, how it was often misunderstood by whānau and, in turn, not talked about.^[1163] Whānau reported how this, at times, was disempowering, and, at other times, this lack of knowledge and stigma led to criticism of the whānau or tāngata whaiora.^[1164]

“Mental health wasn’t the thing that you really talked about. My father was actually afraid of it. We went on a journey with my brother but when he ended up in Lake Alice – oh wow. Now that in itself was a journey for all of us, and although I wasn’t living at home Mum would discuss it with us all ’cause she felt that we needed to understand mental health. Not the nonsense that everybody said, “You’re a bit cray cray,” you know? That was the 60s, 70s, and even the 80s. You know … If you had anything different. I thought, what the hell was normal anyway?”.^[1165]

Ngā pānga ki te āhua o tā ngā purapura ora noho ki ō rātou wāhi mahi - Impacts on the way survivors interact in their workplaces

538.    Survivors described how they always felt compelled to “go the extra mile” to prove their worth in the workplace so others would not think their past was an impediment to their performance and, therefore, would not look down condescendingly on them. They described feeling no let-up in this need to prove their worth. Ms Dickson said she had to “fight every day” in an effort to prove herself. “Once my employers would find out that I had been to Lake Alice, they would start to treat me differently.”

539.    Mr Banks said he found it impossible to convince colleagues and bosses he was up to the job, and his efforts to do so were ridiculed. “Everyone there knew I had been in Lake Alice and made fun of me. I was very insecure and so desperate to prove myself that I was rushing about working about double what the others were, and they made fun of that, too.”^[1166] Mr Marks said he was, “always afraid that if people hear that you were in Lake Alice, they will treat you differently”.^[1167]

Ngā pānga ki ngā wheako purapura ora ki te whai rongoā - Impacts on survivors’ experiences with the medical treatment

540.    Some survivors have experienced discrimination by medical professionals based on their mental health history. Ms Sunny Webster told us:

“I’ve been totally and utterly judged and treated differently because of my scars and my psychiatric history. This is particularly the case with medical professionals. It doesn’t matter what’s wrong with me physically, they’ll always put it down to mental conditions … Patient confidentiality doesn’t extend to ex-psychiatric patients. That attitude is what I’ve lived with my whole life.”^[1168]

541.    Many survivors told us they now distrust health professionals. Some survivors have told us that because of medical professionals’ attitudes and the different treatments they received, they avoid seeking medical assistance. Some survivors who require mental health support are also in this position. A 2018 mental health and addiction report, He Ara Oranga, explains that the legacy of shame and stigma that has surrounded mental health remains a barrier to seeking help.^[1169]

542.    Some survivors told us their treatment by medical professionals had
prompted them to ask for the removal of their Lake Alice history from their medical records.

Te anamata o ngā purapura ora - Effects on survivors’ relationships

543.    The social stigma attached to mental illness, and to Lake Alice in particular, at the time, had damaging effects on survivors’ relationships. This damage began at the time of survivors’ admission. Some parents kept their child’s admission secret from the wider family and even chose not to visit Lake Alice, which deepened the individual’s feeling of shame at being in the unit and reinforced a sense of disconnection from family members. Ms Dickson said no one came to see her while she was at Lake Alice.

“I know it was because of the shame that the Lake Alice name had. Our whole community knew about Lake Alice and that if you went there, you were crazy. So even though my parents put me in there, they were embarrassed that I was there. They didn’t tell my grandparents or my cousins. They told no one that I was in Lake Alice, and so no one came to see me.”^[1170]

544.    The stigma of Lake Alice also harmed later relationships. Some survivors chose not to disclose their past to those closest to them out of fear about how the news might be perceived. Ms Dickson said she told no one about Lake Alice once she got out because of the stigma and shame of having been at such a place. “As soon as people found out I went there, they behaved as though I was mentally ill, so I just kept it a secret.”^[1171]

“I never told anyone I had been in Lake Alice because there is so much stigma attached to anyone who is thought to have a mental illness … [O]ne night when we had a few drinks I told my best friend Linda and at the time she said that was horrendous what … happened to me but then later she treated me differently and would make comments such as “you’re a nutter end of”. I stopped that friendship because I couldn’t take the comments and I never told anyone else again.”^[1172]

545.    One survivor, Mr JJ, described how revealing his time at Lake Alice to his wife contributed to the demise of his marriage.^[1173] He said he told his wife about how he had been sexually abused and given electric shocks at Lake Alice and later she began, “getting suspicious of me especially when I was cuddling and embracing the children”.^[1174] He told her he had endured so much at Lake Alice and had no intention of causing any harm to his own children: “I was angry, but her family were suspicious of me. In the end she left me in 1997 and took the children and moved back to her family … That was very hard for me to lose the children.”^[1175] He said his relationships with his children soured afterwards, although he was still in touch with his youngest daughter: “I told them some things about my experience as a State ward but not everything as the full story is just too scary.”^[1176]

Te anamata o ngā purapura ora - The future for survivors

546.    All of these impacts must have healing and restoration. The concept of te mana tāngata talks about respect for, and restoring the inherent power, dignity and standing of, people affected by tūkino. Accompanying this concept is the process of utua kia ea – a process to account for tūkino and restore mana to achieve a state of restoration and balance.

547.    This process means recognising and acknowledging the tūkino suffered, providing the right support and resources for survivors to restore their mana and mauri and connect or reconnect with their whānau and whakapapa. In other words, supporting a mana-enhancing system that would enable the transformation of the lives of survivors and their whānau.

548.    We describe survivors’ attempts at redress for the abuse experienced at Lake Alice in chapter 2.4. The legal process they went through to achieve redress was protracted and flawed. While many Lake Alice survivors did eventually receive some financial redress, most considered it to be inadequate to compensate them for the impacts caused by the abuse. An improved process is outlined in our redress report, He Purapura Ora, he Māra Tipu.^[1177]

Ngā tūtohitanga - Summary of findings

Ngā pānga o te mahi tūkino - Impacts of abuse  

The Inquiry finds:

• The abuse in the unit harmed survivors’ physical and mental health, their psychological, emotional, cultural and spiritual wellbeing, and their educational and economic prospects. 
• Many survivors turned to crime and were imprisoned. 
• The harm to survivors has been transferred over generations.

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