A survivor of torture at the notorious Lake Alice psychiatric facility will appeal to the High Court today to challenge the Government’s new redress scheme.

Malcolm Richards is speaking to the media around 11am today alongside his lawyer.

Richards – who was tortured as a 15-year-old at the Manawatū facility – is seeking a judicial review of the scheme, which was launched late last year.

Richards and his lawyer, Christopher Griggs, will file the claim at Wellington’s High Court this morning before speaking to media alongside supporters.

In 2021, Richards told the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care about the “lifelong hideous effects” from his time at Lake Alice.

“There were lots of children that received ECT [electroconvulsive therapy] in Lake Alice and I was one of them.

“Though it felt much longer to me, the medical notes records that I was sent to Lake Alice for two months,” he said in his oral statement.

“I have lifelong hideous effects from my time in Lake Alice, particularly from the ECT. It turned a 15-year-old depressed boy in an unhappy home with a violent father into someone with life-long debilitating trauma, memory loss and huge difficulty retaining information.”

Richards told the inquiry there were “two types of ECT – one was planned and the other was used as a punishment".

“I had both.”

Abuse in care report

In July last year, the long-awaited landmark report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care – six years in the making – was released.

It branded the abuse and neglect of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders in the care of state- and faith-based institutions as “a national disgrace”.

Among its findings, it detailed how in the 1970s and 80s, hundreds of children and young people were sent to the psychiatric institution where many were tortured with electric shocks and painful injections of paraldehyde.

Lead Co-ordination Minister Erica Stanford said these weren’t administered for any medical reason – “instead were used for punishment and emotional control through terror”.

“It is beyond heartbreaking.”

Minister Erica Stanford leaving a press conference where she revealed a redress package for those who were tortured at the Lake Alice facility. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The Royal Commission of Inquiry found most of the young people at the facility were there for behavioural reasons, including abuse, harm or trauma, rather than mental distress.

In July last year, the Government for the first time formally acknowledged that this amounted to torture.

And on November 12, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon issued a historic official apology to the hundreds of thousands of people who were abused in state and faith-based care institutions over decades, including at Lake Alice.

Redress scheme

In December, Stanford unveiled the details of the Lake Alice redress scheme.

While she acknowledged it was not possible to right or compensate for the wrongs of the past – she said Cabinet had agreed to recognition to those remaining survivors for the torture they suffered in the care of the State.

“It also serves as an expression of our regret as to the many ways in which they were failed.”

Eligible survivors could choose either an expedited payment of $150,000 or an individual payment where claims were assessed by an independent arbiter who would make determinations on payment amounts.

Call for judicial review

Richards’ claim will be filed in the Wellington High Court this morning.

The claim challenges several elements of the Government’s scheme.

These concerns included the scheme’s “ex gratia” element and exclusion of survivors who did not experience electric shocks or paraldehyde injections at Lake Alice but were – for example – locked up, naked, in solitary confinement as children.

It also says capping the total compensation amount fails “to ensure fair and adequate compensation in the worst cases of torture”.

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.