Wellington, July 8 NZPA

Judge Carolyn Henwood has been appointed as chairwoman of the Listening and Assistance Service for former psychiatric patients.

The service is the follow-up to the confidential forum for former patients of psychiatric hospital services.

The service, once it is operating, will listen to the complaints of those alleging abuse or neglect prior to 1992 and try to give them assistance.

It will not determine liability or truth, nor will it provide for the payment of compensation.

Internal Affairs Minister Rick Barker said the date was chosen as it reflects the time by which the sector had modernised standards and improved ways of handling complaints.

Judge Henwood is a member of the Parole Board and has over 20 years experience as a district court and youth court judge.

Mr Barker said Judge Henwood had the right skills for the job and the service would be established over the coming months.

In 2001, the Government apologised and paid compensation to a group of former patients of the Lake Alice Hospital child and adolescent unit, near Marton, which closed in the late 1970s.

It later extended this to a second group, bringing to $10.7 million the total paid to 183 people.

A special forum heard accounts of ill-treatment suffered by patients between 1940 and 1992.

Its report said 493 people came to the forum, most of them former patients with tales of the neglect and abuse they suffered, either at the hands of other patients or staff members.

The forum was set up after several former patients went public with accounts of their miserable lives in the hospitals.

The forum's report did not identify any of the former patients and did not publish individual accounts of life in any of the hospitals, but it did present the common themes it said had emerged.

These included:

* Many had been afraid of other patients or staff, and had suffered or witnessed physical or sexual abuse;

* They said staff had been callous, threatening or abusive, and they were often told they would never recover, never get a job or have children;

* Most felt they had little choice about the treatment they received, and said they were cajoled or bullied into agreeing to have electric shock treatment;

* Those who were in the hospitals as children or adolescents described their desolate lives. Many said they had not known why they were there.

NZPA PAR il nb

Credit:NZPA

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