44. The Kimberley Centre operated within the socio‑cultural context where eugenics ideology underpinned societal and government administration that perceived disabled people as inferior beings to be segregated from society to prevent the reproduction of a subnormal race. This manifested in disablism, the oppression of disabled people. Disabled people were segregated from communities and congregated into isolated institutions like the Kimberley Centre where they were marginalised from society because of their disability status. For many, the Kimberley Centre would become their home for life.

45. This chapter describes the circumstances that led to disabled children, young people and adults being taken or placed into care at the Kimberley Centre during the Inquiry period.

Placement by family on advice of medical professionals

46. The Kimberley Centre was promoted and seen as a place for disabled children to receive care and training, and the process of placing them there was dominated by the medical profession. Most survivors that the Inquiry heard from were placed at the Kimberley Centre by their family in the belief that it was the best place for them, most commonly on the advice of a medical practitioner.

47. Anne Bell told the Inquiry about her sister, Vicki Golder (Pākehā), who spent approximately 45 years at the Kimberley Centre. Vicki has a severe learning disability, is blind and cannot speak. Anne was formerly president of the Kimberley Parents and Friends Association and the project manager for the Kimberley Deinstitutionalisation Project for the Ministry of Health.

48. Anne described how the lack of support in the community and medical advice led to Vicki and others being placed at the Kimberley Centre: “Sending children to institutions was very traumatic for families despite it being the only option for disabled children at the time. This was particularly so for people in rural communities. There was no playgroup, support, respite service; there was absolutely nothing. Families would receive medical advice to send their children away.”[55]

49. Anne also told the Inquiry about the reality of the difficult decision parents faced in this situation and their belief that the Kimberley Centre was the right place: “Due to the failure of no other supports, families had to make decisions between things like their parents’ health or ability to care for their other children. Given this context, it is unsurprising that many parents sent their children to institutions. Moreover, the Kimberley Centre was portrayed as a specialist service where staff had the required expertise to provide care to these children. For many parents, though they hated sending their child away, they thought they would be giving them the very best support.”[56]

50. Samoan survivor Lusi Faiva’s mother was instructed by her doctor to place Lusi into the Kimberley Centre:

“I was 2 years old when I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. There was little support for disabled children and their families when I was little. The doctor instructed my mum for me to go to an institution, he said, ‘it would be better this way’. Soon after I was moved to Kimberley.”[57]

51. European survivor Sir Robert Martin was placed in the Kimberley Centre by his mother at 18 months old on the advice of her doctor. “A doctor told my mother that I was mentally retarded. He told her that there are places where there are other people [sic] know how to look after people like me. He told my mother to send me away and forget about me. I was put away in an institution. I was locked away from the community.”[58]

52. Expert witness and disability researcher Dr Hilary Stace described a harrowing instance of a baby with Down Syndrome being forcibly taken from his mother: “The normalisation of institutionalisation of disabled children was hard for individuals to fight. I heard of a mother who had a baby with Down Syndrome in the 1960s. The family doctor and her husband suggested the baby be put into an institution. The mother resisted until one day the father came home with the GP and an attendant from Kimberley. They forcibly took the toddler off his mother, told her not to visit for at least two years and to forget about him. Terrified and confused by such instruction the mother didn’t hear about him again until after his death a few years later.”[59]

Placement by family for respite care or due to lack of community support

53. Families often felt they had little choice but to send their child to the Kimberley Centre due to an acute lack of support to remain in the community. The pathway into the Kimberley Centre for some was the respite care it provided family.

54. Margaret Priest said her mother found it difficult to look after Irene. “My father was working and my mother had no assistance from the government or disability services to look after Irene or to give her respite.”[60]

55. New Zealand European survivor Murray Newman was at the Kimberley Centre from 5 years old, initially for fortnightly respite stays but later from age 11 on a full-time basis. His brother, David Newman, is his welfare guardian. David told the Inquiry: “Parents were generally sent away with the understanding that their loved one would be well cared and catered for when initially admitted into Kimberley and some would have been deeply distressed to learn otherwise at a later date.”[61]

56. Some survivors were placed into the Kimberley Centre as adults and didn’t have any say in the decision. New Zealand European survivor Ross Hamilton Clark was placed at Kimberley in 1956 and said: “When I was 19 years old, my mum took me to Kimberley Hospital and asked them if I could be admitted. I was lucky she was alive to take me down there. She did this because I did not have any friends to talk to and she worried I was lonely. The staff allowed me to be admitted. I wouldn’t have gone to Kimberley if my mum hadn’t taken me. I did not see my mum again, because she died in 1959.”[62]

57. At the Inquiry’s State Institutional Response Hearing, Director-General of Health Dr Diana Sarfati publicly acknowledged that the government’s legislative and policy settings between 1950 and 1999 did not always provide adequate support and resources to families or explore family or community-based care options as an alternative to placing disabled people and people with mental health conditions in health and disability care settings.[63]

58. There was no community or respite support for families, and this led to children, young people and adults being placed at the Kimberley Centre.

Placement by the State and transfers from other institutions

59. Another pathway into the Kimberley Centre was through transfers and swaps with other institutions, such as Campbell Park School (Waitaki Valley), Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital (Manawatū–Whanganui) and Marylands School (Ōtautahi Christchurch).

60. New Zealand European survivor Mr EI, a State ward, was transferred to the Kimberley Centre from Hokio Beach School after running away and a perceived suicide attempt. He ran away from school and got into someone’s bach. He was hungry and looking for food and ate rat poison by accident. His stomach was pumped at Levin Hospital: “I was picked up from the hospital and taken back out to Hokio Beach. The manager of Hokio Beach, plus the staff at the hospital, all decided that they would put me into Kimberley Hospital. My file says that I was admitted to Kimberley under section 5 of the Mental Health Amendment Act 1961, which covers the ‘admission of mentally infirm persons’.”[64] Mr EI could not understand why he was at the Kimberley Centre, as he didn’t have a disability.[65]

61. Lake Alice survivor Walton Ngatai-Matheson (Ngāti Porou) told the Inquiry about patient swaps between the Kimberley Centre and the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit: “The quiet kids from Lake Alice would go over to Kimberley Hospital and the kids from Kimberley who got up to mischief were dropped off at Lake Alice. If the kids from Kimberley behaved, then they would go back to Kimberley.”[66]

62. Walton recalled that approximately six children in 1972 came from the Kimberley Centre to Lake Alice in a van. Walton told the Inquiry about a 5 year old from the Kimberley Centre who received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) at Lake Alice: “One of the children from Kimberley was just 5 years old. He used to have fits, epilepsy, and they would give him ECT. They brought him over from Kimberley to give him ECT at Lake Alice. His mum and dad were killed in a car crash. I cannot remember what happened to him. He was only at Lake Alice for about one or two months then he went to a boys’ home.”[67]

63. A former Kimberley Centre psychopaedic training officer, Enid Wardle (New Zealand European), told the Inquiry of transfers from the Kimberley Centre to Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital for ECT: “I also observed that the most troublesome children at Kimberley were frequently taken to Lake Alice Hospital for electroconvulsive therapy.” They were kept overnight at Lake Alice after their ‘treatment’.[68]

64. The Inquiry’s report Beautiful children: Inquiry into the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit referred to documentary evidence of a patient swap between the Kimberley Centre and Lake Alice: “We have evidence of Dr WF Bennett, the medical superintendent of Kimberley, agreeing with Dr Pugmire to transfer one of his patients to Lake Alice in exchange for a female Lake Alice patient. We also know Dr Leeks regularly visited Kimberley to consult with staff on adolescent patients, some of whom he admitted to the unit [at Lake Alice].”[69]

65. Māori survivor Mr NW (Ngāti Maniapoto) worked as a nurse aide at the Kimberley Centre from 1975 to 1982.[70] Mr NW told the Inquiry that if a patient continued to be violent towards staff and other patients and seclusion wasn’t working, they were sent to Lake Alice.[71] Mr NW helped with the transfers:

“Transfers to Lake Alice would usually be for adult aged residents, who had learning disabilities. They would go to Lake Alice because they had more staffing than we had and more monitoring systems. Lake Alice was also better equipped to house violent patients. The Lake Alice hospital secure block was built to the same standards as the Paremoremo prison and housed the criminally insane.”[72] Mr NW was unsure if the patient’s family would even be told about the transfer and he couldn’t recall many transfers going the other way, from Lake Alice to the Kimberley Centre.[73]

66. Sir Robert Martin was sent back to the Kimberley Centre at 9 years old after stealing a chocolate bar from a shop while in foster care. He remained at the Kimberley Centre until he was sent to Campbell Park School aged 11 years, and then to Lake Alice at age 13. He was later transferred back to Campbell Park School from Lake Alice.

67. Māori survivor Mr HZ (Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Tūwharetoa) was transferred from Lake Alice to the Kimberley Centre at 9 years old before being sent to Marylands School.[74] Mr HZ has a long history of being taken into State care, released to whānau, then taken back into care. When Mr HZ was around 7 years old, he was under Department of Social Welfare control and put into foster care for six months. He was physically abused by foster parents in Whanganui before being transferred to Lake Alice.[75] Mr HZ found it very unsettling that he was moved between foster homes, whānau and institutions and considers this the root of many problems later in his life.[76] As a child, he developed a hatred for Pākehā people as they had taken him away from his whānau into State care.

68. At the Inquiry’s State Institutional Response Hearing, Director-General of Health Dr Diana Sarfati said:

“I acknowledge that societal stigma against people with mental health conditions and learning disabilities was a contributing factor to people being placed in psychiatric settings during the 1950s to 1970s and I acknowledge that people, including children and young people, were placed in psychiatric hospitals and facilities for reasons that would not be acceptable today.”[77]

69. It was inappropriate for children, young people and adults with learning disabilities and people who experienced mental distress to be placed into the Kimberley Centre, and other psychopaedic and psychiatric institutions, for many years. It is troubling that some Kimberley Centre children, young people and adults with learning disabilities were transferred to Lake Alice, which was a secure psychiatric facility.