A man who survived torture as a teenager at the notorious Lake Alice psychiatric facility in the 1970s and had to go to the UN in his efforts to gain justice fears he will die before he sees appropriate financial compensation.
Malcolm Richards has cancer and is waiting for hospital treatment after suffering a heart attack. But he has only met Erica Stanford, the Minister in charge of the Government’s response to historical abuse in state care, twice since the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care was tabled in Parliament in July.
He is one of about a quarter of a million New Zealanders who were abused while in state or faith-based institutions from 1950, and is calling on the government to speed-up its redress scheme and better-involve survivors in the process, nearly three years after the Royal Commission on Abuse in Care said an independent redress scheme for survivors of abuse in state and religious care should be immediately stood up.
They [the government] have stopped talking to us on redress and won’t respond to what we want to see in any apology, he said from hospital.
The bottom line is that we are to be involved every step of the way and redress is to be individualised to the needs and suffering of each individual, not a one size fits all solution that they are trying to achieve.