Steve Watt lives in Wellington, with his dog Bonnie. Photo: RNZ/ Jimmy Ellingham
Warning: This story includes details of abuse.
A former patient of the Lake Alice psychiatric hospital says while he cannot tell the court about his experience there, his story is an important reminder of the need to investigate claims of maltreatment.
Steve Watt was due to give evidence later this year in the case against John Richard Corkran, known as Dempsey Corkran, the only former staff member of the unit to face prosecution for the horrors there in the 1970s.
But 91-year-old Corkran's trial will not happen because of his ill-health.
Watt, 62, said he did not remember Corkran mistreating him, but he still wanted someone to take responsibility for the decades of failure to hold anyone to account for the abuse at the Rangitīkei institution's child and adolescent unit.
At his Cannons Creek, Wellington, home where he lives with his dog Bonnie and mountains of computer equipment, Watt makes mats out of rope to sell, mostly on Trade Me. His business is Twisted Mats.
"They're a must for me to keep me both active and positive," he said.
"There's one problem for this cottage business that's in regards to the quality of the mats. It will never need to be replaced. You buy one, that's it."
Watt has owned a computer business and worked a sound desk for touring bands, including big acts.
But on New Year's Eve 2002 he suffered a brain injury when a drunk driver smashed into his van and left him for dead.
Watt was a survivor - then, now and earlier.
In the mid-1970s he was sent to Lake Alice, even though he had no psychotic illness.
His parents neglected him and stints in the Rangitīkei institution when he was 15 and 16 were the state's answer.
"Every day I survive. I try to get the best out of every day I can.
"I'm living in a society which I really don't appreciate or don't honour because they don't understand the reality of the abuse that they're still raining down on children today, that they did to us 50 years ago.
"Why haven't they learnt? Why don't they want to learn?"
Watt's life changed forever when he was forced to watch the Lake Alice unit's lead psychiatrist, Dr Selwyn Leeks, send electric currents through a boy from Niue.
It was electroconvulsive therapy, which was was used for punishment or no apparent reason, rather than as a treatment. Watt did not receive it himself.
"That day - I still have nightmares about it," Watt said.
"I realised I was going to be labelled a mental patient forever. I had a boarding school education up until that stage.
"[Then I] realised there's no hope. No one's going to believe me."
Watt was right - he and other patients were not believed by officials. Only two years ago, when the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care heard evidence from the Lake Alice unit, did some survivors say they felt believed.
He first went to the police in the late 1970s and said they fobbed him off for the next three decades - even telling him the Nieuan boy had since died. He had not.
"I had a complaint of being locked up naked in cells for days on end with no cover, no blanket - a bucket to piss and s*** in. Only a mattress covered in plastic to lie on for days on end.
"If that's not sexual or child abuse..."
Despite being named as a complainant in the Corkran prosecution, Watt said as far as he could remember the former charge nurse treated him well.
Corkran was accused of injecting teens with the painful paralysing drug paraldehyde. Watt said he was given it by others.
"I remember having it. It takes about three or four days to etch through your body. It just reeks. It's just uncomfortable pain from where you've had it injected, plus this odour that lasts for three or four days."
Watt said he wanted to give evidence at trial about how Lake Alice damaged him - how the smart student and choir boy from Huntley prep school in Marton became a reckless daredevil who did not value life in the years after.
He also wanted accountability for the years of failure to prosecute Leeks and other perpetrators of abuse.
Leeks died in early 2002 shortly after police said there was enough evidence to charge him, but he was too sick to face trial.
Police have apologised for their failings in one investigation in the 2000s and there have been other apologies from organisations, but Watt wanted more.
"I would like to actually get the other five [complainants from the Corkran prosecution] together with me and to try to form a group to pressurise the government into realising they can't just walk over us, forget us.
"They should have gone after Leeks in the 80s. They've known about this since way back in the day," Watt said.
"Somebody's got to be accountable ... it's got to be somebody. Who's going to stand up and actually man up and give us closure?"
Steve Watt runs his business, Twisted Mats, from his work room at home. Photo: RNZ/ Jimmy Ellingham
Watt last week wrote to the court to ensure he could be named and tell his story.
"A lot of people really don't want to know because it's embarrassing and they'd rather not know. I've got a chap that just said, 'Get over it'.
"Well, some coffee stains don't fade. They're etched into my soul."
Because of his brain injury, Watt said he held no shame, and was open and honest without worrying what others thought.
"I've got PTSD. It never goes away. I still have nightmares about that electrocution that I witnessed.
"I still have nightmares about the lights coming through my Kombi van when I was left for dead in the middle of the road."
The teen driver responsible for that crash in Wellington was sentenced to 100 hours of community service.
He was only charged with leaving a scene without offering assistance - a light charge Watt could not understand.
It had not done anything for his dim view of the police, he said.
"I spent the next six months in hospital with a serious brain injury, wasn't expected to live. Six weeks in a drug-induced coma and I've fought myself back to this.
"I died four times that night. God didn't want me. Maybe he wants me to sort this bloody mess out.
"Here I am trying to sort it out 48-50 years later."
Watt said he would not stop until a someone in the government took responsibility for the years of failure to prosecute or acknowledge what went on at Lake Alice.
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