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Warning: this story goes into the details of the physical abuse.
Paul Beale spent more than 40 years of his life as a patient in care. The treatment he received has been described to the Royal Abuse in Care Investigation Commission.
Paul Beale spent more than 40 years in care.
Photo: Supplied
Beale, who is 69 years old, was first admitted as a patient at the Kimberley Center, near Levin, at the age of 10 and spent 44 years there.
It works at a very basic intellectual level.
Beale is unaware of physical danger and cannot make decisions for himself.
His sister, Gay Rowe, is his guardian and testified on his behalf before the commission.
She said her brother started out as a child without marks and came home from vacation heavily scarred.
“It was horrible because we don’t know how he got them, we don’t know if he fought with other young people in the neighborhood with him or if it was something that was done to contain him for some reason.”
Rowe said his brother was given drugs that turned him into a zombie.
She describes her antipsychotic medications as horrendous.
“And I was having eight for breakfast, six for lunch, and eight for dinner … when I saw this drug cocktail, and that was just one of many that I was having.”
He recalled visiting his brother one day in the center and seeing another young man sitting tied by the wrists and ankles to an armchair and the assistants telling him that it was to prevent him from fleeing.
“It was one of those things that I thought, dear God, if they’re doing that to him, are they doing that to my brother? And how many other people here are doing that? “
After the Kimberley closure, Beale was moved to a residential home called Parklands.
Gay Rowe.
Photo: RNZ
There he spent seven years.
Rowe said Paul received a series of unexplained injuries after being regularly assaulted by other residents.
He later learned that the Ministry of Health had concerns about Parklands, but still sent his brother there.
The Ministry of Health has produced an audit report.
He said he did not know and had not seen an audit report and if he had, Paul would not have been sent there.
“I absolutely wouldn’t have gone there,” he said.
Rowe filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Health over Paul’s treatment at Parklands.
After a long process, she decided on Paul in 2017.
” It’s just that Paul has no understanding and if I weren’t here to speak for him, nothing would have happened and having spent so much time at Kimberley and then seven years at Parklands, he owes the world basically because of the way he’s been. treaty. ”
Throughout the claim process, she felt that the Ministry of Health was waiting for her to leave.
“My brother is just one of hundreds, possibly thousands throughout this country who have been abused by those charged with his care.
Rowe thought that a first letter of apology from the ministry that Paul received was not worth the paper it was written on and a second was only slightly better.
Rowe has instructed his attorney to file a lawsuit against the Ministry of Health over Paul’s treatment in Kimberley.
Where to get help:
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