Robyn Dandy wouldn't visit the site for decades, but says it has now changed. Photo: RNZ / Jimmy Ellingham
A Lake Alice survivor says she's going to take the $150,000 redress payment to buy a house bus and travel the South Island with her pets.
Robyn Dandy, who was injected with paraldehyde at Lake Alice in 1972, was emotional when she spoke to RNZ this afternoon.
"I'm happy. I'm glad it's going to come to an end now and we can just all relax and concentrate on the rest of our lives and a bit of happiness which I really believe we deserve now.
"I just think $150,000, why fight it? That's a lot of money for us now. We're all elderly. I can have my dream. I lost my grandson some years ago and I promised him one day I would get a house bus and that's what I want to do. I can go forward with that now. No more stress."
Cabinet has agreed to ringfence a $22.68 million package for those who went to Lake Alice between 1972 and 1977 and received eletroconvulsive therapy and/or a paraldehyde injection.
Survivors have until 30 September 2025 to register their interest for a fixed payment of $150,000 they'll receive early next year, though the government hasn not ruled out considering those who miss the cut off date.
There is a second pathway to redress that involves an individualised payment and the government has committed to paying for free, independent legal advice to help survivors determine what option is best.
On top of money, the government will provide a written apology, acknowledging torture, signed by the prime minister and health minister and facilitate access to support and rehabilitative services.
Dandy said it would be up to individuals to decide what redress option was best for them, but she was sick of fighting and was not well enough to keep it up anyway.
"I think we've all suffered a lot of trauma. It's affecting a lot of us very badly now. Just the wait time and a lot of us are suffering ill health and been determined to hang in here until there's been some closure to it all."
"I just want don't want to go any further with it. I want it to all end now. Let us rest and like I say, have some happiness. We deserve to have happiness.
"Our lives have been very traumatic after what we went through. I feel really sorry for those families who've lost loved ones early due to suicide for what happened to them or who've died waiting. I feel so sad for their families, I really do."
Dandy said she planned on buying a house bus and driving around the South Island with her animals.
"I think $150,000 is very generous but the pain's never going to go away and we can't expect it go to away now but at least we can have some happiness."
"I used to tell my grandson when he was a toddler that one day I'd buy a bus and him and I would travel and he used to go and get his little backpack and get ready to go.
"When he died I made him a promise that I would never give up on that dream and now the government's made it possible that I can have that dream and to me that means a lot. It means a great deal to me and I'm saying thank you to them."
Dandy's grandson, Kahn Petch, was 6 when he died in a house fire in November 2001.
Mixed response to redress
Other survivors were critical of the torture redress package.
Karilyn Wildbore, who was sent to Lake Alice as a young teenager in the mid 1970s, said the $150,000 lump sum payment fell well short of what the Royal Commission had advised.
"Compared to what the Royal Commission said it should be it's a low ball because they were over $800,000. It doesn't really add up."=
"If you want to be low balled then go hard but if you want to get what you really deserve, then you're going to have to go with a lawyer."
Malcolm Richards, who was tortured at Lake Alice in 1975, said the package was pitiful.
"$150,000 is what most abuse state victims got without being tortured so it's a ridiculous amount... and the help is very vague."
Richards said he "wouldn't be signing up to anything" because he believed it would detract from pursuit of a ruling from the United Nations on Lake Alice torture.
"They seem to think this is all to do with the Royal Commission's ruling and it's the UN's ruling demanding they provide us redress."
He believed $5 million was a more reasonable amount he and other survivors should expect.
"I don't think there's anyone fit and well that's been through Lake Alice. We've all got health problems and suffered. I would have spent well past $150,000 fighting the government over the last 50 years.
"The legal fees they paid back... but they didn't inflation adjust it so it wasn't redress they were paying it was stolen legal fees. Every turn we come to, the government is trying to get away with as little as possible."
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