Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital
Aerial view of the hospital estate.
Geography
Location	Lake Alice, Rangitikei, Manawatū-Whanganui, New Zealand
Coordinates	40°07′33″S 175°20′13″E / 40.1258°S 175.3369°E / -40.1258; 175.3369
Organisation
Care system	Public
Type	Psychiatric
Services
Emergency department	No
Beds	960
History
Opened	August 1950
Closed	October 1999
Links
Website	http://www.lakealicehospital.com Unofficial
Lists	Hospitals in New Zealand

Lake Alice Hospital was a rural psychiatric facility in Lake Alice, Manawatū-Whanganui, New Zealand. It was opened in August 1950, and had a maximum security unit. Like many New Zealand psychiatric hospitals, Lake Alice was largely self-sufficient, with its own farm, workshop, bakery, laundry, and fire station. It also had swimming pools, glasshouses, and vegetable gardens.

The facility slowly shut down during the mid-1990s, finally closing its doors in October 1999.

The buildings and 56-hectare (140-acre) grounds were purchased in July 2006 by Auckland accountant and property developer group Lake Hicks Ltd.^[1]

Plans to develop the former psychiatric hospital were scrapped after the owners fell into financial difficulties. The property was sold again in December 2008. The new owners intend to demolish most of the buildings including the infamous maximum security unit. A few buildings such as the administration block will remain and the land will be used for farming.^[2][3]

Former patients of the hospital's child and adolescent unit made allegations that abuse took place there during the 1970s, including the use of electroconvulsive therapy without anaesthetic and paraldehyde injections as punishment.^[4][5] The New Zealand government issued a written apology in 2001, and has paid out a total of NZ$10.7 million in compensation to a smaller group of 183 former patients ^[6][7] but refused to acknowledge and offer redress for the long term effects of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and torture. This forced applications to the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) in 2019.^[8] In the Crown's own internal business policy documents it stated it would not recognise long term effects of abuse and would then categorize different forms of abuse and torture in a payment matrix.^[9]

The New Zealand Police conducted an investigation dubbed Operation Lake Alice, which included interviews with former staff and 63 former patients.^[10] In June 2021, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care held an 11-day hearing into the practices of Selwyn Leeks and the Adolescent Unit.^[11][12] On 8 June 2021, police announced they would lay charges after finding evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Leeks and one other former staff member, then in their 90s, were deemed unfit to stand trial due to ill health and were not formally charged. Leeks died several months later in January 2022.^[13] One other surviving former staff member will face prosecution.^[14][15]

On 27 May 2024, a former child and adolescent patient of Lake Alice Hospital won a court appeal for ACC to cover injuries suffering during electro-shock therapy during the mid-1970s.^[16]

On 30 October 2024, cabinet minister Erica Stanford confirmed that the New Zealand Government would address a parity issue in a NZ$6.5 million compensation settlement that it had reached with 95 Lake Alice survivors in 2001. Survivors received an average of NZ$41,000 in individual payments, with NZ$27,000 being deducted in legal fees for each claimant. Further claimants received an average of NZ$70,000 since the New Zealand Crown covered their legal costs. However, these reimbursements would not be adjusted for inflation.^[17]

• 
  Workshops and maintenance area at dusk (2003)
• 
  Villa 12 in springtime (2003)

Smale, Aaron (26 July 2023). "The Lake" (Podcast). Stuff. Retrieved 26 July 2023.

• Lake Alice Hospital Website: critical website, with photos of buildings
• Auckland Cenotaph website with photos of buildings and list of graves