Brother's misery torments sister

By STEPHEN COOK

Trawling through an old box of family snapshots from her childhood, Judy Sorich sees one that instantly grabs her eye.

It's a creased black and white photograph of her brother Bruce Charles Mitchell, taken a few years before he mysteriously disappeared from the grounds of Kingseat psychiatric hospital.

Staring back at her is a face she remembers well: the distant gaze, the pallid complexion and close-cropped hair.

Although his life has now melted into memory, Mitchell's face hasn't, often reappearing in her dreams. Even today, 37 years later, the misery of her brother's final few years still torments her.

The years spent in exile away from friends and family as he battled epilepsy, the burns to half his body and the regular beatings his family claim he suffered at the hands of staff and patients in Kingseat.

Aloof and taciturn to the end, Mitchell, according to the official version of events, just gave up on life, wandering from the hospital grounds and into the Manukau Harbour.

Mitchell's death certificate says he drowned, but like the case of Kelly Haydn Collins his family say there are still too many unanswered questions.

Collins vanished without trace from Kingseat in June 1967 at the age of 13, after receiving electric shock treatment. Authorities presumed he drowned in the Manukau Harbour, despite a two-week search not turning up any sign of his body.

Mrs Sorich says there are too many similarities between the cases.

She is not convinced her brother drowned, and while reluctant to suggest something more sinister may have happened, she says at times she wonders whether he may be alive somewhere.

She recalls receiving a haunting telephone call three years after his disappearance and how certain she was it was from Mitchell.

"It sounded just like him. It was really weird."

Mitchell was born in 1951 in Stratford, the second eldest of seven children. According to his brother John, he was a typical Kiwi kid who enjoyed the country life.

When he was 11 his whole world went up in flames after a prank with a tin of turpentine caused burns to 90 per cent of his body.

He was rushed to New Plymouth Hospital and then transferred to Middlemore Hospital's burns unit where doctors painstakingly carried out a series of skin grafts.

But they could not repair the psychological damage.

Mitchell suffered a spate of epileptic fits and was to never speak again.

"From that day on he never said a word. It was like his brain shut down," says John Mitchell.

For the next few years, Mitchell became increasingly difficult so his mother Jean decided to put him in Kingseat.

His family visited him and although he was pleased to see them, he became more distant. There were also signs of physical abuse.

"Every time we went to see him he was covered in bruises. We were sure he was being beaten, but were always told by hospital staff he had walked into a door," John Mitchell says.

After three years in Kingseat, the Mitchells got a call that their son was missing, presumed drowned.

"We couldn't believe it. Mum was distraught," says John Mitchell.

"They reckoned they had found footprints leading into the Manukau Harbour. But they never found a body.

"For a long time we believed he was not dead. If he had died surely there would have been some evidence of this.

"I think something happened to him. I am not a suspicious person by nature, but I do believe something happened to my brother."

Like the Collins family, he wants his brother's case reopened by police and properly investigated.

"What the hell did go on. Now if someone disappears the whole country is involved. Back then it was as though no one gave a damn."

Strangely, there was never a coroner's hearing into Mitchell's death. Archives New Zealand, which holds the files for deaths before 1970, confirmed this week they had no record of a Bruce Charles Mitchell.

Mrs Sorich is sceptical about that, and wonders why her brother's disappearance was not treated as suspicious given the evidence the family had of abuse against him.

"He used to panic when we left. He was so frightened of that place," she said. "Like so many others, all we want is answers."

COLD CASES

* Clement Matthews aged 11. Died in Kingseat in 1968. Official verdict: pneumonia. A witness claims Matthews was assaulted by a nurse, and police have reopened the investigation into his death.

* James Kake, aged 23. Died at Stanford House, Wanganui, in 1996. Official verdict: an asthma attack. His parents claim he was abused while at Kingseat.

* Kelly Haydn Collins, aged 13. Disappeared from Kingseat in 1967. Thought to have drowned in Manukau Harbour.