Lawyer paid millions in abuse case

Christchurch lawyer Grant Cameron was paid millions for negotiating the settlement for 95 former child patients abused at Lake Alice Hospital, but says he would have done it for nothing.

"I was going to do the case regardless," he said yesterday.

"The bottom line is that occasionally in life you have to do the right thing. This group of people had been ignored for over 25 years."

Mr Cameron would not say how much of the $6.5 million settlement his firm received, but he agreed that a third of the total, or $2.1 million, was "not far removed from what the reality was".

"But the firm had to work for 4 1/2 years on a contingency basis without any income at all, and the problem with these sorts of cases is that you may not recover anything," he said.

"The arrangement in the end was one whereby we billed in accordance with the New Zealand Law Society principles of charging."

Mr Cameron said that had the claim not succeeded, the firm would have received nothing other than a few hundred dollars from some clients for expenses.

Individual claimants' settlements are confidential.

Former High Court judge Sir Rodney Gallen drafted a report to allocate the cash and gave accounts of horrific abuse, including unmodified electric shock treatment used as punishment, rape, sodomy and children being forced into locked spaces with disturbed adult mental patients.

No criminal charges have been laid against former Lake Alice staff, though Mr Cameron now plans to talk to several of his clients about laying complaints.

"There's no reason they couldn't bring a charge now," he said. "Why should public servants be exempted?"

In his view, the Crown Law Office should be laying charges, not shifting responsibility, as he said it did early in the week by saying that it was a police matter.

"The police carried out a full investigation into the Cave Creek disaster as soon as it happened," said Mr Cameron.

"I was told by members of the police [that] they recommended prosecution and were told they had to send their file to police headquarters.

"Police national headquarters was told to hand the file to the Crown Law Office. Ultimately, no prosecutions occurred."

Mr Cameron said the office had placed "every conceivable obstacle" in the way of the Lake Alice claim. The office had lost face and the only outcome it was interested in was money.

"They are trying to say, 'It's all old hat, let's get rid of it, let's bury it as quickly as we can'," he said.

He recognised that there were some legal problems with prosecution but, if nothing else, a proper investigation should be carried out.

- NZPA