Joan Bellingham is calling on the government to act with compassion, as she recalls the horrors and grief she has suffered in state care. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Joan Bellingham's past and future were stolen from her by the state.
She spent more than a decade receiving a cocktail of drugs and electroconvulsive therapy because she is a lesbian.
On 24 July, after a series of delays, the final report by the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry is scheduled to be made public by the government.
Bellingham hopes the government will imagine what it would be like for their children to face the same fate, as it contemplates what to do in response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care.
- Read more: What you need to know - the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care
In 1970, aged in her late teens, Bellingham was happy, healthy and a nursing student at Christchurch's Burwood Hospital.
Nursing was the same profession her grandmother, mother and sister had pursued.
Bellingham had no history of mental health issues or drug use.
She never hid her sexuality, but when her nursing tutors learned she was gay their attitude towards her changed.
"The tutor would say 'If you think you're going to be a nurse, you've got another thing coming'."
When drugs went missing from a trolley, Bellingham was blamed and accused of being a drug addict.
That was how she ended up in the hands of doctors at Princess Margaret Hospital.
"[A friend] said 'you went in a vibrant, fit, young, healthy girl'," Bellingham recalled.
"And she said 'I saw you deteriorate and get pale like a zombie who didn't want to talk to anybody'."
Her doctors told her parents their daughter was a very sick young woman.
"In my records they had put me down as a schizophrenic, an alcoholic and a drug addict. And I definitely weren't a schizophrenic, definitely weren't an alcoholic and I definitely weren't a drug addict."
But in private, away from the eyes and ears of her caring parents, the doctors let Bellingham know the sickness they were trying to cure was her sexuality.
"We were led to believe that homosexuality was a mental illness," she said.
"I was asked questions about my sexuality every day, which ... was rather horrific."
Her parents knew she was a lesbian, they just did not want to hear about it.
It was not an uncommon social attitude in the day, Bellingham said.
But they were loving and supportive of their daughter and trusted the doctors to treat her with care and dignity.
"My mother at one time she counted and there were 32 bottles of different drugs that they were using on me. I was hallucinating. It was shocking, absolutely shocking.
"So I was drugged up to the hilt and then they started giving me shock treatment - once, twice a day - and this went on for 12 years."
Obviously, her treatment had no effect on her sexuality. But it did make her suicidal and addicted to the drugs she was prescribed.
Her doctors had created the drug addict deep in the grips of mental illness which they had claimed she was from the beginning.
Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Bellingham said one incident during her time as a patient did have a reaffirming effect for her sexuality, but in the most horrific fashion possible.
"A friend of mine said 'Look, I want you to go out with this guy and you might like going out with men and there's your problem solved'," Bellingham said.
"So this guy came and took me out and he was told not to give me alcohol because I was so filled up with drugs. The first thing he did was take me to the pub.
"And of course it only took one or two drinks to make me out of it, and then he took me back to his family hut and raped me.
"He pushed me out of the car at my parents place and mum and dad thought I'd taken an overdose."
They called the hospital.
She had her stomach pumped and received more electroconvulsive therapy as punishment for drinking.
She did not tell anyone what happened.
"I didn't say anything at the time about the rape because I was just self-loathing anyway, and at the time it made me think '100 percent, I know I'm a lesbian, I can't stand what's happened to me'," Bellingham said.
The electroconvulsive therapy caused memory loss.
Her clinicians promised the memories would come back. They did not.
After 12 years, she discharged herself and went through the torture of cold turkey to overcome the doctor-prescribed addiction she suffered.
It was only over time Bellingham discovered the full extent of the so-called treatment she received during her time in care.
"I was sad and angry, because so much [of] my life I've lost, and I'd lost my profession - that really angers me.
"This is what I hope the Royal Commission recognise - taking away my profession, taking away my memory, taking away my pride. I didn't have much left but I got back up there again."
As the government is scheduled to next week publicly reveal the findings and recommendations of the almost six year -long Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Care, Bellingham hopes those with the power to meaningfully respond to the report imagine what life was like for her.
"It was an abomination. It was just shocking. I shouldn't have been in there," she said.
"They need to think 'Well, if this had happened to my child - how would I feel? How would I really feel? And how did my child feel going through all that? Put through all that?
"Just have some compassion, think what it was like and make your mind up from there."
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