Fair Game

by Steve Cannane

  Eastgate had two compelling reasons to crusade against psychiatry in all its forms. As a teenager in Melbourne, she was given shock treatment for depression. At one point she had run away from psychiatrists, now she was in the mood to confront them head-on. ‘When I ran away from the private hospital because I didn’t want any further ECT,’ she told Susan Geason, the author of Dark Trance, a retelling of the Chelmsford story, ‘a psychiatrist came after me and threatened me with committal to a state psychiatric institution for life. When I returned to the hospital, he promptly discharged me. He just wanted the upper hand.’60

  In 1977, Eastgate moved to Sydney and was introduced to the Church of Scientology by a friend,61 but there were limitations placed on which Scientology services she could access because she was a former psychiatric patient. ‘She was what they call in Scientology an illegal PC,’ says Peter Marsh, who shared a house with Eastgate. ‘In other words, she could not be audited – because of her psychiatric history.’62

  Eastgate was ambitious, but her personal history was blocking her progress. According to Marsh she had only two options: ‘As an illegal PC there’s a couple of routes you can go forward in Scientology. One is to get trained up as an auditor and demonstrate a production record in delivering Scientology. The other way is to do something extraordinarily brave and courageous in terms of defending Scientology or attacking the enemy. Jan went that route.’63

  Eastgate, who described herself as a human rights fighter,64 joined the CCHR in January 197865 and by the end of the year she was President of Scientology’s anti-psychiatry lobby group in Australia.66 Peter Marsh, who lived with her at the time, says he never saw a more committed campaigner. ‘She was quite relentless in pursuing the scientological goal of “eradicating psychiatry”, she just never let up. I’d describe her anti-psych demeanour as being like someone who was on a “Mission from Ron”. She seemed 100 per cent committed to taking down the psychs.’67

  In October, Attorney-General Frank Walker wrote to the Health Minister Kevin Stewart, enclosing Ron Segal’s CCHR dossier, which included blank treatment sheets signed in advance by Bailey,68 and asked him to investigate Chelmsford.69 The same month the newspaper Sunday told its readers that three patients had died from deep sleep therapy practised in a ‘zombie room’ in a Sydney hospital. The article was based on information disseminated by the CCHR at a public meeting.70

  Under Eastgate’s stewardship the CCHR continued to lobby politicians and the media. While previous claims made by Scientologists were dismissed as part of an elaborate conspiracy theory, this time they had proof, thanks to the dossier compiled by Ron Segal using the documents obtained by Rosa Nicholson.

  But in the crusade to get justice for the victims of Chelmsford, the involvement of the Scientologists proved both a blessing and a curse. Kevin Stewart did not trust the evidence the Attorney-General had sent to him because it had been obtained and passed on by the CCHR.71 As Shadow Minister for Health he’d had what he later described as ‘a very unpleasant and nasty experience’ with the CCHR.72 They had been behind a letter he had received at his electorate office in Campsie enclosing a statutory declaration from a former patient at Rozelle Psychiatric Hospital, alleging ‘maltreatment, forced treatment, treatment without consent, brutality, nearly everything you could allege about psychiatric treatment’.73

  Stewart passed the letter onto the then Minister for Health, asking him to investigate the matter. But a fortnight later, he received a letter from the former mental health patient withdrawing the allegations, saying they were untrue and made up under duress from the CCHR.74 Stewart then had to write to the Minister withdrawing his demands for an investigation. He felt he had been duped.

  When a CCHR representative visited Stewart’s office to find out what was going on, a heated exchange took place. Stewart could not remember the woman’s name, but around 15 years later he testified that she was angry with him for withdrawing his calls for an investigation:

  She said, ‘How dare you do that. We thought we could depend on you, the opposition spokesman to help us in this matter. We have been trying for a long time to get evidence and declarations to embarrass the government, to force the government into a Royal Commission into mental health in New South Wales.’75

  Stewart told the woman he would no longer accept representations from her organisation.76 Now, as Minister for Health, Stewart did not trust the Scientologists. Nonetheless, he promised Walker he would look into the allegations and handed over responsibility to Dr Sydney Hing, the head of the Private Hospitals Branch of the Health Commission, and a close friend of his.77

  Hing was not the ideal man to launch a thorough investigation. He had already refused to look into allegations made by Barry Hart in 1975,78 and when he visited Chelmsford Hospital in October 1978 he could find nothing wrong. Hing did not look very hard: he failed to visit the sedation ward; interview the nursing staff; or review any of the patients’ records.79 He took no notes and took no records of the names of patients or nurses who used to work there.80

  Dr Hing did not even make a written report about his inspection, leaving it to a nurse who accompanied him.81 He failed to direct anyone to return to Chelmsford for a follow-up inspection. Kevin Stewart had promised Frank Walker that the Department of Health would conduct a full investigation,82 but he delivered nothing of the sort. Hing’s bungled investigation would not be the end of the matter.

  In February 1980, seven years after he was given shock treatment without his consent, Barry Hart got his day in court. The former gym owner sued Dr John Herron and the company that ran Chelmsford Hospital in the NSW Supreme Court. However, Hart had no reason to feel confident, as no ex-psychiatric patient in Australian history had successfully sued a psychiatrist for unlawful treatment.

  Representing Barry was Edward St John QC, an establishment man who didn’t mind upsetting the establishment. As a barrister he had defended Oz magazine in their first obscenity trial, and in his one event-filled term in parliament had upset two Prime Ministers from his own side of politics, Harold Holt by forcing a second inquiry into the sinking of the Voyager, and John Gorton by making allegations of impropriety.

  Three days before the trial, Barry Hart was in St John’s Chambers in Sydney, when the silk received a phone call from Tom Hughes QC, who was representing the defendants.83 Hughes told his old Liberal parliamentary colleague he would be calling a surprise witness, a male nurse who would argue that Hart had given verbal consent to be treated at Chelmsford.

  Recalling that the ‘zombie room’ exposé in Sunday two years earlier had mentioned the CCHR, Hart rang the organisation to see if they had any information on Brian Dilworth, the nurse who was going to testify against him. They invited him to their office to review their files. What he saw when he got there astonished him – the CCHR had the red day-books from Chelmsford Hospital: ‘They had a pile of them, about half a metre high,’ he said.84

  Barry Hart could not find anything on Dilworth, nor his own admission form. But he struck gold when he noticed that an identification sheet from another patient contained a ‘signed consent’ form at the bottom. His solicitor had sent him a copy of his own sheet three years earlier, and there was no consent form on the bottom. After Hart’s original clinical notes were subpoenaed, his lawyers discovered the original identification sheet was shorter than the rest of the document. The consent form for shock treatment had been cut off.85

  The stolen files provided by the Scientologists helped Barry Hart win his case. The jury of 11 found unanimously that Hart had been falsely imprisoned and found on a 9–2 majority in favour of his claim of assault and battery against Herron.86 But Hart was only awarded $60,000 in damages, nearly half of which went in legal expenses. The payout was so miserly that Hart had to go on the disability pension. Justice Fisher withdrew any possibility of punitive damages against the defendants, which could have resulted in a much larger payout, because he believed that Hart had not suffered long-term damage, was fit for work and
only deserved a minimal payout.

  Legal academic Brian Bromberger, who observed the trial, told Susan Geason that he felt Justice Fisher was not impressed with the role the Scientologists played in the case. ‘My suspicion is that Fisher was appalled at the involvement of Jan Eastgate. I remember Barry being asked on a number of occasions whether he was a Scientologist or had attended Scientology meetings … Sperling [counsel for the defence] made it look as though Jan Eastgate was pulling the strings in an attempt to discredit psychiatry in general as well as Herron.’87

  When Scientology promotional material was found in the jury room during the trial, Dr Herron’s lawyers tried to argue the Scientologists were trying to influence the jury. Hal Sperling unsuccessfully applied to have the jury dismissed and it was Eastgate’s belief that someone had planted the literature to cause a mistrial.88 Despite all of this, by securing documentary evidence, the Scientologists did help Hart win his court case.

  Emboldened by Hart’s victory, the CCHR took copies of the Chelmsford medical files to Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes program. Jan Eastgate met with Anthony McClellan, a young producer on the program. ‘Jan was blonde, charming but intense,’ he recalled. ‘She knew how to work the media. I’m sure I knew the CCHR was a front organisation, but they had the documents, which was all that mattered.’89

  ‘The Chelmsford File’, presented by Ray Martin, revealed that at least seven people had died during or after deep sleep therapy between 1974 and 1977.90 Martin had gathered compelling testimonies from Barry Hart, Denise Clarke, the widow of policeman Peter Clarke, and Vera Francis, whose sister Audrey had died while a patient of Dr Herron.

  The program won a Logie award for Outstanding Public Affairs Report. McClellan has no doubt it would never have aired without the help of the Scientologists. ‘We couldn’t have done it without the documents,’ he says. ‘There was no way of proving what the doctors were doing without them, and I doubt the lawyers would have let us run the story.’91

  The 60 Minutes program shocked the public. Voters rang and wrote to their local MPs demanding an investigation into deep sleep therapy. Many demanded a Royal Commission, but the NSW government stalled. Police investigations and Health Commission inquiries were launched, but with the investigations caught up in legal and bureaucratic red tape, the Chelmsford doctors continued to avoid accountability for their actions. In 1983, the victims finally had a win when deep sleep therapy was outlawed under the Mental Health Act.

  However, it was not until 1985 that the justice system started to catch up with Harry Bailey. A former patient, Patricia Vaughan, who had suffered brain damage from deep sleep therapy in 1977, took civil action in the Supreme Court. Bailey’s lawyers told him it was unlikely he would win the case and that he could face a lifetime of litigation.92

  On the day before the Vaughan case was due to begin, Bailey’s legal team held a conference. They had bad news. They had contacted William Sargant, the doctor who had inspired Bailey’s treatment methods, but Sargant told them that if he were called to give evidence, he would have to support the prosecution rather than the defence.93

  Harry Bailey returned to his home in Haberfield and told Helen MacArthur, his secretary and girlfriend, that ‘it’s not worth going on’.94 He left their home without speaking another word. He drove up the F3 to the Central Coast of NSW, pulled off the freeway and took an isolated dirt track near Mount White. After parking his car, he pulled out a handful of capsules of Tuinal, the drug he had used to sedate his patients at Chelmsford and swigged them down with a bottle of Heineken. Bailey’s body was found slumped over his steering wheel by a highway patrolman at 1 pm the following day.

  Bailey left a suicide note that said in part:

  I apologise to my patients for deserting them after so long. Let it be known that the Scientologists and the forces of madness have won.

  People should be warned that such cults are a danger to our society, and they should be crushed.

  Drs like Ellard and Wade and Holland and Smith are equally to be abhorred. They are egocentric crazies almost as bad as the Scientologists.95

  In the years following Bailey’s death, the CCHR continued their campaign for a Royal Commission, but the victims were losing hope. Labor MP Pat Rogan made a number of speeches to parliament, repeatedly calling for a judicial inquiry while helping to set up the Chelmsford Victims’ Action Group. Invariably, after speeches to parliament, Rogan’s chief of staff, Margaret Como, would be bombarded with phone calls from victims and their families.

  Como, a mother in her 30s, was smart, media savvy and a relentless campaigner. She had to be. No-one was keen to pick up the story. ‘Every door we knocked on was closing. It was really, really hard,’ she says.96 The victims’ stories touched her deeply. She knew those stories were the key to gaining support for a Royal Commission. In 1988, Como took around 50 victims and family members to meet Sydney Morning Herald journalists Robert Haupt and John O’Neill at the Fairfax building at Broadway.

  A theatrette in the building was booked, and as the Chelmsford victims piled in, Como approached Haupt. ‘I said, “You know you are their last hope”,’ recalls the former Labor staffer.97 As the victims got up one by one and bravely told their stories, Haupt and O’Neill knew they were onto something big. For two weeks across July and August the Sydney Morning Herald ran a hard-hitting series that exposed the impact of the medical abuses of Chelmsford Hospital on dozens of victims and their families.

  Margaret Como mobilised the electronic media to follow up on the Herald’s campaign, and the calls for a judicial investigation grew louder. On 6 August, the Herald ran an editorial titled ‘Time for a Royal Commission’. Later that day, the Greiner government announced there would be an inquiry.98

  The Royal Commission ran for close to two years. Nearly 300 witnesses gave evidence, including patients, nurses, the surviving Chelmsford doctors, senior bureaucrats and former Ministers.

  The final report ran close to two million words. It revealed that at least 24 deep sleep therapy patients had died at Chelmsford Hospital between 1963 and 1979, with another 24 committing suicide within a year of being released. The commission found that Bailey falsified as many as 17 death certificates99 and that many patients received treatment without their consent.100 The Department of Health was criticised for neglecting to carry out proper checks at the hospital and for failing to investigate the deaths.101

  While the report exposed the truth about deep sleep therapy and how it was practised at Chelmsford, it never quite got to the bottom of the role the Church of Scientology played in exposing it.

  In his summary Justice Slattery wrote:

  After Miss Nicholson resigned from Chelmsford in April 1978, she became a member of the Church of Scientology, remaining so until 1983. There was considerable reference in the evidence to this … So far as my terms of reference are concerned the only relevance that the Church of Scientology bears is that Mr Segal in his capacity of the CCHR delivered various Chelmsford records to the then Attorney General Mr Walker in 1978.102

  Justice Slattery chose not to challenge Rosa Nicholson’s story. Anyone with an understanding of Scientology history would cast a sceptical eye over Rosa’s version of events. From the time I first heard of her heroic undercover exploits, I had assumed the Church of Scientology had planted her inside Chelmsford Hospital.

  For decades, Hubbard had been waging a war against psychiatry, and Scientology had a long history of using undercover agents. At the same time Rosa was said to be planning her covert operation at Chelmsford, Scientologists in the US were infiltrating the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service, stealing tens of thousands of documents as part of Operation Snow White. Project Dig, the Australian arm of Snow White, had advocated targeting psychiatrists.103 Peter Marsh (a pseudonym), a former undercover spy for the Guardian’s Office, confirmed my suspicions, telling me, ‘I have no doubts whatsoever that Rosa was recruited to spy for the Guardian’s Office; that’s just standard operatin
g procedure.’104

  As we learned from Operation Snow White, Scientologists would often adopt what they refer to as a ‘shore story’, a well-rehearsed, plausible story that would, if they were caught, explain who they were and what they were doing, without implicating the Church of Scientology.

  The story that Rosa had given to explain her undercover work at Chelmsford was detailed: that first night shift; the unanswered complaints; Arnold St Clair’s death; the meeting with the Scientologist Brieda; the introduction to Ron Segal at the CCHR; and her plan to go into Chelmsford undercover to get evidence. Could it be that this was a classic Scientology ‘shore story’?

  As I made my way through the Royal Commission transcripts, holes in Rosa Nicholson’s story became apparent. There was no record of the complaint she had made to the Health Department in 1972.105 Her aunt, who was meant to be a Scientologist, was not really her aunt.106 She testified that she did not know that former CCHR President Ron Segal was a Guardian, even though she had previously told journalist Toni Eatts that he was.107

  At the Royal Commission, Rosa was particularly cagey about anything to do with Scientology. Under cross-examination she said she could not remember who her auditor was.108 At one stage she admitted she used to attend Scientology’s weekly religious service, but could not remember what day it was on.109 (It is known universally as the Sunday Service.) She testified that she joined the Church of Scientology straight after leaving Chelmsford Hospital in 1978, a claim that would allow the church plausible deniability in relation to her actions. It was as if she was trying to distance herself from the Church of Scientology and protect them from claims they had planted her in Chelmsford to remove medical files.