ACC caught out in another privacy breach

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Kirsty Johnson

Embattled insurer ACC has been caught out scrambling to shut down yet another privacy breach in the very week it has been forced to accept an audit into its handling of client files.
The inquiry was commissioned by ACC and the Office of the Privacy Comissioner in the ongoing fallout after the Dominion Post revealed ACC sent whistleblower Bronwyn Pullar 6500 clients' private details, including the names of sexual abuse and violent crime victims. The saga also claimed the scalp of former ACC Minister Nick Smith who stood down from his cabinet portfolios after it was found he sent correspondence to ACC about Pullar - a friend of Smith and former National Party activist - without declaring a conflict of interest.
The latest breach came about when ACC claimant Garth Paul asked to see his file - he had to make repeated requests to get the file as ACC sent only some documents. In the end, ACC sent him a file belonging to a different person.
Paul advised ACC it had sent him another person's file, but did not reveal whose it was. He did however contact the man whose file was sent out.
The Sunday Star-Times has spoken to that man. We are not naming him to protect his privacy. "I was so angry when I found out. But it's typical behaviour of ACC," he said. "I said to him [Garth Paul], hang on to it [the file], use it to show what they're like."
He and Paul say ACC's systems are so bad the case managers cannot work out whose file they breached and have yet to contact the client to let him know his file was wrongly sent out and apologise.
If it were not for Paul contacting him, he would be unaware of the error. He is grateful his file went to Paul who handled the matter sensitively.
The botch-up and inability of ACC to determine whose file was sent and how backs up other claims of sloppy practices.
Dunedin ACC client Bruce Van Essen has had an ongoing battle over breaches of his privacy. He says the ACC computer storage of clients' confidential medical records is so primitive the records can be viewed by virtually every employee from a mailroom assistant up. Van Essen found his ACC files had been accessed 2800 times since 2006 - a figure he said could not be justified by everyday claims management. Pullar said her file had been accessed 2000 times over three-and-a-half years by a total of 137 people.
On Thursday ACC chief executive Ralph Stewart and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff announced audit firm KPMG and Malcolm Crompton, a former Australian federal privacy commissioner, would probe the Pullar privacy breach.
The Sunday Star-Times found the privacy commissioner received 61 privacy complaints about ACC in the last year. Of those, 15 were found to have substance and were subsequently settled. One has been referred to the director of Human Rights Proceedings, who will decide if it will go to a tribunal hearing. The figures show ACC privacy concerns are endemic. There were 57 complaints to the commissioner in 2009/10 and 43 in 2008-09.
"I think this kind of thing happens a lot more than we know," said counsellor and ACC advocate Ian Brown, whose clients include Garth Paul.
Brown said that even as officials scrambled last week to resolve the fall-out from the Pullar breach, managers from a Christchurch ACC office were making endless calls to Paul, to try to retrieve the file sent to him in error.
Just before Paul went public with the privacy breach, ACC manager John Doidge sent him a letter on Monday, March 19, telling him to return the file within 24 hours. ACC refused to comment on the latest breach, with the board chairman and chief executive citing the pending inquiry as preventing them from discussing breaches or privacy issues.
The inquiry is expected to take three months, which means the ACC position on comment blunts discussion of privacy breaches that surface in the meantime.
ACC's initial response when Pullar's claims were made public was to issue a report to new ACC Minister Judith Collins - without speaking further to Pullar - and to allege she tried to blackmail ACC over return of the files. It then said it had referred the matter to police. Pullar denied any blackmail attempt and said ACC was trying to defame her.
Brown said receiving another person's file was not the only evidence Paul had of privacy breaches. ACC had also allegedly contacted his mother about his case without permission, which backs Pullar's claims of the treatment meted out to her.
Brown said Paul had been treated appallingly by ACC. He claimed staff weren't interested in rehabilitation, people, or their privacy. "In her criticisms of ACC, I don't think [Pullar] was being over-the-top, I think she was being gentle. As one of my clients has told me, if he was a dog, the SPCA would have been prosecuted over his care."

© 2012 Fairfax NZ News

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/6633165/ACC-tries-to-plug-another-breach

Dancing star supports abuse summit

A news report from TVNZ

A Kiwi celebrity is putting his weight behind New Zealand's first ever Sexual Abuse Survivors' Summit drawing on his personal experience to help others.
Aaron Gilmore of Dancing with the Stars fame was abused for more than five years and will draw on his experience to be a key speaker at the summit tomorrow.
He was just 12-years-old when he was first sexually abused by a woman 23 years his senior.
"When I first met her she was very, very kind and caring so to have someone that was showing that interest, it was like a second mum," Gilmore says.
The woman continued the abuse for more than five years.
"There's a real learned helplessness about it and also I saw it as my fault," Gilmore says.
However, the abuse did not stop Gilmore from going on to have a successful dancing career and now he is using that profile to raise awareness about male sexual abuse ahead of the summit.
Organising committe member Gudrun Frerichs says it is often much more acceptable for females to go to counselling or to seek help but males tend to deal with things by themselves.
It is thought the number of boys abused before they hit 16 is around one in eight but Ken Clearwater who heads the Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust says it is closer to one in three.
"It's just the fact that men and boys really struggle to come forward in our male culture to talk about being a victim of childhood sexual abuse or even adult men who've been raped, it's really hard for them to come forward and disclose that" says Clearwater.
Some researchers suggest the country's prisons hold many male sexual abuse victims, which is because studies show males often respond to their abuse violently later in life.
The summit already has around 100 people registered to attend and less than a quarter of those are men.

Copyright 2010 Television New Zealand Limited
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/dancing-star-supports-abuse-summit-3598432

ACC Review Panel joins conference

A press release from SOSA

The government-appointed Independent Review Panel for ACC’s contentious new Clinical Pathway joins others at SOSA’s (Survivors of Sexual Abuse) invitation for June 20th inaugural Summit at AUT North Shore Campus.
This gives survivors the opportunity to have their say about what services they need from ACC, as well as have fun, be inspired and pampered, take back power, find their voices and unite.
“It's about time survivors had their say,” says the initiator of this important day, Dr Gudrun Freirichs. “The NZ government and ACC are part of the silencing by relying heavily on the medical profession and labelling us mentally ill. If we don’t fit the diagnosis, they are washing their hands of us while our perpetrators get unlimited help and counselling in prison programmes or the SAFE Network.
“Why lock up sexual perpetrators if what they do to their victims doesn’t warrant government support?” she asks. “Given that 1 in 4 females and 1 in 10 males experience sexual abuse by the age of 18 means that there are plenty of perpetrators out there interested in silencing us.”
Dr Freirichs goes on to say that sexual abuse destroys individuals and families. “This has to stop”, she says. Frierichs encourages speaking out, “Survivors need to know they are not alone.”
Well-known survivors Louise Nicholas and Aaron Gilmore from Dancing with the Stars will speak at the hui. Artist Tania Blomfeld organiser of “Courageous Women” t-shirts is running the art workshop, while Labour MP Lynne Pillay will give the forum a political edge.
Join the fight for recognition and better services by registering at www.sosanz.com until Friday 11th, or pay $20.00 at the door. SOSA organisers are encouraging registration using a pseudonym, should that feel more anonymous.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1006/S00086.htm

Sex abuse survivors offer help

An article from Stuff

Louise Nicholas says she intends to use her public profile to help the silent survivors of sexual abuse in her new national role as a "survivor advocate". Mrs Nicholas, who will report to a government taskforce on sexual violence, officially announced her role in Auckland last night.
Mrs Nicholas was speaking at the launch of a self-help book for the survivors of sexual abuse, written by the director of Rape Prevention Education, Dr Kim McGregor. She was joined by Dancing With the Stars dancer Aaron Gilmore, a survivor of sexual abuse and a volunteer for the organisation.
Dr McGregor said the role formalised what Mrs Nicholas had already been doing since her high-profile rape case against former police officers Brad Shipton, Bob Schollum and Clint Rickards. All three were acquitted, and it was revealed later that Shipton and Schollum had been convicted in 2005 of the pack rape of another woman in Mt Maunganui in 1989.
Mrs Nicholas has been given government funding for a year to collect the stories of other sexual violence victims for schools, health professionals and policymakers.
Figures showed 24 per cent of Auckland women and 28 per cent of North Waikato women were abused by the age 15 and 32 per cent of Otago women (out of nearly 500 interviewed in the early 1990s) were abused before the age of 16.
Mrs Nicholas said her role was to be an advocate for survivors of sexual violence. "I see the role as a voice to speak for those who can't speak for themselves."
She started work as a full-time "survivor advocate" for RPE in Auckland on July 12, and has already spent two weeks supporting a rape victim through an Auckland court case.
After her experiences Mrs Nicholas said she had heard from the "silent survivors". "It just tears at my heart.
"These women say to me we have got the courage to do what you've done because of you.
"That's huge, to be able to admit that, there's no shame in that.
"Eventually I would like to see this role extended across the country so there are many of us helping other sexual abuse survivors."
Gilmore, 29, who was sexually abused by a woman 25 years older than him from age 11 to 17 has recently become a volunteer for RPE.
Gilmore's abuser was convicted several years ago and he hopes he will give other survivors, particularly men the strength to come forward. "The only thing more common than sexual abuse is the cold."
Gilmore said he was an anomaly when he first went to police because he was a male victim with a female offender. A policeman to whom he first spoke about the abuse told him he failed to see what the crime was. "My first experiences with the legal side of things were quite horrible."
Dr McGregor said sexual violence had fallen off the political agenda over the last 20 years. There were 25 rape crisis groups in the 1980s and now there were about 12, she said. "I feel more positive now than I have in 20 years and that's because of the taskforce on sexual violence and that is a result of the bravery of Louise Nicholas.
"We started campaigning for the taskforce on the back of the marches throughout the country in outrage over the acquittals.
"Even though it has been a devastating thing for her (Mrs Nicholas), she has made it a positive thing."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/567390