Victim pursues ACC privacy file complaint

An article from the Whakatane Beacon by Samantha Motion

A sexual abuse victim says there is evidence her confidential file was opened and read when it was sent to a Matata dairy by ACC without her name on it last year.
ACC has accepted the package was incorrectly addressed to the Matata Superstore and has apologised for breaching the woman’s privacy, saying it was the result of human error in its mailroom.
The woman said as a result of the breach, her home was vandalised, she received phone calls, emails and visits from strangers and became afraid to leave her house.
She and her husband suffered irreparable damage and believed they could no longer live in Matata.
In a letter to the woman’s lawyer, ACC privacy officer Miriama Henderson acknowledged the woman and her husband experienced a “stressful time”.
After originally offering a $10,000 settlement, however, the corporation reneged.
Ms Henderson said it did not believe a financial settlement was “appropriate” on the basis that the harm caused to the woman had resulted from media reports about the incident and the woman’s “belief” that shop workers had read and disclosed information about her.
“ACC did not approach the media about [the woman’s] case and the evidence obtained in the investigation indicates that people working at the store did not disclose information.”
The woman was angry after initially learning of the privacy breach and contacted some national media organisations. The incident also featured in the Beacon.
Ms Henderson said the store owner had been spoken to during ACC’s investigation of the incident.
He admitted opening the package to find out who it was for, but was adamant no-one had read the contents or discussed it with members of the public.
Yesterday the woman said her lawyer had obtained letters from people who had been given details from the file, and excerpts from internet message boards where posters referred to the incident and the woman’s personal information.
She said one of the posts alleged the dairy owner talked to the poster’s mother about the contents of the file.
The woman is pursuing her complaint with the Privacy Commission.
Recently ACC’s Office of the Complaints Investigator found the corporation’s Sensitive Claims Unit had breached the woman’s rights 40 times.
They included unreasonable delays in processing and assessing her claims and failure observe her rights in line with the code of claimant’s rights.

© 2010 Whakatane Beacon
http://www.whakatanebeacon.co.nz/cms/news/2011/02/art10008769.php

Abuse victim "vindicated" by win over ACC

An article from the Whakatane Beacon

An Eastern Bay sexual abuse victim says she feels vindicated after an independent review found ACC “unreasonably delayed” processing her claim for weekly compensation for 10 months.
The decision ruled ACC must accept the victim’s claim and give her 10 months backdated weekly compensation costs.
The woman, who has asked to be referred to as “Rachel” in the Beacon, was also awarded costs of $1985 to cover case preparation, travel costs and a psychiatric assessment.
Her claim related to mental injuries caused by childhood and adult sexual abuse, conditions that relapsed last year as a result of personal circumstances, culminating in her resignation from her place of work.
Over the next 10 months Rachel and her husband exhausted their savings, defaulted on their rent many times, became indebted to utility providers and sold furniture to pay their bills while fighting for weekly compensation.
Rachel told the Beacon she felt a “righteous and justifiable” indignation about what had occurred with her claim. “Horrific, boy, that’s an understatement of what I truly feel about ACC and what they have put me through.”
She acknowledged some of her own communications with ACC in the past had not been great, but said she felt provoked into “reacting rather than responding” by the corporation’s unreasonable actions.
Over the 10 months ACC rejected one claim for compensation, then accepted a second only to rescind that decision a month later according to a copy of the reviewer’s decision obtained by the Beacon.
ACC experts decided Rachel needed to undergo further medical assessments to determine her claim, but failed to make appointments with the relevant professionals.
Rachel and her advocate David Wadsworth maintained throughout that there was enough information on file to make a decision, but she would willingly under go further examination to progress things.
She arranged two assessments with her GP and counsellor during the course of the year and provided them to ACC.
In August, in an effort to expedite matters, Rachel arranged her own psychiatric consultation and assessment.
Upon receiving that report, ACC maintained further assessment before “a panel of relevant health professionals” was still required before Rachel’s claim could be settled. Those assessments had still yet to be booked at the time of review on September 8.
ACC blamed the delays on Rachel and “the evolution of the claim”. They also argued that all events after the lodgement of the review hearing on May 1 were outside the reviewer’s jurisdiction, which the reviewer disagreed with.
The reviewer ruled there was sufficient medical evidence in reports for ACC to have made a decision on the claim in May.

http://www.whakatanebeacon.co.nz/cms/news/2010/10/art10008024.php

Mis-sent file victim being investigated

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Lois Cairns

A sexual abuse victim who claimed to have obtained internal ACC memos calling her a "mental health nutter" who should consider suicide is under police investigation.
The woman's computer equipment and documentation relating to her battle with ACC have been seized as part of the investigation, which saw six police officers search her Eastern Bay of Plenty home.
The officers gave the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, no explanation of what they were looking for, although the search warrant said police had "reasonable grounds" to believe they would find evidence of forgery.
The woman believes ACC sparked the investigation because it was fed up with her persistent battling of the system, and was angry she made public the story of her patient file being sent to a local store.
The file, managed by ACC's sensitive claims unit, contained an estimated 250 pages of psychological reports and case notes.
"They want to shut me up. They want to turn me from a victim into a perpetrator so that they can get rid of me," the woman told the Sunday Star-Times. "They're sick of hearing from me and this is their bully-boy way of trying to make me go away."
The misdirected patient file was the latest in a line of problems the woman, who suffered sexual abuse in the 1980s, has experienced with ACC. In April the Star-Times revealed details of internal ACC emails labelling her a "mental health nutter" who should consider taking her own life.
ACC said then it believed the emails were fakes and was considering laying a complaint with police. The woman is adamant they were leaked to her.
A spokeswoman confirmed that Whakatane police had executed a search warrant in relation to a complaint from "an external party" about a potential fraud. A computer and some paperwork were removed from the property.
ACC said it could not comment.

Copyright 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/sunday-star-times-wellington-new-zealand/mi_8185/is_20100912/mis-file-victim-investigated/ai_n55232006/

Counselling is back on cards for sex abuse victims

An article from the Whakatane Beacon

A Whakatane counsellor says changes to ACC that allow 16 hours of counselling for sexual abuse victims is a desperately-needed improvement – but there is much more to be done.
From Monday this week, people with a new ACC sensitive claim, or with a new claim already in the system awaiting a decision, will be able to access up to 16 hours of counselling to ensure their safety and wellbeing.
Debbie Magee from Insight Counselling Services in Whakatane said there was still some details that needed to be finalised, such as what would happen to people who had been declined for assistance or who had relapsed since leaving counselling. “It’s a lot better than it was but it still needs to go further,” she said. “At least it gives survivors something in the meantime.”
The Government introduced a new sensitive claims “pathway” in October last year, which required people to be diagnosed with a mental illness as a result of sexual abuse in order to receive funding for counselling. The pathway required a doctor’s opinion and assessments from a psychologist or psychiatrist to determine whether a person has suffered a mental injury.
A group of Whakatane counsellors expressed their concerns to Labour MPs in March this year that the new legislation would result in at-risk patients not receiving the help they needed. They were also concerned they would end up providing their services for free, because they couldn’t refuse to help people in need.
The 16 hours of counselling is intended to provide support to survivors of sexual abuse and information gained by counsellors during these sessions would be used within the assessment process.
ACC general manager claims manager Denise Cosgrove said ACC had listened to concerns expressed by several groups that more support was needed but they would still be continuing to develop the sensitive claims process. “We still believe these are reasonable goals but acknowledge that the introduction of the pathway exposed gaps in the services available to people who have suffered sexual abuse,” she said.
Mrs Magee said ultimately she would like to see these people get a minimum 30 hours of counselling sessions, but 16 hours was better than nothing. “It gives us time to work with the person to help them cope better,” she said. “Hopefully it will give some survivors more confidence in coming forward again.” At the very least, it would likely include counsellors in the assessment process again, which was heartening, she said.
Victims rights spokesperson for the Labour party, Lynne Pillay, said this action did not go far enough and the cost cutting exercise should be stopped immediately. “Since National introduced this scheme thousands of sexual abuse survivors have been denied counselling,” Ms Pillay said. “Up to 90 per cent of claims for sexual abuse counselling has either been declined or put into a holding pattern since October last year.”
A Whakatane woman known as Rachel, who has been fighting ACC for compensation and funding for counselling for sexual abuse and whose case is being followed by the Beacon, will be entitled to receive counselling sessions under these changes. However, she said the process was still lengthy and, because ACC would likely be inundated with new claims, the system would be further bogged down.
Her advocate David Wadsworth said providing the preliminary counselling sessions was really just putting a band-aid on a more serious problem, which was ACC processes and the lengthy wait that claimants constantly endured. He said it was taking ACC an extraordinary amount of time to process claims and make decisions on whether or not they would be accepted since this new sensitive pathways legislation was imposed. Rachel, for example, had been in the system for nine months so far, awaiting a decision on her claim, despite her GP recommending she receive prompt and brief intervention to enable her return to work.

© 2010 Whakatane Beacon
http://www.whakatanebeacon.co.nz/cms/news/2010/08/art10007697.php

Victim's file sent to store owner

An article from the Whakatane Beacon

An Eastern Bay sexual abuse victim is hiding in her home after ACC sent her patient file to a Matata dairy owner.
The woman, known as “Rachel”, said since the incident her home had been graffiti-ed, a job interview had been cancelled and she had been told she was the subject of rumours in the community.
The Privacy Commissioner’s office is investigating how ACC came to incorrectly address the package, resulting in the blunder.
Rachel’s advocate David Wadsworth said a confidential compensation settlement from ACC for the privacy breach was in the works. Both he and Rachel declined to comment further on the settlement.
ACC minister Nick Smith told Sunday Star-Times he was not aware of the case until Saturday, but any breach of ACC’s confidentiality requirements was unacceptable.
Rachel has been battling with ACC since January for compensation for a mental injury caused by sexual abuse she suffered as a child and again as an adult.
She applied to ACC’s sensitive claims unit to receive a copy of her file last month, and was asked to provide an address earlier this month.
She emailed back with clear instructions that the courier package was to be labelled with her name and address and sent via the Matata Superfoods dairy.
Rachel said she and other rural residents not registered with rural mail had been receiving their post in this manner for years without any adverse events.
However, a blunder at ACC’s mailing centre meant Rachel’s name was left off and the package was addressed only to the store.
The file contained hundreds of pages of case notes and confidential medical and health information.
Store owner Supinder Mann said he opened the package because it was addressed to his business, but did not read it or show it to anyone before giving it to the woman’s husband when he worked out the intended recipient.
Rachel said she did not blame Mr Mann for opening the package.
She said she had asked ACC to notify her when the package was sent and provide her with a tracking number, but had received no reply.
The first she knew of its arrival was when a stranger arrived at her home and told her that intimate details of her troubled past and her family were the “talk of the town”.
Since then it had been like being caught in a game of Chinese whispers, she said, with her story becoming more and more fabricated as it was passed from person to person.
She and her husband had arrived home one evening last week to find words including “rapist” and “freak” graffiti-ed on their home.
Many other people, however, had contacted her with messages of sympathy and support, she said.
Rachel said the incident was just another in a string of ACC delays and mistakes that were making her life “hell”.
In January, the Beacon reported leaked internal ACC emails showing Rachel might be refused funding because her mental injury pre-dated the introduction of ACC.
Six months on, Mr Wadsworth said ACC had accepted Rachel’s compensation claim, but continued delays meant she would likely not be assessed for whatever entitlement she qualified for until August – at the earliest.
This was because one of the two psychiatrists who would review her file was on holiday until August, and the other was unwilling to assess it alone.

© 2010 Whakatane Beacon
http://www.whakatanebeacon.co.nz/cms/news/2010/07/art10007560.php