ACC to rethink abuse link

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Sarah Harvey

A judge has ruled in favour of an ACC claimant in a case expected to have "enormous" ramifications for the way mental health patients are treated. In the decision, released recently, Judge Grant Powell in the Wellington District Court agreed with a psychiatrist who said a man's schizophrenia had been caused by trauma from sexual abuse in childhood.
Two ACC-employed psychiatrists had earlier said there was no evidence schizophrenia was anything other than a biological condition passed down through families and so the man's abuse had nothing to do with his condition. However, the judge agreed with a growing body of research that says traumatic events can cause psychosis.
The research includes the work of clinical psychologist John Read, who has been at the forefront of research to show a relationship between childhood sexual and physical abuse and psychotic symptoms, including schizophrenia. Read said the ramifications of the decision were "enormous".
"It is gratifying that years of research on this issue is impacting the judicial system. These rulings will also make it harder for psychiatrists to ignore disclosures of sexual abuse by severely disturbed patients, or to dismiss them as either irrelevant or imagined.
"This is a significant victory for all those patients and researchers who have been saying for many years that the experiences which biological psychiatry believes are symptoms of a brain disease called schizophrenia are best understood as responses to adverse life events.
"Very often the voices abused people hear are the actual voices of the perpetrator of the abuse."
Read said it was "alarming" that the two ACC psychiatrists "either knew nothing about the many studies documenting the relationship between child abuse and psychosis or were trying to mislead the judge".
The man referred to in the finding had been covered by ACC for his history of sexual abuse but it was schizophrenia that had stopped him from working. He had sought to gain an independence allowance from ACC in December 2010. An independence allowance covers people who are permanently impaired as a result of an injury. The maximum weekly allowance is $84.97.
In 2011, ACC decided it would not cover the allowance because it said his schizophrenia was not linked to his covered injury - a significant history of sexual abuse between five and 13.
He was assessed by a psychiatrist who prepared three reports but concluded sexual abuse "is not likely to be the material cause of the current condition. There is no evidence of sexual abuse as an etiological factor [cause] in schizophrenia." His claim was declined and despite an appeal and subsequent reviews it was again found his incapacity related to his schizophrenia, which ACC said was a health issue unrelated to the sexual abuse.
After another appeal, psychiatrist David Codyre provided a report that completely disagreed with the previous psychiatrists.
"With due respect to my colleagues who undertook the prior psychiatric reports ... their opinion that sexual abuse is not causally related to schizophrenia is not evidence based."
Judge Powell said ultimately he found Codyre's analysis "a more compelling and inherently more credible cause of the appellant's schizophrenia".
Read said the finding would reduce the frequency with which psychiatrists dismissed abuse disclosures as irrelevant or imagined and increased the probability of people being offered trauma-based psychological therapy instead of anti-psychotic medication.
New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists public issues spokesman Kyle MacDonald said the judgement was encouraging and could mean entitlements for many other people.
"The reality is there a lot of people who would be in the mental health system who would have a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder who may now be entitled to access some treatment under the ACC.
"For a long time there has been a mindset of how schizophrenia and psychotic disorders are treated, which is that it is a biological disorder which needs to be medicated and managed.
"The reality is that actually these people are underserviced in terms of therapy and psychological intervention. This is a way to get people more therapy and more psychological help."
ACC said it would consider whether this decision "has any wider impact" but took the view it would have "limited" value as a precedent and it would "continue to carefully consider each person's unique situation and circumstances".

© 2013 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/9490650/ACC-to-rethink-abuse-link

Privacy breach victims to sue ACC

An article from the Sunday Star Times by David Gadd and Marika Hill

Sex abuse survivors are planning to sue ACC to force a significantly boosted payout for breaching their privacy in the ongoing Bronwyn Pullar whistleblower saga.
ACC sent apology letters in June to sensitive-claims clients and offered to pay them $250 if they agreed to stay silent, after one of New Zealand's biggest privacy breaches in August last year. The "insulting" offer came after ACC mistakenly released the names and details of 6500 claimants, including 250 sensitive-claims clients who are victims of sexual abuse and violent crimes, to claimant Pullar.
Wellington lawyer John Miller, a specialist in taking on ACC, said more than 100 claimants affected by the massive Pullar breach had approached him to take the case. He said those wanting to pursue ACC were sensitive claimants who generally had long simmering feelings of being poorly treated by the ACC system. Although a claimant with a normal injury could shrug off the privacy breach, for sensitive claimants "this is the last straw".
"It's a corrosive environment they are in with ACC, frankly. The people I have spoken to, they are insulted by $250, it is a derisory amount for the torment they have gone through."
Worse was ACC's requirement that claimants sign a confidentially agreement if they took the payment. "They feel they are being told ‘now go away and shut up and sign a document to say you are going to shut up forever more'."
He said that although technically class action claims were not possible in New Zealand, the process worked with one claim taken and if it won it set a precedent. ACC would be asked to settle with everyone, or face losing case after case with legal costs compounding the settlement payouts. He said the process had worked before and usually ACC saw sense.
Miller would not be drawn on what level of compensation would satisfy claimants, but said past privacy breaches had won payouts of anything from $2000 to $40,000. It depended on the severity of the consequences. In 2003 he said ACC paid $8000 for sending a man's earnings details to his wife, resulting in divorce because he had kept his income secret from her.
The Dominion Post revealed in July that ACC paid out almost $50,000 for eight privacy breaches in the past three years.
However, the government agency refused to divulge the amount of each payment.
Following an investigation in the Pullar blunder, the privacy commissioner found that systemic weaknesses at ACC and an "almost cavalier" attitude towards claimants' information led to the breach. The privacy breach led to ACC introducing strict privacy policies and saw an exodus of top staff.
ACC chairman John Judge, chief executive Ralph Stewart and board members John McCliskie, Rob Campbell and Murray Hilder all departed from the agency.
ACC has so far refused to comment publicly on the financial settlement payments.

© 2012 Fairfax NZ News

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/7748139/Privacy-breach-victims-to-sue-ACC

ACC 'cold blooded' to victims

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Danya Levy

A survey around sensitive claims and the treatment of sexual abuse victims has raised more questions about the Accident Compensation Corporation.
It comes as a senior manager's comments are being interpreted as confirming there was pressure from the board on staff to dump sex abuse claimants.
Allegations ACC had turned from rehabilitating clients to saving money have seen three board members, including chairman John Judge, and chief executive Ralph Stewart, quit.
Now, the man behind the survey of 146 health professionals and 72 abuse victims, psychotherapist and blogger Kyle MacDonald, says there has been a "cold-blooded" directive from the board to look after the "bottom-line" regardless of the cost to victims.
In 2009 ACC reinterpreted the rules around sensitive claims so a diagnosed psychiatric illness was required to determine mental harm. That left many people ineligible for help, and led to a public outcry.
A year later former ACC Minister Nick Smith urged the corporation to adopt recommendations from a review, but MacDonald says the survey shows only two have been adopted, five have not been, four have returned mixed results, and another four were not being measured. Now a transcript of a presentation by claims general manager Denise Cosgrove last November acknowledges the sensitive claims changes "didn't work so well", and appears to confirm ACC was removing "low-hanging fruit and easy gains" from the scheme.
"I get that constant message from the board every day," he said.
Green Party ACC spokesman Kevin Hague said the survey showed there was "wilful resistance" to the call to improve, and, because there was a "culture of disentitlement", the board should be replaced. Labour's Andrew Little said: "They will say it is legitimate to minimise costs, but the whole basis of ACC is treatment, compensation for the bulk of your losses and rehabilitation."
An ACC spokesman said MacDonald was only one of those giving feedback and there would be no comment until a final report, which was "imminent", but Cosgrove's comments referred to system improvements, not claimants.
MacDonald dismissed that. "It's hard to interpret in any other way than referring to specific cases and claims."
He said the issue for claimants was ACC refusing to accept the advice of clinicians working with victims, and insisting they be interviewed by its own assessors. "You are required to report intimate and distressing detail to a complete stranger", which had an "incredibly detrimental effect".
"There has been a very intentional aim of getting the longest and most expensive claimants out. It's cold-blooded. What has become clear is that ACC is being directed from ministerial and board level to focus on the bottom line and that has been at the expense of sensitive claimants."
A spokeswoman for ACC Minister Judith Collins said board comments were a matter for the board but the minister expected ACC to check claims veracity carefully and to treat all professionally.

SURVEY

Counsellors
40.4 per cent say ACC has done "very little" to protect client safety
37.8 per cent say ACC has done "very little" to protect client therapeutic relationship
42.5 per cent say ACC has done "very little" to implement changes

Claimants
29.3 per cent say ACC has "not at all" protected their safety
38.1 per cent say ACC has "not at all" protected their therapeutic relationship
50.6 per cent say ACC has "not at all" implemented changes

© 2012 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/politics/7117501/ACC-cold-blooded-to-victims

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

Why Nick Smith did not have to resign

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Michael Laws

One of the best (or worst) things about New Zealand politics is that we judge our parliamentary representatives through a different prism than we judge ourselves. Despite our daily chastisement of their morals, motives and mendacity, we expect our MPs to be the paragons of moral virtue that we are not. This is because we wrongly believe they have an unparalleled influence over our daily lives.
In fact, most politicians are powerless. Including most cabinet ministers and party leaders. They are merely the front dressing for a legion of faceless folk – policy staff, civil servants, lobbyists and parliamentary staff – who shape their champions on a daily basis.
It has long been a proposition of mine that there is only one political party and they are always in power: the bureaucracy. The average middle manager in any government department's policy unit has more influence over our daily lives than the average MP. The role of most of our elected representatives is merely to entertain.
The debating chamber is a literal circus and the press gallery little more than a Greek chorus. They are easily distracted from the substance of reform and change in this country, and the Nick Smith affair this past week stands as Exhibit No964 that this distraction always works, because to describe the Smith/Bronwyn Pullar affair as petty is to do the word an injustice.
But let's start with Winston Peters' allegations – picked up by any number of mentally addled bloggers (is there any other type?) – that this was all really some sordid love affair gone wrong. It was an allegation that had neither substance nor relevance.
In fact when I put it to Peters on my Radio Live show this past week, the NZ First leader backtracked at a spectacular rate of knots. He had used the word "sex" in the House, because a number of the ACC claimants who had had their details mistakenly released to Ms Pullar, were rape victims. And rape involves sex.
Mr Peters now wants an independent inquiry into this non-scandal because it might prove there really was a scandal. Or not. And we need to know that, he emphatically argued.
Ironically, the person who would benefit best from an inquiry would be Nick Smith. Which is precisely why Prime Minister John Key can't have one. Smith would at least discover who had access to the so-called incriminating letter, and who was most likely to have released it.
At this point in time, ACC stand as most likely to gain from such revelations. They could bat off Pullar's assertions of widespread calumny and distract from their own incompetence in releasing the details of other claimants. And bureaucrats play such games on a regular basis. It is their dark art.
The letter that led to Smith's downfall is incredibly innocuous. It simply states a truth. Bronwyn Pullar is a changed woman since her bicycle accident some decade ago. Nick Smith knows this because he knew her before and after. In the letter he also points out – openly and honestly – Pullar's political connections. And then states and restates that it would be inappropriate to act on her behalf or intervene with any ACC decision. Just that Bronwyn Pullar is not the woman she was.
Apparently the crime is that he stated such on a ministerial letterhead. Oh, whoopdie-do. He played absolutely no role in the decision regarding her claim and had no intention of taking one. Rather, he appears to have written the letter out of sheer frustration that a friend kept bedevilling him for an intervention he could not make.
The "discovery" of the second letter was, of course, irrelevant. It was just the hook required for John Key's advisers to reconsider the potential embarrassment of the prime minister's original defence of Smith's actions.
In retrospect, the inquiry – quick and immediate – would have been the way to go. Key should have suspended Smith ahead of that outcome. Any investigation would have found that Smith's actions carried no weight with ACC.
Ironically, that's the part that I find the most disturbing. That ministers cannot control nor guide nor even influence their own department. Especially when they are wrong. At that point, just employ some nodding nincompoop and use them as an automatic signature machine, which is what most ministers, not so coincidentally, really are.
Yes you might argue that there was a technical breach of the Cabinet Manual. But there are technical breaches of the law every day in this country, and the police choose not to prosecute nor even investigate. In this case, the consequences far outweighed the calumny. But don't we feel virtuous?

© 2012 Fairfax NZ News

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/columnists/6631324/Why-Nick-Smith-did-not-have-to-resign

Time is right to protest via social media sites

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Kyle McDonald

The past 12 months have been a great time for protesting. Internationally, Time magazine made The Protester its Person of 2011. And it's not surprising really. We are more connected to each other globally through our use of social media sites than the human race has ever been. The Arab Spring and the Occupy Movements have used the tremendous mobilising power of Facebook, Twitter and blogs to easily locate people who agree with their cause, publish their point of view, and organise large global protests.
Here in New Zealand it is a little different, granted. But regardless of the reason, judicious use of social media is a great way to connect, become involved and – if you believe something strongly enough – take a stand.
In the past three years a relatively small part of the health sector has been close to destroyed under John Key's watch.
The provision of treatment and support for victims of historical sexual abuse and adult rape has been funded and administered by the Accident Compensation Corporation since 1974. However, in 2009, under pressure from the National government to reduce funding and future liabilities, ACC staff, with help from some very clever people at Crown Law I'm sure, changed their interpretation of the legislation specific to "Sensitive Claims" to enable them to dramatically reduce the availability of funding for this very necessary service.
How necessary?
In New Zealand approximately one in four women, and one in six men, will experience sexual violence in their lifetime. That's pretty high. It also means someone you know has likely been directly affected.
So if you feel strongly about this sort of thing how do you protest and influence government in Aotearoa? If you're reading this in New Zealand there is a 50 per cent chance you're on Facebook or at least have heard of it.
What you may not have heard about however was just before Christmas a small group of dedicated staff at a small counselling agency called HELP, in Auckland, managed to get the government to provide funding at the 11th hour, in a little over a week, by skilfully leveraging the immense power of social media and, more specifically, Facebook.
The Auckland Sexual Abuse HELP service has been around since 1982, with the primary mission to support women who have been raped. It is primarily a crisis service, like a psychological ambulance. It helps them through the process, from the initial crisis call, to reporting, police interviews and medicals. Pretty essential, and no other part of the health or mental health system offers it. They're it, really, in Auckland.
So when the Auckland Sexual Abuse Help service needed funding to keep its crisis line open, thanks to an ongoing struggle to secure funding, certainly not aided by ACC's withdrawal of funding in 2009, it started an online petition and a Facebook page, and members asked everyone they knew to circulate it.
When they reached 7000 signatures, appeared on breakfast television to explain their plight, and organised a protest in downtown Auckland in the first five days, it became apparent that they had a lot of friends. However, the part that made the difference was to make it personal.
It was John Key's government, and so you should ask him to change it. Directly. He has a public Facebook page, so tell him there. And so on the petition site they posted a link to take you directly to his page.
Over the course of Thursday and Friday, his page was bombarded with thousands of pleas to fund the Helpline, enough that Key was asked to comment in a press conference on the Friday. This was only a week after launching the petition. I hope it kept his staff very busy.
Late in the afternoon on Friday the government, via the Ministry of Health, announced it had secured a funding reassurance for a further six months, and a commitment to secure long-term funding beyond that.
That is what you can do with Facebook. Not just post photos of your cats. You can also have a say in how the country is run. The Protester in our New Zealand context needs only a laptop, an internet connection and some friends. It's easy to forget that we all have the power to change things and that our collective apathy is the real enemy.
Otto Van Bismarck said that "politics is the art of the possible". However, I believe it's a sad indictment that the only way to get politicians to do the right thing is to make doing the wrong thing politically impossible.
Or is that just democracy in action?

© Fairfax NZ News

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/columnists/6257552/Time-is-right-to-protest-via-social-media-sites

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/

Response from Denise Cosgrove

A letter to the editor of the Sunday Star Times

Your story "Academic with link to sex abusers silent on role in drafting ACC rules" (News, August 29) was misleading in some important respects. The article suggests that Dr Felicity Goodyear-Smith was involved with the development of the ACC clinical pathway for sexual abuse claims. She was not. Goodyear-Smith had no role in the development of the pathway. The report she and two other researchers produced five years ago was an inconclusive study which compared treatment rates provided to ACC sexual abuse clients by psychologists, psychiatrists and counsellors. So it was not relevant to the development of the pathway.
Yes, one of their recommendations was that there should be diagnosis before treatment, using an assessment tool called DSM-IV. Yes, that is what we've been doing. But we didn't do so because it was in their report. Far from it. We did it because it was internationally seen as best practice, because the courts in NZ had endorsed DSM-IV as an appropriate method and because no suitable alternative options have been put forward. Goodyear-Smith had no part in any of that.
The article also failed to mention the work that ACC is currently doing with the Sensitive Claims Advisory Group and others to ensure that, moving forward, we continue to provide the most appropriate services for our clients.
Denise Cosgrove
General manager, claims management ACC

Copyright Fairfax New Zealand Ltd 2010
http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/sunday-star-times-wellington-new-zealand/mi_8185/is_20100912/sexual-abuse/ai_n55232011/

Sex abuse cuts "all about costs"

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Tim Hume

A former senior ACC manager says the corporation's cuts to sexual abuse counselling are "all about costs", contrary to ACC Minister Nick Smith's claims they were about ensuring best practice for clients.
David Rankin, now Child Youth and Family's senior medical adviser, has also revealed an advisory group of eight eminent psychiatrists cautioned ACC against introducing a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) diagnosis of mental injury as the threshold for victims of sex crimes to access support. "They said, 'Be very careful, this is not what it's used for, this is not what it's all about'," Rankin told the Sunday Star-Times. "They said: 'It doesn't indicate severity, it only indicates the presence of a condition and it doesn't in any way tell you what treatment is needed."'
ACC controversially introduced the requirement last year, cutting access to treatment for hundreds, before partially restoring support last month. Two suicides have been linked to the cuts.
Rankin, who was ACC's general manager of health purchasing until 2006, says the main goal of the changes was to cut costs. "ACC's an insurance company. Its premium-payers are grizzling."
ACC was "under extraordinary pressure to reduce its costs" and "anybody that looks at the counselling costs for sexual abuse must come to the conclusion that there is wasted money," he said. Although sensitive claims represented only a small amount of ACC's total spending, it was an area where the corporation had "extraordinary exposure" to liabilities.
In 2004, Rankin commissioned research into sexual abuse counselling that was co-authored by Auckland University professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith. He said the research was commissioned because "ACC was concerned at the increase in cost in counselling".
ACC has been criticised for commissioning the research from Goodyear-Smith, who is married to a convicted sex offender and is the daughter-in-law of Centrepoint's convicted paedophile founder Bert Potter. She has been an outspoken critic of sexual abuse counselling, labelling it "a scam".
Her research included a recommendation that victims be assessed with a DSM-IV mental injury diagnosis, which later appeared as a requirement in ACC's "clinical pathway", despite not having been specified in the Massey guidelines, a widely accepted "best practice document" which ACC said guided how the pathway was formulated.
Rankin said Goodyear-Smith's research had set out to determine whether psychologists provided more effective treatment than less-qualified counsellors. He had been "stunned" when her research had not borne out their expectation that they would.
He said he had been aware of Goodyear-Smith's links to sex offenders and strong views, and for that reason stipulated "that I personally read what she said before we published it". He blocked a number of her recommendations. "We acknowledged the agenda and protected both herself and us against it," he said.
He did not feel her background disqualified her from objective research, stressing that the research was "numerical" and adding "most people researching in that area have got a bias one way or the other".
Green MP Kevin Hague said he believed the commissioning of Goodyear-Smith reflected the corporation's agenda to cut costs. "If it's a numerical analysis you want, the public health departments of our universities are packed with biostatisticians who could do that. Why would you choose the researcher with the most extreme view about the topic itself to do this neutral task?
"They used Goodyear-Smith because they knew she would recommend less treatment and less costs for people who had been sexually abused. That, to me, is a scandal."
ACC Minister Nick Smith said he couldn't comment on ACC's objectives in Rankin's time. But he insisted that changes to sensitive claims over the past 12 months had had nothing to do with cost-cutting, but focused on clinical care. He said an independent clinical panel came to the same conclusion. "There's been a lot of politics around trying to frame the debate around sensitive claims in context of bigger financial issues around ACC, but the paper trail and the involvement of the clinicians driving this makes it plain these are quite distinct."
He was "uneasy" about Goodyear-Smith's involvement, but had seen no evidence her work had influenced the pathway.

© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/4096892/Sex-abuse-cuts-all-about-costs

ACC adviser silent on links to sex abusers

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Tim Hume

Concerns are being raised over changes at ACC that denied sex crime victims access to treatment. Critics allege the changes were partly based on advice from an academic who is married to a sex offender.
Auckland University medical and health sciences faculty professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith was one of the authors of a 2005 paper on sexual abuse counselling funded by ACC.
She is the daughter-in-law of Centrepoint community leader and convicted paedophile Bert Potter. His son, her husband John, was jailed in 1993 on historic charges of indecent assault at Centrepoint. Her paper recommended a diagnosis of mental injury, as defined by the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, be made at the outset of treatment. Last year ACC accepted that criteria for those seeking support, denying hundreds of victims counselling and outraging counsellors, who said labelling sex crime victims mentally ill was stigmatising and unethical.
New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists' sensitive claims spokesman Kyle MacDonald said there were "obvious parallels" between the new rules and the research, and his group was opposed to Goodyear-Smith's involvement in ACC-commissioned sexual abuse research.
The mental injury diagnosis was not included in a 2008 Massey University guideline, a widely accepted document outlining best practice in the sexual abuse field, which ACC says guided its policy.
Last year's changes saw a drop in sexual abuse claims, prompting ACC Minister Nick Smith to set up a review panel that reports next month, but ACC has already reinstated 16 hours of counselling for victims.
Goodyear-Smith, who lived for years on Centrepoint land, working as the community's GP, is an outspoken critic of sexual abuse counselling, saying it can be as damaging as sexual abuse itself, and once telling a newspaper the "ACC scam's one of the biggest there is". She is the founder of a support group for men accused of sex crimes, and has acted for them in the courts and the media over the past 16 years.
Counsellor Barri Leslie – herself a former Centrepoint member – alleges Goodyear-Smith provides "an academic veneer" for attitudes similar to Bert Potter's. "It's outrageous she's been commissioned by ACC in the area of sexual abuse counselling," she said.
A special investigation in today's Focus outlines similarities between Bert Potter's and Goodyear-Smith's positions, including that not all sexual activity between adults and children is damaging.
ACC told the Star-Times last year it had not commissioned research from Goodyear-Smith but now admits it did. Smith's spokesman distanced him from the research, saying it occurred three years before he became minister, and that he had no information on the matter. "The minister does have concerns about the pathway and that is why he established the independent clinical review panel."
Goodyear-Smith would not be interviewed for the story.

© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/4072453/ACC-adviser-silent-on-links-to-sex-abusers

Conflicting interests?

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Tim Hume

Professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith is a senior academic and doctor who was commissioned by ACC to research sexual abuse counselling. She is also the daughter-in-law of Centrepoint guru and paedophile Bert Potter, is married to a convicted sex offender and has controversial views on the workings of the 'sexual abuse industry'. Tim Hume examines allegations of Goodyear-Smith's influence in ACC's recent drastic cut in support for victims of sex crimes.
Last October, ACC changed the rules governing the support available to victims of sex crimes, introducing a heavily criticised new regime that severely restricted access to counselling.
But what most concerned critics was an apparent similarity between a requirement in the new "clinical pathway", and a recommendation contained in research ACC had commissioned from a controversial senior academic. The research was led by Professor Felicity Goodyear-Smith, who has been a vocal detractor of the field of sexual abuse counselling and who, as the daughter-in-law of Centrepoint founder Bert Potter, has ongoing personal relationships with convicted child sex offenders.
During the eight months following the clinical pathway's introduction, ACC paid out $7 million less to 2889 fewer claimants than it had over the same period a year previous. Approved new claims, running at 1313 in the eight months prior to the pathway's introduction, subsequently dropped to 240 over the same length of time. Among the hundreds to have their claims denied were two women believed to have later committed suicide.
Despite a record $4.8 billion loss sustained by ACC the previous financial year, ACC Minister Nick Smith stressed the policy was not an attempt to cut costs, but was driven by a desire to implement best practice for sexual abuse victims, known as "sensitive claimants". Critics dubbed the new pathway a "rapists' charter".
The scheme's many detractors were primarily concerned by a new requirement that, before they could access ACC counselling and support, claimants had to be diagnosed formally with a mental injury as defined by the American Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV). Whereas previously, ACC might have accepted a GP or counsellor's description of symptoms such as flashbacks, panic attacks or nightmares resulting from a sex crime, now a formal diagnosis of a mental illness such as post-traumatic stress disorder was needed.
It's unclear exactly why. Nowhere was a DSM-IV mental illness diagnosis specified in the so-called "Massey guidelines", the widely accepted 2008 best practice manual which ACC had commissioned from Massey University researchers, and which it cited as having guided the formulation of the pathway ...

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© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd

Smith bills public for waitress

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Jonathan Marshall

ACC Minister Nick Smith - annual salary $240,000 - got taxpayers to foot a $600 bill to have a waitress attend a dinner party in Wellington.
The dinner for members of ACC's board was held at Smith's ministerial home. The bill from Rough Edges Catering, issued to Smith and his wife, detailed "private catering" - a three-course dinner served up by a waitress who worked a four-hour shift. The $607.50 bill - which covered nine people - was split between ACC and Smith's ministerial office.
Smith defended the expenditure, saying that while he was capable of cooking, his time was better used conversing with ACC's board. He personally paid for the wine consumed during the dinner party.
Details of the dinner were contained in a bundle of credit card statements from ACC's chief executive, Dr Jan White. In the 24-month period ending in June, White racked up $33,646 on the corporation's plastic, with thousands going on dinners at top Wellington and Auckland restaurants including Logan Brown, Capitol, Vivo Wine Bar, The Yacht Club and One Tree Grill.
Revelations of big spending within the corporation's top-floor office come at a time Smith himself has said spending at the agency is out of control. When told about some of White's biggest restaurant bills, he reiterated that he expected restraint to be exercised.
ACC issued a statement defending the dinners, saying the corporation has a policy of recognising good workers. Spokesman Laurie Edwards said ACC was "extremely conscious of delivering value for money" and "that is why in the last year we have managed to cut $35 million from our administration budget".
In December last year, White spent $13,553 on four dinners, in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Dunedin. Her reconciliation form said the meals were to acknowledge "achievers" within ACC. Dinners for staff leaving included a farewell for Gerard McGrevy at Vivo Wine Bar (costing $756), for Graeme Osbourne at Zibibbo Restaurant ($790) and for Ian Simpson in March at Logan Brown ($1095). ACC did not disclose the quantity of alcohol consumed at each meal and the corporation did not respond when asked for them.
Not all of White's dining experiences came at a high cost to taxpayers - in March last year she spent just $12.50 at Central Otago's Tin Goose cafe.

© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Ltd
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4048609/Smith-bills-public-for-waitress

ACC blunder puts sex abuse file in wrong hands

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Jonathan Marshall

ACC has launched an inquiry and offered to pay a sexual abuse victim $10,000 after accidentally sending her patient file to her local superette – where it was opened by the shop's owner.
The Eastern Bay of Plenty woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, applied to receive a copy of her Accident Compensation Corporation file last month.
The file, managed by ACC's sensitive claims unit, contained an estimated 250 pages of psychological reports and case notes.
Because the woman lives in a rural location, mail is sent to a local superette for recipients to collect.
But when ACC sent the courier package to Matata Superfoods near Whakatane last week it did not write the woman's name on the package, addressing it only to the store.
Matata Superfoods owner Supinder Mann said he opened the "fat package" because it was addressed to his business, not an individual. Mann said he did not read the file or show it to anyone but gave it to the victim's husband when he worked out the intended recipient.
The woman declined requests to talk about the mix-up or any details of a possible settlement, but the Sunday Star-Times has been told by sources within ACC that meetings were held within the corporation last week to determine how the confidential package ended up in the wrong hands.
The privacy commissioner has also become involved, and, it is understood, has been working on the woman's behalf to negotiate a settlement package.
Investigator Dawn Swan confirmed the commissioner's involvement but said she could not comment.
However, it is understood the package will include a $10,000 cash payment to the woman, relocation fees so she and her husband can move out of the rural community, and a face-to-face apology.
An independent investigator is also likely to be appointed by ACC to examine the case.
It is expected that the settlement package agreement will contain a confidentiality clause, meaning that the woman cannot talk to the media about the blunder.
On Friday, ACC media and public relations lead adviser Laurie Edwards confirmed the investigation had been launched, but cautioned anyone quick to blame the corporation.
"Sometimes, and it's not really an excuse, it won't have been us that made the mistake," he said.
"We do around 30,000 to 40,000 letters a day and use an external mail house to process them. It may have been an error there.
"I'm not trying to make an excuse. We do accept responsibility for what they do."
Edwards ignored questions around the financial settlement.
ACC Minister Nick Smith last night said the corporation had not briefed him on the case – or the $10,000 payout – and he would meet officials tomorrow.
"Any breach of ACC's confidentiality requirements is unacceptable.
"It is inevitable in a large organisation like ACC, which deals with 1.6 million claims each year, that there will be mistakes," Smith said.
The minister said he would expect the privacy commissioner to investigate "not just the breach, but also whether there has been any system failure at ACC that needs to be addressed".
The misdirected patient file is not the first problem the woman, who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father in the 1980s, has experienced with ACC.
In April the Star-Times revealed details of internal ACC emails that labelled the woman a "mental health nutter" and someone who should consider taking her own life.
A senior staff member from the sensitive claims unit was relocated.

© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Limited
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3955167/ACC-blunder-puts-sex-abuse-file-in-wrong-hands

Rape victim: ACC cut my lifeline

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Tim Hume

Last month, an Auckland mother died after her claim for ACC-funded counselling was rejected under ACC's new 'clinical pathway' for sensitive claimants. But many existing ACC clients claim they are also having their counselling for sexual abuse terminated. One multiple rape survivor tells Tim Hume how having her therapy discontinued has pushed her to the brink, and why she is speaking out to call for changes to the way abuse victims are treated.
The worst part is the nightmares. "Getting raped every single night when I go to sleep. I can only sleep for 45 minutes before I wake up screaming," says Danielle Martin. "I've got a hammer in my bed. If I knew it was going to be like that every night for the next 30 years, I'd kill myself."
The 32-year-old was first raped when she was 16. The attack happened at Red Beach, north of Auckland. Her attacker was known to her and she says he had a serious drug problem. As she ran from the scene, he chased her to the side of the road and laid into her with his boots.
A private-school girl who had been going through a tearaway stage after becoming estranged from her family, Martin took refuge in a caravan park. A few weeks later, her attacker tracked her down, tied her up and held her hostage for 38 hours, subjecting her to all kinds of indignities. "He cut up or destroyed everything I owned: clothes, photos. He was burning me with knives."
Martin eventually escaped by pleading to be allowed to do her park-cleaning duties, then running to the home of the managers, but not before the man had made a cut on her throat and threatened to kill her and her family if she told anyone.
She didn't, trying instead to forget and move on with her life, and eventually got a job at a bar in Auckland's Viaduct. But after a staff party one night, when she was 18, she was drugged and raped by one of the regulars. She remembers only brief flashes of what took place, but the attack left her with lasting physical injuries.
Her trauma went untreated and unacknowledged, and the subsequent years were filled with depression, addiction, nightmares and self-harm until she finally sought help from a counsellor. In October 2000, her claim as a rape survivor – a "sensitive claimant" – was accepted by ACC, entitling her to heavily subsidised counselling.
At first, the counselling had limited success. She went through about 20 counsellors and psychiatrists without feeling comfortable divulging or addressing the trauma at the core of her issues.
"I never felt safe or made that connection," she says. Life was hard, sometimes unbearable. As a result of the attacks, she had chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression, conditions which constituted a disability and made it extremely difficult to leave the home, use public transport, or maintain social links.
But in the past two years she established a connection with a regular counsellor and a psychiatrist, who allowed her to finally "get into the grit" of her trauma. She made what her psychiatrist called "slow but significant progress" and began to study for a counselling degree.
This was all reversed in October when, out of the blue, Martin received a call from her ACC case manager telling her that her twice-weekly sessions with her counsellor were to come to an end.
In November came a letter: "We're pleased to tell you we've approved your decision for a final 20 sessions. Please note there will be no further counselling sessions approved."
Martin was devastated. "I've been suicidal as a direct result of this."
ACC senior medical adviser Dr Peter Jansen said that while Martin and her psychiatrist might have felt she was making progress with her present regime, the opinion of ACC's experts was that "the long-term counselling has created a dependency that has been counter-productive".
He said Martin had already had 280 ACC-funded counselling sessions. One of ACC's expert assessors, through an assessment which included a review of her case history, determined she would be better off at Segar House, a mental health treatment centre operated and funded by the Auckland District Health Board.
"We want the right care so that people recover from their injury."
Martin, who has had trust issues and finds it difficult leaving the security of home, felt she was incapable of undertaking the programme at Segar House, which has a group therapy component and would involve revisiting the trauma of her rapes with new counsellors.
Her psychiatrist agreed and wrote in a letter to ACC last month: "Since having funding for this intervention discontinued, she has in fact deteriorated significantly – is currently in fact more severely unwell than when first seen but is not accessing any care or follow-up other than that provided by her GP."
Martin said she had been "revictimised" by ACC, which had taken away her lifeline. "I don't have anybody I can talk to about this," she says. She has been calling mental health crisis helplines just about every day but they are not equipped to properly help.
During a recent call, after she woke up hyperventilating from a nightmare, she was advised to take a walk around the block.
"Rape is the ultimate form of powerlessness, the ultimate form of having your choices taken away. And I've been kept in the dark and given no options," she says.
"Therapy helped. My quality of life was improving, my prospects, my ability to be cohesive with other people and my chances of being a productive member of society. I've gone from having some semblance of a normal life ... [to being] a rape victim with worsening symptoms and no help."
Since her counselling was discontinued, Martin has made her blog publicly accessible and has been tweeting about the ordeal, including messages to the prime minister's account. (She received no reply).
"If I'm dead next week, I need this documented," she says. "I've done the right thing. I've been really honest with my treatment providers. I've worked really hard, I've stepped out of my comfort zone to get well. I can still potentially have a really good future. But they're not going to do the right thing unless they're shamed into it."
David Wadsworth of Access Support Services, who is advocating on Martin's behalf, said her case was symptomatic of ACC's "assault on sensitive claimants". "If ACC can get out of any funding of sensitive claims claimants, they'll do it by hook or by crook, as I see it. And they're really the most vulnerable group."
The corporation's new "clinical pathway", which required new clients to be diagnosed with "a significant mental injury" before their applications for sexual abuse counselling could be accepted, had seen the number of sensitive claims approved drop from 472 in the first two months of last year to just 32 in the same period this year. Last month, an Auckland mother died four days after her claim for counselling was rejected.
Meanwhile, many longer-term sensitive claimants were being subjected to reassessments of their treatment regime, which saw them pushed off ACC-funded counselling into DHB-funded programmes.
"They're leaving the claimant high and dry. Four months down the track the person hasn't had any counselling. It's caused a lot of damage to them. They're essentially being retraumatised," Wadsworth said.
Jansen said perceptions that ACC was turfing long-term claimants off counselling regimes to cut costs were incorrect. However, until recently, ACC had been funding treatment for many people who weren't covered by the legislation or weren't getting appropriate treatment.
"If the community is concerned that people are exiting from ACC, my concern would be that they exit because they are recovered."
For regional Rape Crisis help line numbers visit www.rapecrisis.org.nz.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3702810/Rape-victim-ACC-cut-my-lifeline/

ACC accused of 'brutal' email attack on sexual abuse victim

An article from the Sunday Star Times by Jonathan Marshall

ACC has investigated claims staff emailed each other denigrating a sexual abuse victim, describing her as a "mental health nutter".
The Sunday Star-Times has obtained internal emails purportedly written by Accident Compensation Corporation staff in which they are highly critical of the woman, her sexual abuse and family history.
But ACC said on Friday it believed the emails were mostly fakes and was considering laying a complaint with police. The corporation did not say who it believed was behind the emails, and the sexual abuse claimant was adamant they had been leaked to her by a concerned ACC staffer appalled at how she was being treated. The woman's claim is handled by ACC's sensitive claims unit.
And the woman has her own appointment with police on Tuesday, at which she would report a letter she said arrived in the post last week suggesting she was "evil" and should take her own life.
The Star-Times has learned the emails were provided to ACC on March 25 and a top-level inquiry kicked off. ACC appeared to have completed that investigation but wouldn't say what it involved.
"We have seen the supposed `abusive-type emails' and we believe that most, if not all, may be fabricated," said Denise Cosgrove, general manager of ACC's claim management. ACC was "considering whether to refer our concerns to the police for further investigation".
The bundle of messages includes emails:

• Describing the claimant as a "mental health nutter".
• Mentioning how one of the woman's children took her own life after learning she was the product of incest. "No wonder, with a birth mother like this one!!" one reads.
• Mentioning discussion of a staff member who appeared to be sympathetic with the woman's tragic case: "He thinks she's the most wonderful wonder miracle of the world and testament to rehabilitation and all that other babble. Silly bugger, she must have conned him as well." The email continues: "We could have got rid of her a long time ago, one less nutter on our books."

The Star-Times has been told that in the days after the March 25 handover a senior staff member was moved from the sensitive claims unit, but Cosgrove would not discuss that.
The offensive emails are just one piece of a troubled jigsaw that ACC and the woman have been involved with since she lodged a sexual abuse claim in the 1980s after being sexually abused by her father.
The corporation has been forced to apologise to the woman for a string of "failures" involving breaches of their patient code of conduct.
"It is true that in the case of [the victim] there have been several failures by ACC to meet the standards set out in the Code of ACC Claimants' Rights. We are not happy about that, and have apologised to her on each occasion," Cosgrove said.
ACC refused to confirm exactly how many times it had apologised to the woman but the Star-Times has seen at least five letters. One, dated August 2008, sent to the woman by ACC's Sue Walker, related to offensive emails.
"I would like to apologise for the emails sent between Rotorua branch and sensitive claims unit that contained negative information and held inappropriate content," Walker wrote. "Clearly it has left you feeling as though you have not been treated with respect and I regret that it has made you feel this way."
Cosgrove said the woman's case was "most unusual" and was "the result of multiple communication and relationship issues, not all of which are attributable to ACC".
The claimant said the emails had been extremely distressing for her to read and she was further upset to hear ACC had questioned their authenticity.
Her advocate, David Wadsworth, said in all of his time working in the industry he had "never seen such a brutal attack by a government department on an individual who has suffered too much already".
The woman is asking ACC for weekly compensation and treatment charges which relate to a claim, in part, for suffering at Auckland's Centrepoint Community.
Medical reports show the woman fell pregnant to her father three times, the first at age 11. Her father – now dead – was convicted of incest and jailed.

© 2010 Fairfax New Zealand Limited
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3594068/ACC-accused-of-brutal-email-attack-on-sexual-abuse-victim