Articles in this issue:
- Royal Commission to Probe Psych Crimes
- ‘Incredible Persistence’ by CCHR Brings a Government Inquiry…
Royal Commission to Probe ‘Psych’ Crimes
CCHR Spreads Investigation Worldwide
A Royal Commission, the highest form of governmental investigative body in Australia, has been established to investigate and document all crimes committed in the name of “mental health” in the state of New South Wales.
The announcement of the Royal Commission by Health Minister Peter Collins followed a campaign begun by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) more than a decade ago to expose the brutal psychiatric tortures at Chelmsford Private Hospital.
[Inset: See Newspaper Headline Pictorial — Pages 4, 5]
First Priority
The first priority of the Royal Commission will be the atrocities perpetrated under the direction of psychiatrist Harry Bailey at Chelmsford. It was at Chelmsford, located in Sydney, that Bailey delivered what was known as “deep sleep,” a brutal procedure in which near lethal
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CHELMSFORD CAMPAIGN IN AUSTRALIA
Royal Commission to Probe ‘Psych’ Crimes(continued from page 1)
dosages of barbiturates were administered to put the person in a drug-induced coma for as long as four weeks at a time. While unconscious, the victims received crippling electric shocks.
At least 69 deaths have now been documented as having occurred at Chelmsford, 26 from deep sleep alone; hundreds, possibly thousands, of others were maimed or disabled.
“The lid is finally coming off one of the biggest psychiatric atrocities in history,” says Jan Eastgate, president of CCHR in Australia, who spearheaded the lengthy investigation into Chelmsford.
Working closely with members of Parliament and the Chelmsford Victims Action Group, an organization of more than 100 survivors of the hospital, CCHR has led the battle for mental health reform in Australia.
Chelmsford’s doors were recently closed permanently as a result of CCHR’s exposures of the crimes committed there. But the investigation into psychiatric atrocities continued and CCHR has come up with evidence which has revealed just how widespread the use of psychiatric deep sleep torture has been in other countries around the world.
“Our research has shown that psychiatrists were also experimenting with deep sleep in the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada and the United States,” says Jan.
“We know that Bailey studied deep sleep in some of these countries,” she continues. “We intend to investigate all possible places that Bailey studied deep sleep outside Australia and forward what we find to the Royal Commission to ensure the full scope of this scourge on humanity is publicly documented.”
CCHR Exposes Evidence of Crimes
Harry Bailey committed suicide in September 1985, the day before he was due to appear in court to answer questions about the atrocities at Chelmsford.
After his death, the Australian press would describe Bailey as “a sadist dressed up as a doctor.” His lectures and personal papers reveal that he studied the techniques of deep sleep and related procedures in the early 1950s at a number of psychiatric hospitals throughout the world and brought what he learned back to Australia.
“Using data we’ve uncovered in our investigations, we’ve begun a coordinated effort with CCHR groups around the world to trace the international connections of this incredible psychiatric web of horror,” says Jan. “CCHR International now has investigative teams in operation in a number of countries, and we are finding that Chelmsford was only the tip of the iceberg.”
Tulane University
One of the places Bailey visited to learn the techniques he later used at Chelmsford was Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he worked with a psychiatrist named Robert Heath.
With Heath, Bailey later stated, he participated in a number of bizarre mind control experiments in which live electrodes were implanted through holes drilled in the skulls of the victims. The purpose of such experiments was to control behavior with shocks delivered directly to the brain.
A team of investigators headed by Sanford Block, CCHR director in the United States, visited Tulane in August. The team’s first action was to deliver a three-page letter from the Chelmsford Victims Action Group to Eamon Kelly, president of Tulane. The letter asked Kelly for his assistance in gathering evidence of the inhuman experiments Bailey reported had been performed there so that this evidence could be turned over to the Royal Commission.
“We have been part of what has been labeled the ‘greatest psychiatric and medical scandal in the history of Australia,”‘ the victims stated in the letter. “We have fought long and hard for justice which may now come to light in the Royal Commission. Your assistance in this matter would help bring about that long-awaited justice. Any information you can present to CCHR, who can
forward this to us, would be greatly appreciated.”President Suddenly Goes on “Vacation”
The day after the letter was delivered to Kelly’s administrative secretary, the president of the university abruptly went on vacation. Within a matter of days, several individuals at Tulane who allegedly were involved in these barbaric experiments or might have known about them were also suddenly “unavailable.”
“For years the psychiatric community in Australia attempted to stall and suppress any investigation into Chelmsford and Bailey’s murderous ‘treatments,”‘ Block told Scientology Today. “It comes as no surprise that CCHR is now meeting with the same tactics in the United States.”
As part of its investigation in New Orleans, CCHR has been running a newspaper advertisement asking victims of psychiatric mind control experiments to come forward. The ad, which shows a man with wires implanted in his brain, has already started to draw responses.
“People have come forward,” Block says, “and as a result we have found at least one other location in Louisiana where these experiments may have been carried out.” He adds that one confidential source has indicated deep sleep techniques may be currently in use at certain psychiatric hospitals in Louisiana.
“It may take the same persistence here that it took in Australia to uncover the full extent of the psychiatric crimes that are taking place in the United States, but we are definitely going to find out what those crimes are and get them exposed,” he concludes.
CCHR Finds Bailey Connection in Sweden
Another place that Bailey visited was the University of Lund’s Leksell Clinic in Sweden. While there, he studied under Professor Lars Leksell, whom he described as “Europe’s leading experimental brain surgeon.”
Bailey credited Leksell as the man who originally developed many of the brutal psychosurgery techniques that turn victims into helpless vegetables.
Says Jan Eastgate, “The vicious forms of psychosurgery that were taught in Sweden were later carried back to Australia by Bailey and used to ruin the lives of thousands of innocent people.”
In July 1988, due to the efforts of CCHR, psychosurgery was finally banned in New South Wales. (See “Psychosurgery Banned in Australia!” Scientology Today Volume I, Issue 4.)
“CCHR wants to know if these inhuman experimental operations were also performed at Leksell Clinic and, if so, whether they are still occurring,” says Jan. “There may well be grounds for a full scale inquiry in Sweden.”
Following the Trail To Italy and the UK
CCHR has recently opened two more investigations into deep sleep — in Italy and the United Kingdom.
“Although our investigation has just begun in Italy, CCHR has already obtained evidence of the same kind of abuses here that took place in Australia,” says Luigi Cosivi, CCHR national spokesman for Italy.
“We have uncovered at least three deaths and are tracing reports of many others,” he says. One of these deaths was a woman who set herself on fire after
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psychiatric “treatments.”
News of CCHR’s investigation is already making headlines throughout Italy, and the story has been picked up by radio and television stations, with some radio stations running special advertisements calling for victims of deep sleep to come forward and contact CCHR.
“There is no telling how many innocent people have been killed, maimed and permanently disabled by these brutal and savage psychiatric procedures,” Luigi notes.
An investigation has also been opened into hospitals in London, where psychiatrist William Sargant conducted numerous experiments using drugs and electric shock. Sargant, who died recently, was a major advocate of deep sleep and a primary influence on Harry Bailey.
At St. Thomas’. Hospital, one place where Sargant carried out drug and shock experiments, CCHR has already uncovered evidence that at least four of Sargant’s patients died while under his “care.”
Sargant once boasted in the British Medical Journal that he had “used various forms of continuous sleep treatment . . . on several thousands of patients. . . .”
[Image: Tulane Medical Center]
“There is little doubt that we will find exactly the same kind of atrocities in England that were taking place in Australia,” says Justine Petersen, CCHR spokeswoman for the United Kingdom.
Validation for CCHR
The response in Australia to CCHR’s strong anti-psych campaign has been overwhelmingly positive.
One newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, which has been covering the story of the atrocities continuously for months, has had to assign staff full-time just to answer the calls that have been flooding in as a result of the ongoing press accounts of the Royal Commission’s investigation.
Since 1985, more than 1,000 articles have been written on Chelmsford, almost all of them crediting Scientologists or CCHR for leading the attack against the psychs. Victims have continued to come forward with more and more horror stories. To date, more than 100 victims have contacted CCHR with additional information about the psychiatric atrocities that took place not only at Chelmsford but at many other locations in Australia.
Television and radio stations which have continued to run the Chelmsford story report that their viewers and listeners have been calling in to validate Scientologists for their courageous work.
As a result of the massive press coverage, the Sydney org has been flooded with new people asking for more information about Scientology.
“CCHR’s work has made it clear to everyone just how deadly psychiatry’s dehumanizing practices really are,” Jan Eastgate says. “Now that the international scope of the situation has begun to unfold, we are more determined than ever to continue until psychiatry is banned completely from every corner of the world.”
CHELMSFORD: THE TRUTH AT LAST
‘Incredible Persistence’ by CCHR Brings a Government Inquiry…
The announcement that a Royal Commission is being established in New South Wales to investigate all mental health services in that state is the result of a more than 10-year campaign by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) in Sydney.The campaign started with CCHR’s exposure of brutal psychiatric “treatment” at Chelmsford Private Hospital, where 69 documented deaths occurred, at least 26 of those from deep sedation — better known as “deep sleep.”
The Beginning
It started in the mid-1970s, when CCHR received a number of complaints about Chelmsford from people who knew of patients who had been turned into zombies, others who had been left with portions of their bodies paralyzed, and still others who had died during or after deep sleep.
Investigation by CCHR uncovered further gruesome details of abuses committed at Chelmsford. Electric shock was being administered to patients without their consent while they were comatose from the deep sleep drugs.
Doctors were grossly negligent, only visiting the deep sleep area once a week and leaving the care of these.patients to the nurses the rest of the time. Furthermore, as CCHR revealed, the doctors were issuing orders about the patients’ care over the phone without ever examining them at all. They were even presigning “drug treatment” sheets and
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handing them over to the nurses to fill in the patients’ names and administer drugs without any approval from the doctors at all.
CCHR first demanded a public investigation into Chelmsford in 1978, presenting evidence to the attorney general and minister for health that six people had died as a result of the barbarities there.
“Incredible Persistence”
“Even with clearcut evidence of outrageous psychiatric crimes, it took incredible persistence for us to get the government to take the necessary actions to bring these criminals to justice,” Jan Eastgate, president of CCHR in Australia, told Scientology Today.
“One of the biggest problems we ran into,” she explained, “was the flagrant attempts by psychiatrists in different parts of the world to keep us from exposing the truth.”
Jan referred Scientology Today to a letter from a psychiatrist who was particularly candid about his intentions. Sir Martin Roth, a professor of psychiatry at Cambridge University, wrote the letter to a colleague on January 6, 1981, in which he spelled out his fears about the Chelmsford scandal in Australia.
“The inhumanity and cruelty to which patients appear to have been subjected,” he wrote, “is quite unique in my experience and the Scientologists and other organizations will have obtained ammunition for years or decades to come.
“There is, therefore, a pressing need for maintaining strict confidentiality at this stage until one can set these barbarities in the context of contemporary practice in psychiatry by a carefully prepared statement that comes from colleges and other bodies concerned.”
But CCHR refused to allow the psychiatrists to minimize their atrocities with “carefully prepared statements” such as Roth had suggested. Members of the group kept on documenting the never-ending stream of abuses that were coming to light, and continued to demand that the government do something about them.
CCHR Forces the Issue To Be Confronted
CCHR was pleased when, on October 17, 1978, the attorney general responded to the group’s information about Chelmsford by writing to the minister for health and asking him to begin an investigation into the hospital. A representative from the Private Hospitals Division of the Health Commission even did an inspection at Chelmsford and verified CCHR’s report that Harry Bailey was issuing presigned drug forms.
After the inspection, the minister for health wrote back to the attorney general promising him that he was going to see that a full investigation was carried out.
But CCHR soon realized that it had been an empty promise. No investigation was done.
Meanwhile, CCHR submitted evidence of Chelmsford abuses to the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. Not surprisingly, although the college acknowledged receiving the materials, it did nothing to discipline the responsible psychiatrists.
Determined to force the responsible government officials to confront the matter, CCHR used every possible avenue in its appeal for justice. Complaints against Bailey were filed with the New South Wales Medical Board in 1978 and again in 1980. But CCHR got nothing but a run-around. The board simply referred the complaints to the health commission, and the health commission then referred the matter back to the medical board!
Ethics Goes in — Finally
CCHR’s persistence eventually began to pay off.
After one of Harry Bailey’s deep sleep victims committed suicide, a coroner’s inquest was convened which uncovered evidence that Harry Bailey had become $100,000 richer as a result of her death. The woman, who had also been Bailey’s lover, had named him as sole beneficiary in her will.
In 1982, five years after the death of another Bailey victim, CCHR’s efforts resulted in the opening of an inquest to investigate the cause of her death. The coroner reported that the woman died as a result of criminal negligence on the part of Bailey and two other Chelmsford psychiatrists.
While she had been given deep sleep, the woman exhibited numerous signs of internal bleeding. Despite this, Bailey kept the woman in a drug-induced coma and continued to administer blasts of electric shock until she died.
Shortly after this inquest, the attorney general charged Bailey with manslaughter based on the coroner’s findings of criminal negligence.
As horror story on top of horror story continued to pile up, the government was forced to take action. In 1983, the Mental Health Act was passed in New South Wales, outlawing deep sleep and establishing the Complaints Unit within the health department to investigate abuses against patients and to protect their rights.
A year after the passage of the Mental Health Act in New South Wales, the government announced that it would revamp the Medical Practitioners Act to speed up investigations of complaints against doctors.
By this time, numerous other complaints had been filed against Harry Bailey. He was soon facing disciplinary charges issued by the medical board and was later summoned before a disciplinary tribunal investigating him under the Medical Practitioners Act.
One month before he was due to appear before the disciplinary tribunal and the day before he was to appear in court to answer other charges regarding the atrocities at Chelmsford, Bailey committed suicide by taking an overdose of a barbiturate he regularly prescribed for his patients.
In a suicide note, Bailey admitted that the Scientologists had investigated him tirelessly. “They have finally won,” he wrote.
In November 1985, the New South Wales Department of Health launched its own inquiry into doctors using deep sleep techniques, and as a result filed complaints of professional misconduct against three other Chelmsford psychiatrists. The department established its own Joint Task Force to undertake a wide-ranging investigation into the barbarities directed against patients at the
hospital.By June 1988, Chelmsford hospital – the “hell-hole,” as it came to be called in the press – had officially closed its doors.
Bringing Psychiatry to Justice
As CCHR fought to bring psychiatry to justice, some of those who had been involved in the atrocities tried to justify what had happened by lamely insisting that the horrors of Chelmsford represented only isolated incidents.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” says Jan Eastgate. “These are the kinds of atrocities regularly committed by psychiatrists all over the world.
“As we know, psychiatry, with its barbaric practices, is responsible for creating the crime, violence and human suffering so prevalent in society today,” she continues.
“That is why CCHR, backed up by the Office of Special Affairs, is working to eliminate psychiatric violations of human rights.”
Jan cites HCOB 16 July 1970, THE PSYCHIATRIST AT WORK, in which LRH describes the horrors of psychiatric “treatments”:
“Under a ‘drug treatment’ engram you often find savage electric shocks of execution strength buried.
“It is doubtful if one could watch an electric shock ‘treatment’ without vomiting.
“In ‘neurosurgery’ the Ice Pick is used to rip and tear up people’s brains.
“Holes are drilled in skulls and the brain sliced up.
“No evidence exists that this ever helped anyone but it makes incurable invalids.”
Jan points out that it is the responsibility of all Scientologists to help expose and eradicate psychiatric abuses so that the field of mental health is truly cleaned up on this planet.