Shadow of Doubt podcast: Psych unit staff’s concerns over treatment of daughter

Episode 2 of our Shadow of Doubt podcast is live now, featuring psych unit staff’s horror at the ‘abominable’ treatment of a young woman who recovered memories of child abuse.

Our podcast Shadow of Doubt is an investigation into how mental health and justice systems handled a troubled young woman’s allegations of shocking abuse. Illustration and design by Emilia Tortorella.

A mental health hospital had mismanaged the treatment of a young woman whose recovered memories of sadistic abuse led to long jail terms for her parents, according to a senior psychiatrist who worked at the hospital.

The teenager received ‘abominable’ care in the mental health ward in the months before she began remembering 13 years of extreme abuse by her mother and father, the psychiatrist has told The Australian’s Shadow Of Doubt podcast.

A former nurse at the hospital says she also became concerned after learning that the young woman was receiving treatment in a sexual assault centre that had a poor reputation among hospital staff for its counselling methods.

Shadow of Doubt: daughter ‘Emily’.

Convicted dad ‘Martin’ spoke from jail.

The parents at the centre of the case are both in prison and are pushing for a judicial review of their convictions, arguing that their daughter’s allegations were based on unreliable ‘repressed memories’ retrieved in counselling. The father’s 48-year jail sentence is the longest on record for child abuse in Australia.

The case began when the couple’s 17 year-old daughter, a high-performance sportswoman, was admitted to a public mental health ward after she reported being sexually assaulted by a team masseur. While detained in the hospital for nearly four months, she self-harmed and tried to escape many times, eventually making extensive allegations of abuse against her parents.

Episode 2 is live now, exclusively for subscribers. Tap here to listen

A senior psychiatrist who worked at the hospital, and who cannot be named for legal reasons, has told the Shadow of Doubt podcast that her treatment records suggest the case was mismanaged. He said detaining such a highly trained sportswoman in a heavily sedated state for so long had likely heightened her distress and worsened her mental health problems.

When shown a chart of the drug doses she was administered, he said: “Look, this is just an abomination … That’s all I can say. It’s an abomination.”

The young woman’s mother, who is now serving a 16-year jail term, says her daughter was almost catatonic when she visited her in hospital, and doctors failed to offer any explanation for her escalating suicide attempts.

“I did bring up with them that I was very concerned …[that] the wiring of her brain and her whole body and the way she responded and needed to eat and needed to exercise could be adding to the depression,” the mother said. “To suddenly stop and to do what they did to her, and then fill her up with antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs – to me, it could have only added to what was already occurring. But no one listened.”

The mother says she was also concerned that her daughter was receiving counselling from both a psychiatrist in the hospital and a social worker in a separate sexual assault centre, because the two did not appear to be communicating enough.

Mental health staff in the hospital shared those concerns at the time, The Australian has learned. A former senior nurse told the Shadow Of Doubt podcast that the sexual assault centre was jokingly referred to by some hospital staff as a place where “voodoo” was practised.

“A lot of our seniors were wondering what was going on, and we were told she did ‘sand therapy’ or ‘sand play’ therapy, and some kind of memory recall therapy,” the nurse said. “It seemed to be kept secret from us, kept away.”

The senior psychiatrist, who has since left the hospital, said he found it “absurd” that a young woman receiving treatment for serious mental health issues in a psychiatric ward would simultaneously undergo counselling in a separate sexual assault centre.

“They’re two different services with a completely different orientation,” he said. “It’s quite unsatisfactory. And, just as a consultant psychiatrist, I never felt that the approach of sending people from a psych unit to a counselling service was appropriate.”

He recalled that the young woman’s case divided staff, with some expressing doubt about the allegations she was making against her parents, while her treating doctors appeared to be unquestioning. According to hospital records, the young woman was “flooded” with memories of abuse six months after she was first admitted, and began remembering that her father had raped her from the age of eight.

She later told police that her father had sadistically abused and tortured her from the age of five, and that her mother had encouraged and participated in the abuse. Her psychiatrist testified that these memories had been “blocked out” because of a disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder.

One of the couple’s other daughters testified during the trial that her father had sexually assaulted her when he conducted sports massages in her teens.

The parents’ appeals have all failed, and they are seeking a judicial review of their case with the assistance of pro bono lawyers.

*The images used with this podcast investigation are for illustrative purposes only and bear no resemblance to the real people in this story, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.

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