Qualla: Lake Alice Hospital https://qualla.com/lake-alice-hospital en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:28 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/b/u/e/lake-alice-hospital-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Lake Alice Hospital https://qualla.com/lake-alice-hospital Lake Alice Hospital: Introduction https://qualla.com/lake-alice-hospital/ Photo credit Pawful at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The buildings are mostly gone now. The workshops, the villas, the maximum security unit that once stood on 56 hectares of rural Manawatu-Whanganui farmland have been demolished or left to decay. What remains is a story that New Zealand spent decades trying not to tell. Lake Alice Hospital opened in August 1950 as a psychiatric facility, largely self-sufficient with its own farm, bakery, laundry, and fire station. It also had a child and adolescent unit. And in that unit, during the 1970s, children in the care of the state were tortured.

Read more: Lake Alice Hospital on Qualla

Image: Pawful at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/b/u/e/lake-alice-hospital-wp/rbue-lake-alice-hospital-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Lake Alice Hospital: Behind the Self-Sufficient Facade https://qualla.com/lake-alice-hospital/ Photo credit Pawful at en.wikipedia, Public domain. From the outside, Lake Alice looked like many of New Zealand's rural psychiatric hospitals of its era. It had swimming pools, glasshouses, and vegetable gardens. Patients worked the farm. The facility operated with the quiet self-containment that distance from cities allowed and ...

Read more: Lake Alice Hospital on Qualla

Image: Pawful at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/b/u/e/lake-alice-hospital-wp/rbue-lake-alice-hospital-behind-the-self-sufficient-facade.mp3 0:06 2 full Lake Alice Hospital: What Was Done to Them https://qualla.com/lake-alice-hospital/ Photo credit Pawful at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The survivors have been explicit about what happened. Electroconvulsive therapy, which in legitimate medical practice is administered under general anaesthetic, was applied to children fully conscious. The pain was used to enforce compliance. Paraldehyde injections served the sam...

Read more: Lake Alice Hospital on Qualla

Image: Pawful at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/b/u/e/lake-alice-hospital-wp/rbue-lake-alice-hospital-what-was-done-to-them.mp3 0:06 3 full Lake Alice Hospital: Decades of Denial https://qualla.com/lake-alice-hospital/ Photo credit Pawful at en.wikipedia, Public domain. When former patients began making allegations publicly, the response from the New Zealand government was slow and grudging. In 2001, the government issued a written apology and paid NZ$10.7 million in compensation to 183 former patients, but it refused to acknowledge the long-ter...

Read more: Lake Alice Hospital on Qualla

Image: Pawful at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/b/u/e/lake-alice-hospital-wp/rbue-lake-alice-hospital-decades-of-denial.mp3 0:06 4 full Lake Alice Hospital: The Fight That Will Not End https://qualla.com/lake-alice-hospital/ Photo credit Pawful at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The original 2001 settlement paid survivors an average of $41,000 each, with $27,000 deducted in legal fees per claimant, leaving some with barely enough to cover the cost of the trauma that followed them through their lives. Later claimants received an average of $70,000 after t...

Read more: Lake Alice Hospital on Qualla

Image: Pawful at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/b/u/e/lake-alice-hospital-wp/rbue-lake-alice-hospital-the-fight-that-will-not-end.mp3 0:06 5 full Lake Alice Hospital: What the Land Remembers https://qualla.com/lake-alice-hospital/ Photo credit Pawful at en.wikipedia, Public domain. The hospital's final years were a slow unwinding. The facility shut down incrementally through the mid-1990s and closed its doors in October 1999. The 56-hectare site and its buildings were sold in 2006 to a property developer, but development plans collapsed during the financial...

Read more: Lake Alice Hospital on Qualla

Image: Pawful at en.wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/b/u/e/lake-alice-hospital-wp/rbue-lake-alice-hospital-what-the-land-remembers.mp3 0:06 6 full