Lake Alice compensation money shouldn\u2019t count when MSD assesses a person\u2019s eligibility for a benefit<\/a>, nor should assets bought from it, such as Zentveld\u2019s boat.<\/p>\nHe said MSD\u2019s decision felt as if mistreatment of survivors of abuse was continuing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis clawing back \u2013 what MSD are doing and all these things against the survivors for redress \u2013 this is not saying sorry. This is not making things right. It continues year after year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zentveld would receive back payments for the money he\u2019d missed, although he now faced another wait, as his landlord was overseas and MSD required an invoice from him.<\/p>\n
Zentveld said the landlord was okay with him getting in arrears and catching up later, if needed.<\/p>\n
Call to review other decisions<\/p>\n
MSD\u2019s group general manager for client service delivery Graham Allpress said officials received the review committee\u2019s decision on June 29 and were \u201cworking through next steps\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will update the client once this decision has been implemented.\u201d<\/p>\n
RNZ asked if, in light of the decision, MSD would check other decisions affecting Lake Alice survivors who had received compensation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll decisions of the benefits review committee, including this one, only apply to a client\u2019s individual case,\u201d Allpress said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis decision will be considered as part of ongoing work around Lake Alice redress payments and the welfare system.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said if a person didn\u2019t agree with a decision about a benefit, MSD would let them know about their rights to appeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur staff do their best to support clients and make the appropriate decisions based on information they have available at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zentveld said MSD\u2019s response wasn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cMSD top brass should review all the Lake Alice survivors and refund them, because it\u2019s not right.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got them. I\u2019ve busted them wide open at their own game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A piece of dirt on the bottom of their shoe\u2019<\/p>\n
Former chief human rights commissioner David Rutherford agreed decisions affecting other survivors should be checked.<\/p>\n
Rutherford has supported Zentveld\u2019s fight for recognition for abuse survivors for years, including to the United Nations Committee against Torture.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is concerning that it took a survivor of the torture at Lake Alice to win an appeal, essentially. And some of the background information shared is also concerning because it appears that people don\u2019t understand within MSD what survivors have been through.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Zentveld\u2019s case, that included getting electric shocks and paralysing injections. Zentveld and many other survivors told their stories before a Royal Commission into abuse in care in 2021.<\/p>\n
Rutherford said Zentveld and others in his situation would have opted for a $150,000 rapid compensation payment partly so they didn\u2019t have to worry any more about bureaucratic stonewalling.<\/p>\n
\u201cPaul would have expected when he received that money that he could spend it as he liked, on what he liked, and that\u2019s what he did.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then he had a situation where, essentially, the MSD people were saying, \u2018If you keep that money in the bank as cash, we wouldn\u2019t have had a problem, but because you\u2019ve bought a boat, we do\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat, fortunately, was overturned on the appeal, but that\u2019s what the frontline people were saying, and that\u2019s the sort of problem that the survivors were trying to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Human rights lawyer Lydia Oosterhoff said she was not surprised to hear about Zentveld\u2019s fight for his entitlement, given her clients\u2019 interactions with MSD.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy experience is that the ministry treats survivors like a piece of dirt on the bottom of their shoe, a mere inconvenience. They don\u2019t see them as people. They see them as a risk that they need to pay to go away.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ministry does not appreciate that, often, survivors are in the situation that they are today because of what the state did to them in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was also not surprised that MSD wouldn\u2019t automatically review decisions about other Lake Alice survivors who had received compensation, saying she\u2019d had similar struggles after winning a judicial review about abuse in care compensation.<\/p>\n
The minister overseeing the response to the Royal Commission about abuse in care, Erica Stanford, was aware of MSD\u2019s decision about Zentveld\u2019s accommodation supplement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen this issue was first brought to my attention I raised it with my officials, the Crown Response Office, who engaged with MSD. It is my expectation that this is resolved as a matter of priority.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zentveld is one of more than 100 Lake Alice survivors who have opted for a $150,000 compensation payment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,3359,21972,20703,26665,33912,679,42,78,1736,13207,4960,43,3109,14484,61,40,38,41,39,12475],"class_list":["post-527118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-alice","tag-benefit","tag-cancelled","tag-carpark","tag-ellingham","tag-forced","tag-headlines","tag-in","tag-jimmy","tag-lake","tag-live","tag-news","tag-public","tag-survivor","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wrongly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}