George Alexander:
The people from whom we will hear, are lawyers talking not about their own experience but about the experience of their clients. There are two: the first is Christa Peter, who I hope, will now give us her statement.

Mrs. Christa Peter (translated from German):
I am here as a lawyer and there are a number of my clients who are in the same psychiatric clinic that my neighbor just referred to. Let me just say something very briefly about the legal arrangements or constructions because it struck me that things weren't quite clear in your mind, earlier on. The situation is the following: if somebody commits a criminal act and its a serious offence or if the judge isn't quite sure about the personality of the offender, the court can call apon a psychiatric expert and this expert is then commissioned to establish whether the person who is to appear before court is responsible for his deeds or if he was suffering from a severe impairment i.e. a psychiatric illness, psychosis, illness or whether this was imbecility or – and this is the difficulty that is involved here – whether he is suffering from a serious different deviation, which woiuld have such a serious impact on his life or on the conduct of his life as if he were imbecile. 

This clarification is precisely the crux of the issue. This is where the power of psychiartry makes itself felt. Here the points are set and based on experience, this means that if somebody has actually committed the act of which he is accused – this of course has to be established first of all – then it will then be decided whether somebody will be sentenced in accordance with the penal code and that involves a termination after a certain period or whether the person concerned will be committed to a psychiatric clinic on an open-end basis. That's what I wanted to say at the outset, to try and make things clear. 

Another aspect of my work since 1997, basically the past four years, is that one thing is becoming ever clearer to me and that is that the people, who are accommodated in mental homes and psychiatric clinics have a culprit funciton. These people are locked up – as it were – safe and it gives society the feeling that we are protecting the public at large from people who are a potential threat or danger. The fact of the matter is, however that on the other hand, we accept justifiably that offenders, once they have had their senctence, will be released and the people then no longer ask and no forecast is made at that stage, it is just accepted that under certain circumstances, they may repeat their crimes. Interestingly enough, there are no statistics in this respect. I tried myself to get my hands on statistics, which will make it possible to establish a comparison between those who have had their sentence and been released, what the number of cases is of people who commit crimes again and what the rate is of repeat offenders amongst people who have been released from psychiatric clinics with a good prospect with regard to the future. But there are very, very few figures available. 

There are some statistics which I have got from Nordrhein-Westfalia where statistics were gathered over a period of five years. What was established there, was that whent it comes to serious crimes, i. e. violent and sexual crimes, the repeat rate is at 15% for a period of five years. On the other hand, there was a figure of those who were in a certain clinic and here the central authorities in Wiesbaden conducted a survey and they established a figure of 4% of those who were likely to repeat their violent crimes, sexual crimes and so forth. That is something I also want to draw your attention to, because amongst the public at large, this group of people who are accommodated in psychiatric clinics are regarded as being a group of people demonized. Remember the young girl from Eberswalder. When it was not clear and the crime had not been cleared up... You may not be familiar with this case. It was a twelve year-old girl, who was raped and murdered and the media said: "We have to make the clinics safer!". And films were shown and Mr. Schmoerkel, the criminal, was used as an example of how dangerous people are, who are accommodated in forensic facilities. And when it was established afterwards that the offender was not somebody who had escaped from forensic clinic, but actually he was a criminal i.e. he was somebody who had committed similar crimes in the past and had been released from prison, then all of a sudden there was silence amongst the media on this issue. 

And that again, is something I wanted to draw your attention to, by way of an introduction and in addition to this, the diagnosis I just referred to, which maybe subsumed under serious psychic disturbance. This opens the door of course to randomness. You have all sorts of disturbances in personality. Refer to the young person who just talked to you, who had all sorts of tests carried out and ultimately what emerged, was that this is very, very subjective evaluation on the part of the psychiatric expert. I talked to Prof. Groebel from Berlin. He is a specialist in forensic psychiatry and he said to me quite frankly that the people who are here, imprisoned here... or this was an overlapping of the groups with other people, people who are accommodated under different circumstances might just as well be imprisoned here and vice versa. They have equal disturbances that they could be accommodated here in accordance with a different regime. So you have a grey area here, which is more or less random. I won't say completely, but more or less. 

I would also lke to point out that I have also gained positive experience. Particularly as regards the clinic in Neustadt but not in the forensic department. There was a young mother there who was manically depressive and people were in the process of taking her young children away from her and I represented her and was given a great deal of support by the doctors there. Without their support, I would not have been able to make sure that the mother and her children could have remained together and that would have had very drastic consequences for both sides and now the family is living happy together. I think they've turned out well. But let me just say this by way of fairness before I come on to my harsh criticism of this clinic I've just referred to in Neustadt.

Let me just add another remark on behalf of the forensic clinic. I represented a client there, who had stabbed somebody with a knife and said he was a prisoner. Afterwards he didn't know that he had committed the deed and he was treated well at the forensic clinic: given the proper drugs, people talked to him about the situation... He is now allowed to leave the facility. Let me just say that again in the interest of fairness. But before coming on now to the specific circumstances in Neustadt, let me just come back to what was said just now about the problem of psychiatric expert reports or expertises. Before I say something about this, let me just extend a message of greetings from my client there, who writes the following: (Perhaps I should just point out that he was invited to come here and he was not given permission to leave the institution because the doctors thought this would be counter-productive in therapeutical terms, so he has asked me to read you this letter on his behalf:

"Ladies and gentleman,
If I were able to appear before you this afternoon, I would certainly have very mixed feelings. "Ambivalence" is the technical term and my feelings could really not be more contradictory than they are at the present time. The reason for this is that I wish to call for something which I did not give three people over 27 years ago:the right to life and human dignity i. e. I wish to have respect for myself as an individual and above all, recognition of the fact that, in a psychiatric sensem, I am no longer in need of treatment. At the age of 19 I killed three people during a burglary and was sentenced to 10 years youth arrest and subsequent accommodation according to the § 63 in a psychiatric hospital. 

At that time, this was a very mild sentence from my point of view. But there again, I had no idea of what I would experience subsequently. During my prison sentence I completed my secondary education and was an appentice to become a printer. After that, after attempted suicide, I took part in a self-help group for a period of 5 years. This was the only way for me to try and come to grips with my past life and come to an appraisal of the crimes which I had committed. At the same time the ........ was the only opportunity of providing retribution of that kind. It was certainly not the right world, because I cannot give life to the people I killed but this is the only path for me to come to the realization of what it is that I did.

In 1990 an expert came to assess my transfer to an open prison but it was said at that time that the personality which Mr. B. showed at that time – that was 1975 when he committed the deeds – was no longer recognizable. In 1992 after almost 11 years imprisonment and 7 years in a psychiatric clinic, a different expert said – without knowledge of the file – that I could in no way considered to be psychiatrically ill. The same expert also said in 1994 that the residual risk apon release would be minor indeed and recommended indeed that I should be released on probation. Another expert came to the conclusion in 1996 and said that I had marked social competence and assumed that I was completely capable of controlling my life and therefore I was capable of assuming criminaly guilt. 

From 1995 to 1997 I spent considerable periods of time on holiday in Hamburg. I lived with a family that I had befriended and went to work in a printing works. Throughout this time I did not commit any offences nor did I attract attention for negative reasons in any way. Despite the positive expert reports and despite the parole that I had, which were deemed as preparation for rellease, I only had negative statements throughout the whole period. More or less the same diagnosis and forecasts but without any specific examples based on actual findings. The contrary experts of the colleagues did not provide any food for thought amongst the doctors at the institute, nor it means that they were prepared to review their actual position. On the contrary, the colleagues were devaluated an the attitude towards me became even more restrictive. Even more negative was the response of the courts, who of course had to decide on a possible release. They commissioned the expert reports and then ultimately, given that they were positive, didn't take any account of them ever. For the courts, only the statements of the clinic were decisive in any way.

So, summing up, let me just say that it had been certified via four expert reports that it is responsible to release me into society. In practical terms however, I am still in the forensic psychiatric clinic and I am regarded by the doctors as more dangerous than ever before. The mere fact, that I am regarded as being a psychiatrically healthy person but I am kept in a psychiatric clinic is a violation of human rights from my point of view and this fact alone that I have to live here, contradicts human rights which the Federal Republic of Germany stands. Law and justice should apply to people like me, not just others. In personal terms, over the course of the last 20 years I have learned to respect laws and to adhere to them, since they are absolutely essential for harmonious life in a free and domocratic society. 

Thank you for your attention and I hope very much that your work will help to have people in psychiatric help no longer regarded as third class citizens and that they will also be regarded as people, as proper humans, beyond the period in which they have sat their sentence for the crimes they have committed."

I'd like now to report on the final expertise of Mr. Boerder You've heard that in 1996, the last positive expert report with a recommendation for release. How did the head departmental doctor, Dr. Wienicke, from the Neustadt clinic respond? He wrote to the court in the same year: "Overall there is no doubt whatsoever, that Mr. Boerder has severe peronality disturbance, which can be classified in the same way as a different doctor did, although the one component cannot be stressed enough. That was referred to in a different document. His remarks are contradictory to a certain extent. He is in a position to adjust and respond to other people's remarks, but to derive social competence from that, seems to be, bearing in mind the personlity of Mr. Boerder, off the mark. 

So what is stressed is the dissociality of Mr. Boerder as a result of his behavior. Since May 1996, even if certain offences cannot be proved on his part, but the sheer number should be suspicious. What should be born in mind too – here Dr. R... – is that there is an increase of such instances after Mr. Boerder had succeeded with the help of expert reports and with the court in ......... to bring about visible improvement and the forecast for the release cannot be very favorable. So what we have here is a doctor who has absolute claim to power and who will not tolerate other experts seeing inmates viewed differently. I have introduced you to this case in order to familiarize you with the background as to how an expert report of this kind is drawn up. 

In Autumn of last year, Dr. H......... was commissioned. He is at the university clinic in Kiel or was associated with the university. He was commissioned to draw up an expert report on Mr. Boerder as regards to the question as to whether a release on parole would mean that he would be likely to commit further crimes or not. Dr. H......., who was obviously aware of the state of the art in psychiatric science, came to the conclusion that any HCR20 – I'll explain that system in a minute – is an increased risk of violent crimes being committed in the future. And if Mr. Boerder were to be released at all, there would need to be a risk-management to prevent any other violent crimes from being committed by him. The expert report.. – well, let me just say – I was dismayed by this expert report. I said, "This is a death-sentence for my client." And I wrote to the expert and asked him to give me the documents as a result of which he came to the conclusion to which he arrived. And then I said, I need the papers that my client has filled out. I had to take action in the courts. He reacted very aggressively but ultimately I got the documents that I needed. 

Let me say something about HCR 20 that comes from Canada, is a very modern method, is a manual available and it explains that this method has the advantage. It is a little rough. There are 20 criteria, which are dealt with and you have to answer left or right, yes or no and it is explained that this is a little rough by way of a method, but it is easy to handle, at least. And apart from which, as uncertainties have to be taken into account, this is of course, familiar from other test procedures and this is of course a prediction of acts of violence. But as I said, such uncertainties are referred to weather forecasts or space journeys or whatever. So you can see at what level forecasts are being given about human beings. We heard yesterday in the message of greetings from the UN representative of human rights – and this is a fundamental pillar of democracy in our culture – that human beings are individuals and human rights are violated in an extreme manner if people are denigrated to statistics.

Let me just explain to you briefly how the system operates. There are ten criteria which are called for from the past, 10 from the present and 10 for the future. And if you are certain that if a criterion has been fulfilled, for instance if somebody has an unstable relationship, then he is given 2 points and Dr. ......... , although my client has been in a psychiatric clinic or in prison for the past 19 years, he said: "Yes, give him 2 points." Because his fiancée gave up the relationship because he wasn't freed from prison or clinic. And there were problems in the working sphere i.e. somebody switches jobs regularly and gives up their job. Here again the doctor gave him 2 points because the partial job of my Hamburg client had run out and so on, and so forth. 

So it was quite clear to me that the expert reporter gave him 27 of the maximum of 40 possible points and the consquence of that was what I have just read to you. Whereas I know my client, I know his background and I gave 11 out of 36 points bearing in mind close attention to the facts. But nobody was interested in that whatsoever. The court accepted what he wrote and the upshot of that was that my client remained in prison. So that's how human rights can be violated, human dignity can be violated by the manner in which expert reports are drawn up and of course by the manner in which the courts respond to those expert reports. That's what I want to give you by way of example and if you ever come across HCR 20, then have a look at it. It is a real eye-opener. 

Naturally I can't say anything about psychiatry and forensic as a whole. I just want to talk about the clinic in Neustadt in Holstein, where the young man who was here before talked about. Its the Baltic Sea Center for Mental Health. They have a press spokesperson and he wrote an article in the little newspaper which you get in which he talked about describing this institute the way it deserves. So I would like to describe this institute the way it deserves. One patient also writes to you, who is in a semi-open prison, who can go about on daily leave. We are being treated by psychopaths here. "People" who have neither any remorse nor any mercy. We are tormented by fear here. Fear is with us at all times, fear of limitations, of sanctions, of being put back in the closed ... penitentiary, normally because of tiny little offences. And the years that have been stolen from us, we will never gain again. 

For us patients of Neustadt, it is quite clear that psychiatry is a space without law, in which our human rights are being violated. I could write a book about this but we don't see any hope in this. We are absolutely at the mercy of the judiciary. Neustadt, particularly the forensic psychiatry ward needs to be looked at and seen, because people who live here have no future and this has to be seen by the world at large.

Something else that I would like to share with you. Perhaps some of you are aware of the article in "Stern" magazine, which appeared in March about one of my mandates, who has been in the psychiatric penitentiary for 30 years with a false diagnosis. He came there at the age of 16. He was supposedly suffering from imbecility, although he had just an average intelligence, as a number of reports have shown. "Stern" magazine talked about this. My mandate has been there for 30 years. He was invited by Dr. Bauer to take part here in the tribunal and I applied to the clinic and was told that – and I have to say that he is in the closed penitentiary since 1986 and I'll tell you why in a minute. We can only allow patients to leave if we can be sure that the aims of treatment are being fulfilled and that people are not in any way being detrimentally treated. 

It is unclear to them. They say: "How coming to the tribunal could be helpful to the treatment of Mr. Sabasch?". And the "Stern" magazine have made therapy even more difficult. We fear that taking part in the Russell Tribunal would also be detrimental to his mental health. They also write that they fear, because he has a negative attitude to the clinic, that he might use this opportunity to escape. Dr. Dubbe signed it, Dr. Petersen Kubasch, senior consutant and the doctor of the actual ward. And the court, to whom I made this application, wrote that the participation in the Russell Tribunal is not a very important reason and for this reason will be declined.

We've heard earlier on from the speaker before me about the padded cell. This padded cell is as he described, the first encounter that someone has with life in this clinic, if they are admitted to spend time in a hospital. So everyone ends up here. He describes in some detail what it's like. In any case you have no personal property there, not only in the padded cell, but in the entry section of the clinic, as it's called. You have nothing to do whatsoever. In the morning you get your breakfast, pushed through a little flap and your bread is already spread for you. This is just the entry section, that's not the padded cell itself but it's the next section, the next step. And then in the morning you have to go into the courtyard for an hour and a half, no matter what the weather is like. At 11 o' clock there is lunch, again pushed through the flap, with the plastic spoons, no proper knives and forks or anything.

And then at 11:30 you have to give your clothes in and then from 11:30 to 2 p.m. you are locked into your cell. And then at 2 o' clock you get your institution clothes again and you have to go back outside into the courtyard. And then in the evening you are allowed to watch television for one or perhaps two hours. And then at 6:30 p.m. you've eaten your food, again pushed through the flap and it is all prepared for you. And at 6:30 you have to give your clothes back in, you can only keep your underwear and you get locked in until the morining at 7. So for 15 hours you are locked in there, in this ward. And there it is possible that people spend months, spend years. 

There is no therapy in the sense of psycho-therapy or anything like that. There are no therapeutic discussions, there is nothing to do, there is no school, nothing except these two hours of watching television. You spend 15 hours in the padded cell, no personal property. Only if you are in the shared cell you can have something to write with and you can have newspapers and magazines but that's about it. And this can go on open-endedly. It is impossible to know how long you will be there.

On the same ward there is the so-called "reception ward", where there are slightly better conditions. They are allowed to spread the butter on the bread themselves and they are allowed to have proper cutlery; they can even have a job. Three priviliged people are allowed to clean the toilets. They are allowed to clean the wash area and they are allowed to clean the lounge. Again there is the situation that you have the institutional clothes but you can keep your own shirt; you can listen to cassettes or even a radio. I was told that everywhere there are these forced injections, so patients are forced to have these injections; they are held down and are injected in their buttocks against their will. Otherwise, as I said, no therapy here either. 

I asked a patient there to write down for me how long people spend time in this area - I am not going to say the names, or the surnames in any case, because I don't know the people and I don't have the permission to do this – but he told me that there is a "Michael" who has been there 20 years, there is a "Bjorn" who has been there 6 years and three months; then there is "Jan-Dieter" who has been there 9 years; "Kai" who has been there 6 years, "Christoph" 6 years, "Helmut" 12 years. And all of these patients have only been in this particular ward, so that's perhaps all I need to say about this ward. So this is "therapy", as it is called in Neustadt, in the Baltic Sea Center for Mental Health. 

The next word doesn't matter, the "FM2"...

George Alexander:
Forgive me, could you give us an indication of what additional information you hope to provide? This is of course very useful and very interesting. How much more information and how different information do you think that you will provide?

If you bear in mind that these general things are not so interesting for you then perhaps I could talk about a number of detailed cases. I'd like to talk about Mr. Sabasch, who I spoke of just now, who has been there for 30 years because he was declared an imbecile, although he quite clearly is not this.

G. A.:
Excuse me, perhaps just the opposite. Perhaps going into individual detail is not the best way. You had been summarizing and I wondered, whether you had come about to the point of having indicated the kinds of abuses that were generic to the patients. And if not, what new general provisions... I think we probably no longer have time for individual cases in detail. Would this help: maybe the jury could ask some questions which could elicit this information? 

Yes, perhaps.

Shall we try that?

Yes, but I would like to ask that I be allowed to give two or three sufferings that my mandates have suffered themselves. I mean, I would like to be able to just very briefly mention them.

G. A.:
If you could just take a breath for a minute, I will return to those three examples. But there are apparently people with questions. Why don't we deal with the questions and then we return?

Yes, ok.