Woman was electroshocked 200 times in a hospital because she was openly lesbian

Electroconvulsive therapy machine on display at Glenside Museum
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A lesbian is speaking out about 12 years of imprisonment in a hospital, forced medication, and over 200 electroconvulsive therapy treatments because of her sexuality.

Joan Bellingham, 67, is one of many survivors telling their stories as part of a national inquiry in New Zealand into abuse in state and faith-based care facilities from 1950 to 2000, and she said the abuse started because she wouldn’t hide her sexual orientation.

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“I have been gay for as long as I can remember,” Bellingham said, according to the Ontago Daily Times. “I never thought of it as something I needed to hide away.”

Bellingham said that she was told from a young age that she should be more ashamed of herself. Teachers would leave comments on her work about how she has “another thing coming” if she goes into nursing and a tutor “told me homosexuality was wrong, said I wasn’t normal. She said I was depressed and messed up in the head.”

She was a nurse trainee at the Burwood Hospital in Christchurch when she was 18-years-old in 1970. She said that she was bullied by others at the hospital and people spread rumors about her because she was “very open about” about her sexual orientation. The rumors turned vicious, as she was accused of stealing medication.

She was taken to the Princess Margaret Hospital one day when she was at work: “I didn’t have my clothes with me or anything. I had no choice in the matter.”

Over the next 12 years, she would be in and out of that hospital, getting admitted 24 times. She was diagnosed with a “neurotic personality disorder” and given drugs to “quieten me down” when she said that she didn’t belong in the hospital. She was later diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Bellingham said that her parents weren’t any help since they saw doctors as authorities who were “like gods.”

During this time, no one would listen to her. Bellingham said that she was given a variety of drugs…

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