Synopsis

Norm Madden’s journey South sheds light on a dark slice of little known New Zealand history;-the Eugenics Movement.

Whilst searching to discover why he was shut away in an institution as a child, Norm learns he was a casualty of the Eugenics Movement, a plan to rid New Zealand of unwanted citizens.

Norm Madden was one of an estimated 10,000 affected ‘undesirables.’ By stopping these New Zealanders from breeding, it was thought that the nation’s stock might be improved.

Norm visits a recently closed institution –the Templeton Centre.
He finds Willie Barron who spent over 70 years locked away ‘I don’t know why they put me there.’  George Smith stole two pies in Riverton in 1935, and 60 years later was still incarcerated. ‘I did try and run away.’

Norman’s crusade for justice is successful, but has victory come too late?

Reviews

 ‘…Well, they saved the best one till last with TVONE’s brilliant Monday night documentary Out of Sight, Out of Mind.
Focussing on the appalling injustices dealt to Norman madden, who spent the first part of his life incarcerated at Templeton psychopaedic hospital the documentary made for chilling viewing and left one reeling with the national shame of it all.
Norman had been assessed by authorities at the age of six and the record, for what it was worth, showed he couldn’t spell cat, add two and two and was declared a wilful and naughty boy.
An unwanted child, Norman was banished to see out his days looking after the disabled at Templeton farm, where he was regularly sodomised by the older boys. This roughest of touches was all that he knew of physical human contact as segregation from the female inmates ensured that there was no association or ‘perish the thought’ breeding between the sexes.
Though the line was drawn at sterilization, the documentary revealed that , under the direction of a Dr Theodore Gray, a determined eugenics programme to cleanse the white race of the feeble-minded was carried out at pschopeadic hospitals thoughout New Zealand.

Norman’s personal file was read out to him and Gray’s master plan put into historical context by a contemporary medical professional. In the post interview debrief, Noram –thought elderly-was enraged by the record and put his verbal dukes up saying that, if he met up with gray now, he was of the mind to ‘give him a good bang on the nose’.

Managing to extracate himself from this bleakest of prison houses by his early twenties, Norman had spent years fighting for recognition for the past injustices and the wasted years.
And endearing and engaging character, Norman took us for a walk down a harrowing memory lane by means of a series of conversations with a caregiver, an advocate, a taxi driver and the documentary maker and narrator Gerard Smyth.

The Villas at Templeton hospital have ceased to exist, having been bulldozed in 1996, but black and white photographs of the ghastly institution indicated there was the coldest of comforts at that terrible farm. This is where the visual medium has the edge, as we saw for ourselves the deprivation in the no frills institutional terrain.
Having grown up in Canterbury, I remember people speaking of
Jane Bowron DOMINION POST

A documentary that uncovers an extraordinary and shameful period in the treatment of the disabled in New Zealand. Film-maker Gerard Smyth was asked in 1995 by parents of Templeton residents to produce a documentary that would help keep the Christchurch institution open. However, he found that, overwhelmingly, the residents wanted to leave as soon as they could. Smyth’s inquiries led back to eugenics, or controlled breeding, a once-respectable movement that had legs until Hitler gave it a bad name. For many years before World War II, it was thought that disability could be bred out and, in 1928, the government here passed the Mental Defectives Bill, which established “psychopaedic” hospitals where the disabled were housed. Smyth met Norman Madden, a former Templeton resident who has started a campaign for redress for his institutionalisation since the age of six. He managed to leave at 19, but speaks of “a life of hell” there, including forced labour and sexual abuse. Other former residents include Willie Barron, who spent 70 years locked away and Maria Stewart, who arrived at Templeton at age three with a busload of girls. In addition, Warwick Brunton, an expert in the history of mental health, meets with Madden and explains the eugenics philosophy that led directly to his misery.
-Fiona Rae and Alistair Bone NZ Listener

Crew List

Photography: John Chrisstoffels, Gerard Smyth
Sound Recorsist: Hammond Peek, Paul Skelton
Editor: Gaylene Barnes
Writer, Narrator, Director, Producer: Gerard Smyth