A psychologist at a leading NSW public hospital tried to hypnotise an 11-year-old boy before forcing him to dress up and perform sex acts, a federal inquiry has been told.
Terence Kirkpatrick, a former outpatient of the Royal North Shore hospital, says he was sexually abused by the psychologist, Stuart Frank Simpson, at the hospital in the late 1960s.
“I was numb with fear and I could not understand why I was being made to go into the room with him and why no one was stopping it,” Kirkpatrick told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse on Monday.
Kirkpatrick had been referred to Simpson for asthma treatment, which at the time was considered psychosomatic. Simpson, who has since died, would sit him down before their sessions and talk softly to him, Kirkpatrick said.
“I understand now that he was trying to hypnotise me but I didn’t really know what was going on,” Kirkpatrick said.
Kirkpatrick’s father tried to report the attacks in the late 60s but was told by the hospital it would be dealt with internally and he should not tell police.
He said his father was told: “The Royal North Shore will take care of it and it is better not to go to the police because [I] would have to go through the interrogation and all those distressing things.”
In the second part of a case study into health regulators in NSW and Victoria, the royal commission is examining how the hospital handled Kirkpatrick’s complaints.
Last week the commission examined how the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission and other agencies dealt with numerous complaints against a former doctor, John Rolleston, who had a practice at St Ives, in Sydney’s northern suburbs, and also worked at Royal North Shore hospital.