Adjudication No. 1219 (October 2003)

The Australian Press Council has upheld in part a complaint against The Sunday Herald Sun over two articles and an editorial on Victoria's program for releasing on temporary leave into the community, for rehabilitation, patients from the high-security unit at the Thomas Embling Hospital.

The complaint was lodged by the director of the Victorian Mental Health Awareness Council, Isabell Collins. It concerned a front-page article on 15 June headed Insane killers on leave, which continued inside the newspaper, as well as a background article naming some of the people in the security centre and giving details of the crimes they had committed. There was additionally an editorial arising from the articles published in the same edition.

Using as its source the annual report of the Forensic Leave Panel - a Government-appointed body chaired by a Supreme Court Justice - the newspaper reported that in the past year 39 people had been granted leave from the unit to visit family, go shopping, go to church, and take part in personal development programs. It said that many of those given leave were "killers". Others had committed serious assaults, or were "inmates" who had been found not guilty of crimes due to insanity, or convicted and sent to hospital instead of prison based on psychiatric advice.

The newspaper reported that, since the high-security centre had opened in 2000, three inmates had escaped from it and nine others had escaped from staff looking after them outside the unit. However it quoted the Leave Panel president, Justice Bernard Teague, as saying that, of those given leave by the panel, there had been no instances of escaping. The background article also detailed offences that it said had occurred near the security centre.

In her complaint, Ms Collins describes the article as "pejorative and sensationalist in nature". She says the people referred to are "patients", not "inmates" or "prisoners", and naming some of them was a gross breach of privacy. Some of those named in the background article were not eligible for leave under the Forensic Panel processes, but the article implied they were.

Ms Collins says the article helped to instill fear and loathing of people with mental illness - in particular those diagnosed with schizophrenia - and caused great distress to some of the families.

Mental illness, and particularly the subject of the release back into the community of people suffering from mental illnesses who have committed crimes, is an emotional and difficult issue for media at any time.

In this case The Sunday Herald Sun took the annual report of the body responsible for a supervised program, and used its figures in conjunction with details of escapes from the security unit outside the program. It did not clearly distinguish between the two. To this extent the complaint is upheld.

However, in the Council's view, the complaints about invasion of privacy and language are not sustainable. The cases cited are on the public record, either through court appearances or the panel's report. The Council does not consider that prescriptive directions on language would be helpful nor that the newspaper's use of language created a "pejorative" tone.

The newspaper also published at least two letters critical of the reports' possible impact on people's perceptions of mental illness.

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