Mon, Jan 31, 2000 page2

• Escapees tell of Lungfatang life

  MENTAL HEALTH Lack of money and the lack of beds in government facilities leave families little option but to turn to private care, despite allegations of abuse

  • By William Ide / STAFF REPORTER
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  Liu Tung-cheng (柳東成) hardly slept the night he escaped from the nightmare of Lungfatang sanatorium (龍發堂) in early January this year.

  But it was not from anticipation of what was to come that kept Liu awake. It was the haunting sounds of crying and screaming that punctuated the night, he said -- the same sounds that had kept him awake on every other night he had spent in the sanatorium.

  He was ready even before the whistle which marks the beginning of a new day was blown at 4:15am.

  

  A former Lungfatang patient demonstrates how he was treated at the institution during a recent news conference.

  PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

  Liu managed to complete his early morning chores of cleaning up the feces and urine of other patients who had relieved themselves during the night, tidying up, and feeding others without letting anyone know of his plan to escape.

  The plan had been solidified the night before with three other patients, after the temple's founder, Hieh Kai-feng (釋開豐), and its' spokeswoman, Master Hsinhsien (心賢法師), left for a trip to China.

  Once breakfast had been served to the patients and two truckloads of workers had headed off to the temple's massive chicken farm, the four made a break for it and jumped into a temple truck at 6:10am with only a 12-minute window of escape.

  The task wasn't easy as Liu and another escapee, Chin Jung-tsai (金榮財), were connected to slower patients 24-hours-a-day by what the temple calls the "chains of compassion" (感情鍊). One-third of the sanatorium's 650 patients wear these chains which wrap around and link them from their waists.

  "Let's go," said Chen Kwang-chao (陳光照) -- a "squad leader" and 13-year resident of the sanatorium -- as the four headed for one of the temple's trucks.

  Chen not only had the keys needed to open steel gates inside the dormitory building next to the temple but, most importantly, was one of the few squad leaders who could drive and had keys to a truck.

  Chen drove quickly out of the sanatorium and across the Kaohsiung County line to Tainan, roughly a half-hour drive away and left the truck alongside the road. The two slower patients linked to Chin and Liu were then chained to the truck and told to wait for their return.

  They never came back.

  Life after Lungfatang

  Now, over two weeks later, sitting in an all-night cafe in Taipei, three of the four look relieved. Liu, Chen and Chin are all wearing slippers and keep their shorn heads covered in public.

  As they talk, they glance around occasionally, monitoring their surroundings, alert and at peace for now but convinced that the temple will try anything to drag them back.

  If you haven't experienced it, you wouldn't understand, they say.

  Still, with haunting memories trailing behind them, it is good to be out, Liu said.

  "To breathe fresh air again is something that makes me happy," said Liu, a 34 year-old alcoholic, who was dumped at Lungfatang over a year and half ago.

  "I am still worried about those who are inside, they are in a pitiful state," he said.

  One out of every 20 eggs in Taiwan comes from the farm and the laborers there get very little rest, Liu said.

  "We work 365 days a year, even Chinese New Year," he said.

  Liu and his cohorts were given more responsibility inside the temple because they were better off psychologically, they said. All of them had arrived at the temple because they could not be maintained at government-run facilities or they had violent tendencies.

  Liu's mother says she grew tired of all the yelling, the violence, his constant drunkenness and unpredictability.

  After years of treatment at other institutions, Liu's mother had him rushed off to Lungfatang one night when he had passed out drunk. He woke up the next morning, chained to another patient -- and with one of his worst hangovers.

  Since his escape, Liu has had little contact with his family. His mother, unsure of what to believe, especially now that Liu and the other escapees have raised accusations of abuse and inhumane conditions at the sanatorium (which Lungfatang strongly denies), would rather that he just stay away.

  "I don't want to take care of him anymore, let him survive on his own now," she said. "I don't know what I did in my past life to deserve this."

  When asked what it cost to have the temple take care of her son and whether she had paid the alleged going rate of NT$2.5 million, her response was, "let's not talk about the money. I didn't have any choice. He was always making a ruckus and creating trouble. I couldn't get any rest and I still have to work to make some money to eat."

  "I am not Wang Yung-ching (王永慶, one of the richest men in Taiwan)," she added, "I can't pay for him for the rest of my life. I hope he never comes back home."

  After the escapees held a news conference on Jan. 21, his mother was encouraged by the temple to attend a news conference in its defense. She refused, she says.

  While the psychological state of each patient varies, the stories of family life are the same: "We had no other choice"; "We were afraid for ourselves as well as those around us."

  Chen, who was tormented by voices in his head for years and couldn't be treated by government institutions, was taken to Lungfatang in 1986 -- his family's last resort. His family paid a NT$500,000 donation to the temple, he says.

  After he was left at the temple, the voices went away and so did his family, which he hasn't seen for over 10 years, he says.

  Marching to the temple's tune

  Chen later became squad leader and a drummer in the temple's band, traveling extensively to other countries in Asia, including China, where Lungfatang is well received, having donated some 30 to 40 ambulances to mental hospitals throughout the country, Chen says.

  The band and Chen's experience is what Lungfatang argues are signs of success, showing the temple's drug-free, no-nonsense environment that gives patients work and responsibility really works.

  Escapees claim that there is more to Lungfatang than meets the eye. They allege that the squad leaders -- patients who have gained trust -- are given the task of managing the sanatorium and use force when necessary against other patients.

  Chen, a broad-shouldered fellow with thick callused hands and an intense glare said that as a squad leader he was responsible for beating, taunting and pushing other inmates around. If he hadn't done so, he says, he would have gotten the same treatment.

  "If someone gets out of line you are told to beat them," Chen said. "We were taught to beat patients on the soles of the feet."

  "When you do this every day it gets to you, you can't escape from it," Chen said.

  The temple denies beatings ever take place. "If we're really beating them, then show me the proof," said Hsinhsien. "Even if they [patients] were beaten on the soles of their feet there would be proof."

  There is little way of knowing what is true. There are no doctors or psychiatrists on staff at the temple. The only records that the temple has of patients are release forms signed by the parents and patients that describe their mental condition and previous treatment.

  Liu said that over the past year-and-a-half he had seen some 41 patients die.

  Hsinhsien says that in the past year there were only three to four deaths, all from natural causes, but "We can't reveal the exact number because people would use that against us."

  During a visit to the temple the Taipei Times didn't see any visible signs of the abuse the escapees have alleged, but then very little of the time spent at the temple was unmonitored and uncontrolled.

  A handful of families of the patients who came to visit the temple last weekend all denied -- in the presence of Hsinhsien and Hieh Kai Feng -- that there was anything strange going on.

  One couple, who said they were concerned about their daughter after reading local news reports which said she had been beaten to the point that she had lost 50kg, rushed to the temple the Sunday before last. It was the first face-to-face visit they had with their daughter in two years.

  "If she had really been abused she would have been angry with us," the father said. She did, however, tell her parents that her "mental illness had gotten better and that she was ready to go home."

  "We'll wait a bit longer until her illness is better," the father said. He did not specify when that would be or what possible condition would be good enough so that their schizophrenic daughter would be able to return home.

  "The reports are just a bunch of nonsense," the mother said, her eyes wet with tears.

  Patients pose greatest threat

  One patient and a volunteer at the temple did admit that the biggest threat in the temple was not the 20 disciples of Hieh Kai-Feng -- 17 of whom are female -- but the other patients.

  "As long as you don't make any trouble with other patients, you'll be fine," one patient said.

  The escapees claim the temple is skilled at its ability to present the institution in a favorable light -- something that has helped it survive all these years. The temple's internal walkie-talkie system is used to help prepare rooms or work areas before outside eyes can even get a glance, Chen said. "Their packaging is very good," he added.

  But as long as the public is kept from getting a clear answer about what is going on inside the temple, the controversy will continue, critics note.

  Dr Wen Jung-kwang (文榮光), the head of the psychiatric ward at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital said: "Lungfatang is an embarrassing blemish we don't want others to see. It's a sickness we want to hide."

  "The government doesn't want to talk about it and the press doesn't have any interest in the issue," Wen added.

  That is why the problem has persisted for so long, even when the government could step in and provide the care needed for those who have slipped through the cracks of Taiwan's psychiatric care system.

  "Society is to blame," said Dr Billy Pan (潘建志), of the department of psychiatry at Taipei's Wanfang Hospital. "The government could put more money into psychological care, but society would also have to help foot the bill."

  Unlike other countries in Asia such as Japan, which devotes some 8 to 10 percent of their national health care budget to mental patients, Taiwan only allots 3 percent, Pan says.

  Currently there are some 130,000 mental patients in Taiwan but only about 20,000 beds, roughly two-thirds of which are covered by National Health Insurance.

  For the escapees, their battle has just begun, Liu said.

  As long as they have not set the record straight they will be hard pressed to lead normal lives and not worry about being dragged back to the temple again, he said.

  "There has to be some justice out there that would keep this place from existing," Liu said.
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