No retrial for psychiatric victims

ECHR: German courts could refuse legal aid

For years, Waltraud Storck was hospitalized and forcibly treated due to a false diagnosis and no judicial order in psychiatry. German legal aid for a renewed civil law retrial against the responsible private clinic can not demand the psychiatric victims under the European Convention on Human Rights, judged on July 19, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg (Az .: 486/14).

Storck was admitted to closed psychiatry at the instigation of her father as an adult. There was no court order for the accommodation between 29 July 1977 and 5 April 1979. She was diagnosed with hebephrenic schizophrenia, a misdiagnosis. She was treated with neuroleptics without her polio was considered sufficient.

As a result of the treatment, she is today 100 percent severely disabled and dependent on a wheelchair. Under the pseudonym Vera Stein, Storck has described her experiences in several book publications.

A claim for damages against the clinic remained unsuccessful before the German courts. The ECtHR ruled on 16 June 2005 that Germany had violated Storck's right to freedom and security and awarded her 75,000 euros in compensation. She never agreed to the accommodation. The authorities should have checked the legality of the accommodation even after their escape attempts.

With the verdict in his pocket, Storck now wanted to prosecute the clinic under civil law. The legal aid application was rejected by the courts right up to the Federal Constitutional Court.

Before the ECtHR, the complaint against it was unsuccessful. Storck did not put forward any new aspects for the retrial. Germany has offered her next to the 75,000 euros another 17,000 euros because of the rejected legal aid application as compensation.

Nor can the General Court examine the extent to which Germany correctly transposed the ECHR ruling of 2005, according to the ECtHR. This was the sole responsibility of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. This has the process but now set. fle