Bronwyn Pullar and the Other 6,000 Victims

8/6/2012

The Bronwyn Pullar/ACC fiasco keeps on rolling on.

Bronwyn Pullar was emailed the personal details of over 6,000 ACC clients when she sought to obtain benefits from ACC. ACC laid a complaint of blackmail against her. Pullar has now been cleared of the criminal allegations. One thing that made a difference for her is that she recorded her meetings with ACC. There is a lesson here for everyone who needs to deal with ACC – take notes of every meeting and phone call. Even better – get everything in writing or take someone with you to meetings. As Bronwyn Pullar discovered, doing so can save the day when a big, bloated Corporation tries to squash you and your entitlements.

But what about the other 6,000 victims of the case? Their personal details were disclosed inappropriately. They seem to be the forgotten victims of this case and are another example of the lack of accountability surrounding the Accident Compensation Corporation.

2 Comments

Dorothy

11/6/2012 02:54:36 pm

It is likely I was one of the names leaked as I was going through a hearing process with ACC at the time. I don't know how to find out if my details were leaked due to ACC's "chinese wall". I have copied below my email to tv3 after the story last night. I am passionate about their corruption and blatant breaches of their own legislation and how it has affected so many claimants. Intersted in your thoughts.

"I cried through most of your story about ACCs treatment of Bronwyn Pullar.

I have been fighting (to the best of my ability) with ACC for 10 years over a Sensitive Claim. I have lost count how many assessments I have had, for "mental injury". ACC have put me through hell by making me re-live traumatic events over and over. This is not at all productive. I languish on a Sickness Benefit and have done so for about the last 8 years (like so many claimants). The stress was just too much.

The last assessment I had was an "Impairment" assessment (for "mental injury") and was conducted by a GP with specialty in gynecology! How can that be right, obviously this person was part of ACC's 'money-go-round' and admitted to me that she was probably being paid more than I would be for 5 years Independence Allowance (IA). She decreased my disability from 35% to 20% and all the factors she said were relevant for the decrease, had no relevance at all, and DRSL agreed. I went to DRSL and won (first a hearing to see if I could have a hearing, due to ACC not communicating with me), then to challenge the findings of this GP and why my disability was reduced so much. It would have cost ACC probably about as much as they would have paid me for 5 years under the IA to get this assessor from Christchurch to do the assessment (in Wellington). They have also flown me to Auckland and had an Auckland specialist come to Wellington to give the reports they want.

I have tried to achieve through an OIA request to find out how much they have spent on my case versus how much they should pay me for a 5 year IA year sum. All I got was the "Commercial Sensitivity" excuse. We are only talking about $7,000 give or take (and backpay which I haven't raised with them yet as I am so exhausted). The "impairment" assessment was to establish if my "impairment" was the same as all the other assessments, of which my disability was calculated at 35%. I went to review years ago about the initial assessment as it was done by a GP who was not provided adequate information by ACC and her report was so incorrect in so many ways. Through my lawyer I got a specialist assessment of 45%. ACC threw the specialist report out as they said the report did not conform with AMA guidelines.

ACC has worn me down and I sucked it up at the last hearing, as I could not go through any more of these torturous assessments and that would have been my only other option. The DRSL Adjudicator knew that and ruled accordingly. If I had to have another assessment I planned to tape a note to my chest, go to the toilets and kill myself. I wanted to make a statement and let people know how cruel ACC are, and how the treatment of their clients can be devastating to our mental and physical health. It is a disgrace that they have literally pushed me to suicidal thoughts, and would have succeeded, had I NOT stopped fighting. ACC had me so distraught that at the last assessment I said "I will not talk about the historical stuff as it is just too hard and you already have tons of files on this". My disability was then reduced after that assessment.

I have also had a number of head injuries and this was mentioned in a report some years ago. The assessor recommended looking into this further. Nothing was done by ACC, no matter how much I asked for investigation.

I also have a back injury claim from 1983 which they tried to tell me was a duplicate to the Sensitive Claim accepted in 2001. I had to go to Wellington Hospital to get records to prove this was not a duplicate claim. They were just trying to get rid of me and had not mentioned this "duplicate" claim to me for the 10 years after my Sensitive Claim was accepted. If there was any confusion you would think that they would have brought it up during that 10 years.

I have proof they have breached their own legislation over and over, the most important being what Bronwyn said about helping her to get back to work. In the legislation there is a legally bounding responsibility for ACC to provide re-training. They did not tell, or allow me this after my back injury, head injury, nor the Sensitive Claim.

When an organisation that is supposed to help you takes you to the brink of suicide, they do need to be taken to task in the strongest way. I have no doubt I am not alone in this.

Thank you for your story and hopefully more people may get some justice from this corrupt organisation. (There is certainly proof of their corruption. Does anyone remember the senior managers be

Emp Law Experts

13/6/2012 09:49:07 am

Thanks for making contact. I am so sorry that you have been beaten down by what you have been through with ACC; surely it was bad enough that you had to go through the original injuries. It’s hard for you, and I, and most people, to understand why a government department does not take more care when it’s dealing with people’s lives and why it fails to consider that if it did things with more concern that it might actually save money in the long run (for example: if you had been given the help you should have had, you might have felt able to go back to work). Please don’t think about harming yourself. That would be a terrible thing. I know you’re probably at the end of your tether in taking these people on, but if you can bear it, it might be good to talk to the Privacy Commissioner to see if you can find out if your details were disclosed and, remember, we’re here to help.

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Bronwyn Pullar and the Other 6,000 Victims

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