Heading Chelmsford was psychiatrist Harry Bailey—a protégé of British mind-control guru William Sargant—who had been conducting “deep sleep” experiments on patients since 1963. But now stories of deaths, suicides and ruined lives were beginning to surface. Freedom began its own investigation and through its coverage, helped raise public awareness and overcome the bureaucratic inertia and stonewalling that threatened to halt the wheels of justice.

Freedom’s investigation also traced Bailey’s connection to mid-1950s behaviour control experiments conducted at Tulane University in the U.S. by psychiatrist Robert Heath—experiments involving the use of LSD, sodium amytal and Thorazine, a drug referred to as “a chemical lobotomy.” According to Bailey, the Tulane experiments included implanting electrodes in cat and human brains. Heath monitored the brain-wave functions of his experimental subjects through electronic probes pushed through holes he had drilled in the skull and imbedded in the brain—and he reportedly preferred African-Americans and hospital patients as subjects. As Bailey once bragged, “In New Orleans, where it was cheaper to use N-----s than cats, because they were everywhere, and [they were] cheap experimental animals—they started to use them, Negroes and patients in hospitals....”

The ten years that followed saw persistent investigation, intensive coverage of CCHR actions, exposés and increasing public outrage over the 48 deaths Freedom and CCHR had helped to uncover. Deep sleep therapy was banned, Chelmsford was closed down and many of the surviving victims who received electroshock therapy took their cases to the Victim’s Compensation Tribunal. And finally, the government of New South Wales agreed to appoint a Royal Commission to uncover the truth about deep sleep at Chelmsford and throughout the state, which resulted in widespread reforms and more protections for patients.