Lawrence Island

June 18th 1987 Lawrence River

From the air the stark grey tower of the main building was almost invisible. An early morning mist was rising in advance of the sun, wreathing the countryside with swirls of grey and patches of fuzzy white. The sea of mist extended out from the land mass to the cold grey of the pre‑dawn ocean. Jacob looked down from the Lear with an unexpected surge of pride as his world emerged from the mists below.

He loved to get out in the grey light at the beginning of the day and walk the deserted beach at the ocean edge. Often on these walks he would meet his father. Old Joseph also liked the solitude of the early morning and the sunrise. He had a garden chair fixed on a little rise looking out over the beach and the ocean where he would come and sit. He remarked to Jacob on many an occasion how much he enjoyed that time as it allowed him to reflect on the advantages of living in a free country which had given them so much. The intense quiet was broken by the roar of the surf as the world turned inexorably on its axis. There was a sense of the majesty of nature which he found humbling as he strode briskly along.

At this hour the breeze seemed to die to a faint whisper here, beside the sea.

His reverie was broken by a quick change in attitude as the plane tilted downward into the mists. A voice over the intercom announced.

“Landing in five minutes, Sir! I’ve radioed ahead for the car to meet you. The other passengers will be going to the reception area in the transporters as usual. Is there anything else you would like me to do for you at the moment?” The voice belonged to the pilot, Charlie.

“Yes please Charlie. Will you radio the operations centre and let them know that there will be a full management meeting at nine o’clock sharp? That should allow enough time to bring the managers who live offsite over to the island. Let them know I expect to have reports from all divisions, and that we have some potential problems for which we will need to work out some new strategies. Oh! And thanks for the smooth ride. It was a lot better than last time.” Jacob smiled to himself. They had flown through a thunderstorm which turned out to be much worse than the weather boys had predicted. They had all been given a good shaking before the landing.

The light was getting stronger as Charlie brought the plane down. Jacob could make out the tower building clearly now, even though it was several miles away across the island. Surrounding it were some low humps which he knew were the main wards of the hospital. Near these he could make out the tennis courts and swimming pool for guests. The operations centre from which Jacob controlled the far flung empire, was housed in the top floors of the tower. It also housed the Abraham Clinic, where he was ostensibly a doctor engaged in pure research. The truth these days was that scientists like the affable but gruff Hamish McGregor did the bulk of the work including the research. Jacob was an ideas man who would bring his concepts to the staff meetings and expect the others to work out how they could be done. If there was basic agreement that an idea was doable then it was given the green light and a project team would be allocated the task of making it happen.

Other than the divisional managers very few of the staff knew Jacob’s real role in the Clinic and Hospital Complex. The Clinic had been founded by his father Joseph Abraham after the war. But now Joseph was only a figurehead, even though he was actively engaged in the day to day affairs of the Fertility Clinic itself and still maintained a research lab within the facility. He was known as the Clinical Director and Chairman of the hospital board. The real power and control rested solely with Jacob and his close knit group of managers. Jacob was the public figure representing the hospital whenever charitable donations or new facilities were put in place. His ego fed on the media attention and he used this to obtain political favours when they were needed. Many a politician had received discreet donations to their favourite causes over the years as had multiple charities. However the public image belied the power hungry man underneath the suave exterior. Jacob was a control freak, who exercised his power over employees and companies with an iron fist. Many of the companies within the group were unaware of who the absolute control rested with, and would have been surprised to find out that the younger Dr Jacob Abraham had tight rein over all of their activities. This was achieved in spite of the managers having reputations for hard nosed business activities. Only Jacob and a few trusted deputies knew the truth behind the power he exercised with them. Joseph however was a true gentleman with an impressive work ethic. Even in his later years he was putting in long days and still worked with the passion he developed as a war refugee coming to Australia.

Joseph was always a survivor. Before WW2 he had been a Medical Intern, having completed his degree just months before the outbreak of fighting. His appointment was to a small hospital near the Polish border, where he was just settling in when the Germans invaded the area. Joseph was taken prisoner and shipped to a concentration camp. He was moved several times before being finally transferred to Auschwitz. At the hands of the Nazis, Joseph had suffered almost every indignity handed out to people of his race. He had been tortured, brutalised and starved, and used for gruesome experiments.

The seemingly endless pain had gradually eaten away all resistance to the experiments and tortures. Joseph became an automaton, kept alive by a deep hatred of the indignities being perpetrated on his body, and a sheer determination to stay alive to cheat his tormentors of their final triumph.

Liberation of the camp came suddenly and again Joseph’s luck held out. Thousands of prisoners were being exterminated as the Allies advanced but Joseph was not taken. Later he found his name on the lists scheduled for the gas chambers sometime in the next week.

He had healed slowly from the inside. At first nothing had changed. As his unexpected freedom became a reality in his battered mind, the realisation that he could once again become a human being surfaced. His first feelings had been of revenge, these had given way to feelings of pity, and finally to an awareness that he could do little to change the inevitable course of history. Like many of his fellow sufferers he was left with sadness deep inside his soul which would stick with him for the rest of his life. Mostly he put this aside and enveloped himself in his current projects, but underneath the scars would never really heal. Rehabilitation was relatively quick once the prisoners were given adequate food and clothing. After several months Joseph was able to return to his hometown in Poland but there was nothing left for him here so, determined to return to his studies he travelled to Switzerland and re-enrolled in medical school completing his degree quickly to become a doctor.

He had come to an awareness that the most he could do now would be to help those who had suffered more than himself by tending to their medical needs. This was not altruism but rather a practical side of his nature exerting itself as his body and mind healed. He was determined to regain his previous position and status in society in some form.

Auschwitz had provided him with an ever present reminder of the good or evil that medicine can do. During the dreadful time in which he was used for experiments he had been emasculated. The operations had been conducted with little care for pain or suffering, and no care of the consequences. The fact that Joseph had not been exterminated when the experiments on him were completed was more good luck than good planning.

The overcrowding in Europe had sent refugees all over the globe, in search of new hope and a peaceful life. For Joseph, the chance came to migrate to Australia. Like many who had suffered he wanted to start afresh after getting his degree and Australia had the reputation of being a place where with hard work, any man could succeed. It was also a country where militarism was never the way of life. Australians were essentially people that would help out their neighbours regardless of any personal feelings or antipathies. He had taken the first boat available and had landed in Melbourne in 1951. His medical degree was not recognised by the Australian Medical Association, but he could obtain his Australian qualifications under a special assistance plan which allowed him to do a condensed course at Melbourne University. The major problem was surviving in a strange country with its different culture. To a survivor of Auschwitz, however, this was a paradise. Joseph soon found doing work night shifts in the city mortuary to support his studies and meagre board in a rooming house in Coburg. It was a quick tram ride to the University when he could afford it, but mostly he walked to save the fare.

He also found that there was a little money to be made from tutoring other students who did not have his advantage of already having medical training. He finally graduated with honours. The major obstacle to all of his efforts was learning to speak English fluently and then learning to speak the Australian lingo which was affectionately known as ‘strine’. This was a mixture of rhyming words that were often used interchangeably with the proper words. He learned that ‘tin lids’ were really ‘the kids’. It took a while but working with ordinary Aussies soon had him using all the ‘right’ slang.

At first it had been hard to make a living, initially joining a GP practice and then moving on to his own small practice, specialising in paediatrics. His intense care for the young, translated into an ever growing yearning to improve the lot of those who could not raise families. Joseph volunteered to work in the fertility clinic at Parkville where he soon came to realise that this was his real vocation. He studied endlessly, sometimes all night without a break, and was always available to take part in research. His main area of interest was in infectious diseases in children and improving treatment regimens so that there were improved outcomes. He also had a strong interest in fertility programs and newly developing techniques in artificial insemination.

In time he had been offered a full time research job with the Parkville Research Centre where he went on to make wide ranging discoveries in his field. Soon Joseph Abraham, one time guinea pig for the third Reich, was a foremost authority in one of those very areas for which he had been selected as an experimental animal by his torturers. Joseph had many reasons to celebrate when he obtained his medical degree, and one of the foremost was that of announcing his intention to marry. Anna had also been a refugee. She had not suffered the privations and tortures which Joseph had been put through but had been badly used by the Nazi’s in her native Poland. She had endured all the humiliations and degradations in order to protect her son. Anna and Jacob arrived on the same refugee boat as Joseph, but their paths did not cross until they met in the University Hospital where Anna was working as a domestic.

Her greatest problem had been finding work in post war Melbourne, a problem made worse by her poor English. No one would employ a refugee who could speak no English. Anna took Jacob with her to night school where she was learning English, and quickly found that the young boy was not only far ahead of her but was able to teach her. Jacob was attending day school and had adapted easily to his new environment, learning the language very quickly. Much of what he learned was not in any text books. Australian youth have a great propensity to pass on all that is vulgar to their new found friends in preference to more useful information.

Jacob turned out to be a brilliant scholar, in spite of his rapid induction into the slothful habits of his fellow students. However he was unable to escape from his studies as Joseph pushed him to study constantly pointing out that he would only have the one chance of getting a degree and it all revolved around getting top marks in his School Leaving Certificate. Jacob was a student with an enquiring mind who excelled at the sciences and mathematics. He graduated top of his school and went on to do Medicine at Melbourne University. Joseph was doing well enough to support him in full time study and put in extra hours whenever he could to make sure that there were enough funds to give him a small allowance.

At the University Jacob found much of what he had been seeking in life, philosophical discussions, booze, women and a decided need for lots of money. He put his talents to work in all areas, while still maintaining good results in his exams.

With the aid of his friends in the Business School, Jacob soon had his allowance invested in the stock market. He found in himself a natural aptitude for speculative trading and from small beginnings was soon making handsome profits from his efforts. Mostly he would find a company that was planning on listing on the stock exchange and try to buy stock on the first day of listing. He then had a formula worked out that he quite rigidly stuck to. It was a variation of the old 80/20 rule which he had adapted to suit his holdings. Whenever a stock rose sufficiently to sell off and give him a 20% profit he would sell off 80% and retain a 20% holding. In rough terms he then had his investment money back and some stock being held in his portfolio. If a stock showed quite rapid growth he would sell of enough to pay for the initial investment and then very carefully watch the share movement looking for any sign of plateauing or of factors which could cause the stock to lose value. He would then ruthlessly sell off the remaining stock when he thought it was approaching the peak value. When he could he would cut classes and visit the stock exchange to absorb information on the companies that he was interested in. His friends kept him up to date on rumours and speculations and often tipped him off when a company was thought to be in trouble.

Joseph’s real breakthrough came when we bought shares in a junior Nickel explorer. They were penny dreadful stocks and he bought them on advice from a junior broker that he had befriended. The advice was that the company would undoubtedly shoot up shortly as they had found a huge nickel prospect but had not yet announced the find to the market. Jacob bought 750,000 shares with $15,000 cash that he had just garnered from the sale of some gold stocks.

Two days later an announcement to the market saw the Nickel stock shoot up to 30 cents a share in one day so he offloaded 250,000 shares and put $60,000 in his pocket after paying for the initial investment. The stock continued to rise as the Nickel boom accelerated. He still had 500,000 shares in the portfolio and the market speculation was that this stock could go to fifty dollars a share. At $2.00 per share they would be worth a cool million. He sold them at $100.00 per share and pocketed $50 million dollars. The nickel shares just kept rising and finally peaked at just under $200 per share. Jacob had no regrets. He had made a fortune with a single stock and could now move on to other things with his new found wealth.

This new wealth enabled Jacob to do those things which he liked best. After graduating in Medicine, Jacob combined his talents by investing in a pharmaceutical company which he directed from its office near the Austin Hospital where he was interned. At this stage he could have given up his study and moved into business full time but he was determined that he would complete all the required requisites for his medical qualifications to satisfy his own need for social status but more importantly to justify Joseph’s faith in him. His main driver was to make Joseph and Anna proud of his achievements. Knowing of the hardships they had endured reinforced his determination to succeed at all costs.

The company thrived under his hard-nosed guidance and soon expanded. They had an anti-inflammatory product which was not doing well in the market After analysing the product and the marketing Jacob had the sales staff put in a major marketing campaign using one of the lesser advertised benefits as the main thrust. The drug was quite effective for arthritis and had very little side effect in terms of stomach upsets like so many of the other drugs in the market. It was not long before sales leapt and the company showed a huge surge in profitability. His next strategy was to take over as many small competitors as possible growing the company by acquisitions wherever the opportunity arose.

As his companies expanded, Jacob’s life became more complex. Finally he left hospital practice and took up full time management of the ever growing empire. He gathered around him a group of expert managers. These men were ruthless in business and tenacious fighters for every last dollar to be wrung out of their company divisions. Each man had his salary tied to the bottom line profit for the company he managed. Jacob took over the complete control of all the research divisions in his growing empire. In the drive for efficiency which pervaded all his companies, the need for high level research and development of leading edge technologies provided the impetus for the establishment of a separate research foundation.

The opportunity had come to acquire the leasehold on the whole Lawrence River facility with the closing down of the old Lawrence River Mental Asylum. The facility consisted of an island of some three thousand acres in the delta of the Lawrence River on the North Coast of New South Wales.

The buildings of the hospital were scattered over an area of some twenty acres of parklands, encircled by a high wire security fence. The hospital had some buildings of recent construction in the new wings, but the main buildings were stone and brick which had been built around the turn of the century. There were some very old buildings originally built by the convicts when the area had first been occupied as a penal settlement in the early 1800′s. These buildings had been restored by successive administrations and used as the administration centre for the hospital.

Jacob had realised that this was the opportunity of a lifetime and secured the lease on a ninety nine year basis with conditions which meant that he must maintain the buildings in good order for that period and that all improvements would eventually revert to the government at the end of the lease.

The Lawrence Island itself was cigar shaped, curving to one side as a crescent where it followed the shape of the delta. One end faced the open sea and contained a small sheltered beach. The original buildings had been built behind this beach to provide a view out over the ocean. The old hospital was built with sandstone blocks and featured leadlight windows along the main beachside façade. A magnificent entrance hall which Jacob refurbished greeted visitors who invariably stopped and looked up at the domed roof when they entered. Here a series of brilliantly designed leadlight windows formed a circle under the ornate dome allowing multi-coloured light to splash into the foyer at any time of the day. The reception desk was tucked away towards the back of the area with a group of comfortable lounges arranged on a large circular carpet under the domed skylight. The effect was rather like that of walking into an old fashioned but very plush hotel built in the grand style of the early 1900’s.

Jacob spent millions of dollars building a four story research centre with several satellite buildings and an airstrip running along the length of the island. The building program allowed for modernisation of all the hospital buildings and the construction of a new theatre complex off to one side of the research centre. Plans were laid for several new accommodation facilities and a large testing laboratory for specialised research. It included several levels of empty space underground for future car parking and storage. The plans included replacing the old ferry access with a modern bridge across to the island. This was to be built in a second stage construction phase.

The finance for these operations came from a variety of sources, some legitimate and several not so pure. In one of his manufacturing operations a batch of anti-inflammatory drugs was contaminated and unsuitable for the local market. The loss would have been hundreds of thousands of dollars if he had scrapped it but Jacob was presented an opportunity to quietly remove the batch to Africa by a small twist of fate. A company in Nigeria had ordered the anti-inflammatory drug and then cancelled the order when they realised that it was a duplicate. Jacob used the cancelled order to ship the contaminated material to Nigeria to his distribution company and then transhipped the order across the border where there were very rudimentary checks on movements of supplies to Benin. It was sold here through the black market ending up in many different third world countries. This started a trend for Jacob who saw the huge profits to be made by dumping substandard products in this way.

Another venture was production of amphetamines in Asia. Here the market was strong but the quality varied considerably. Sub-standard batches were shipped to Africa where there were minimum controls on quality and where the distribution and supply routes were easily masked. By taking over small pharmaceutical companies and bringing the drugs into the Australian, European and American markets he was able to use his contacts in the underworld to distribute his products to the street community thereby increasing his wealth enormously. The risk was there but with creative accounting and multiple small subsidiaries he was able to hide many illicit transactions and soon established a flourishing drug supply business. Money was channelled through the legitimate pharmaceutical subsidiaries as profit and ended up in his substantial bank accounts. These were spread around and established in every tax haven around the world. Jacob soon found that associations with drug cartels in South America could add to the spread of his empire. He established a presence in Brazil where he maintained a prestigious apartment anonymously as a secure bolt-hole for the future.

Purchasing the Lawrence River site was conditional on government approval for his hospital, clinic and research facilities being approved under a 99 year lease arrangement with his development company. He also encouraged the development company to purchase land in the nearby town of Lawrence and build a series of beach side units. This commercial project gave new life to the sleepy little coastal resort, as some of the units were sold and others made available for holiday lettings. The purpose of this construction was to provide living quarters for the workers at the Abraham Clinic which was the name he had chosen for the hospital complex.

Jacob’s grand vision had come true. He had convinced Joseph to move his Clinic from the bureaucratic jungle of Melbourne to the North Coast of New South Wales. At first Joseph had been unwilling to make the move but the carrot had been the superb research facilities that Jacob could now make available and the opportunity to work unhindered by the due process of petty bureaucrats.

Joseph had been working in the field of genetic engineering and was at the forefront of his field. His techniques had been used to develop new methods and superior results in many areas, with his special interests being in the I.V.F. programs of his clinic. One of his areas of interest was in duplicating the functions of the placenta in an artificial environment. His other work was largely in the area of developing ever more sophisticated techniques for performing the IVF itself. This involved improving the methods of keeping the immature cells alive in media which would sustain them for longer periods than it was thought possible. As a result of all this development the Abraham Clinic enjoyed a reputation for the highest success rate with its patients of all the clinics in the western world up until the time when the government called a halt on this type of work. When this happened a decision was taken to continue the work behind closed doors as the progress was going ahead at such a rate that to halt the research would have delayed the programme by years. Ostensibly they changed their research efforts to other areas but due to the fact that they were not reliant on grant money and did not have to submit funding applications to anyone there was no official requirement to report on their activities. They had a team of dedicated researchers supported by funding from the Abraham Pharmaceutical Company.

To the patients coming for review in the Clinic, the process seemed to be quite straight forward. A few tests and some consultations and the decisions were made. Most patients had no idea that a great deal of scientific work was done on them behind the scenes when they presented with their problems. In reality they didn’t care much in any case, as their prime concern was to produce healthy children. Very few of the prospective parents interviewed in the plush waiting rooms had any real concept of how science was able to help them. Those that were able to be helped with IVF even though it was technically illegal were not interested in causing any problems as they invariably were able to report pregnancies to their physicians. The clinic developed efficient means of educating these couples who could claim to the world at large that being away at a health resort was all that was needed to restore their ability to procreate.

The clinic enjoyed a reputation second to none, and attracted desperate would be parents from all over the world. The business was conducted discreetly and only advertised by word of mouth amongst trusted colleagues in the medical profession. For many it was the only hope after trying unsuccessfully at other clinics in less scientifically advanced countries. As leaders in the field, the Clinic attracted many Americans who were sent by physicians who had followed the successes in the Medical Journals. Every week Joseph received enquiries from aspiring researchers wanting to come and study with him. Officially the status of the IVF program was in limbo pending the government enquiry and most turned a blind eye to the steady stream of relatively wealthy clients that came to the hospital complex.

The do‑gooders had moved in with their archaic concepts based on ignorant religious principles, and started a movement to ban I.V.F. programs. At first it was simply the isolated query in the newspapers regarding paternity, then a ground swell of ’concerned” people from minority sects and oddball groups started to put pressure on the government to legislate for the control of the I.V.F. program. The real problem arose with a case of disputed legal rights fought through several courts, where the rights of the unborn foetus were unclear in law.

The Attorney General stepped in and made it illegal to take part in an I.V.F. program until the legal issues had been sorted out. No one was ever questioned or arrested as there were no complaints from the clients. The do-gooders kept up their lobbying but never even knew that the work was still going on quietly in the background. A Senate Committee was appointed to look into the matter, with a promise of some advice to the Parliament within eighteen months.

For the Abraham Clinic in Victoria the sudden cessation of all their programs was an apparent death blow. Fortunately the law was only applied strictly in Victoria so the patients could go interstate if they wanted to, or could afford to and nothing was said or done to prevent “clinical assessment” in other places.

For Joseph this was the turning point in his decision to go to New South Wales. The new facilities at Lawrence River gave him the opportunity to continue his beloved research, and to help those patients that he benignly thought of as his family.

For Jacob, the change in the law was just another opportunity to expand his empire. He had been finding that making huge amounts of money were no longer the buzz that they used to be and had diversified into a number of new ventures. He was finding a new driving force in himself. This force was the lust for power and control over people. He was not interested in politics except to further his business ends, and his ever growing arrogance and ego were feeding off manipulating his people and defying those laws which he felt should not apply to himself. He was becoming a dictator with a fiefdom quartered in the Lawrence River project.

The Lawrence Island complex had become much more than originally planned. It now housed several secret laboratories where the security was so intense that the staff lived in separate isolated premises and were allowed no contact with other sections of the complex. Principal of these were secret laboratories and manufacturing processes built into the underground area. Here huge quantities of drugs were manufactured and shipped through covert channels to all parts of the world. Many were street drugs which attracted enormous sums of money when laundered through illegal channels. They were shipped to anonymous overseas companies disguised as legitimate drugs or as bulk chemicals to be used in manufacturing processes. Jacob had set up satellite laboratories and manufacturing facilities in Columbia, Thailand and Africa. Here the raw materials and pre-processed chemicals were turned into the pills which eventually hit the streets of New York and in Australia as amphetamines and new drugs that he was introducing slowly to the market. Some of these were highly addictive and had started out as genuine products of pharmaceutical research but had to be rejected because they could never pass FDA, or in Australia, TGA accreditation. There were pharmaceutical research laboratories in one compound where research into the ethical products manufactured by the group’s factories was conducted. The chemists who worked here were isolated from another small group of tightly controlled scientists who worked in the secret laboratories and processing plant underground. Most of the ordinary workers who did the actual process work had no idea that what they were producing were highly illegal chemicals. They were all given esoteric names which meant nothing to the process workers. They were also told that these chemicals were used in producing the approved drugs made in other Abraham Pharmaceutical plants.

Transporting of the drugs and chemicals from the facility was achieved without drawing attention to the volume of material being shipped to and fro. Raw materials and bulk chemicals were transported by truck to a separate facility on the mainland which was about fifteen miles upstream. This facility was a large agricultural company that produced plant materials for the genuine drugs which the company produced in a number of facilities both in Australia and overseas. The plants on this farm were grown and harvested on the 10,000 acre property located in a bend in the river. Highway access for trucks was easily achieved as the main north south freeway passed within ten miles and the side road leading to the farming complex was a well-sealed road. Part of the complex was a fertiliser factory which made a range of products from the by-product of preliminary processing of the exotic plants. Supplies for Lawrence River were transhipped here and picked up by the company’s modern barge on twice daily runs to and from the island. There was a jetty and loading facilities at each end that made the task relatively easy and out of sight of the main roads.

Traffic on the river was minimal and limited to local fishermen and a few deep sea boats. Some runs were done at night to avoid being seen. Often these were the bulk chemicals on their way to the port and overseas. The locals understood that the ethical drugs manufactured on the island were shipped to the jetty and into waiting trucks for shipment to Sydney or Brisbane and were accustomed to seeing the ferry plying up and down the river. As it did not create a big wash and caused no erosion of the banks they had no problems and accepted it as normal river traffic.

The barge never carried people, just the skipper and his mate. Anyone having to do business on the island could fly in or catch the little ferry which was still running until the long awaited road bridge was constructed. There had been interminable delays in getting all the necessary approvals in place for the bridge and this was officially a source of annoyance to the hospital management. Secretly however, Jacob did not want ready access to the hospital by this route and did what he could to delay the process.

Staff who lived in Lawrence came across on the morning ferry and returned on the evening ferry. There was another ferry run late at night for the night shift workers.

The hospital was organised into several separate sections, each essentially independent of the other. In one section there was a modern sports health facility where clients came to be treated for their imagined ills, with an emphasis on weight loss or gain. Nearby was a luxurious motel style clinic for drying out alcoholics. This unit was also run by the section which operated the health farm. Each unit ostensibly was a separate business under the larger umbrella of the Abraham Clinic.

The original hospital had been refurbished as a private hospital for the very rich, where the patients were jetted in to the private airstrip on the island, and pampered for as long as they could afford. The old ward blocks were converted into a bright maternity home and hospital for both private and public patients. It was here that the I.V.F. program was re‑established. Childless couples were brought to the Island on the regular flights from Sydney, and stayed until the program was successfully completed.

Behind the Research Centre there was another building complex which was not accessible from any other area on the island except through the main entrance of the Research Centre. This was known to all and sundry as The Asylum and was off limits to all staff and patients except those who actually worked there. There were ten buildings in the complex forming a circle around a large garden area. The only windows faced in to the central area. The word was put around that this was actually a posh asylum for wealthy guests to discourage curious onlookers. Of course onlookers could not see into the complex from the outside. It was designed to be private in all senses of the word.