A Week That Demands a Royal Commission

discussed in this podcast. We haven't had a chance to go over it just enough yet to be able to broadcast it to the public. And of course, also you'd understand that because some of this information is going to be very useful for Kevin Henry in terms of presenting it to the parole board and presenting it for his pardon, we have to be quite careful what we make public at this stage. We will do so in coming weeks.

So this week I want to talk a little bit about what's been going on in the past week or two in terms of Aboriginal and to Astraight Islander people in custody in Australia. We've seen three reports come out in the last few weeks detailing horrific conditions for Aboriginal in Torostraight Islanders in prison, and that includes people with

disabilities and juveniles. We've also had further debts in custody that are unexplained and where police action has been completely inappropriate, and we've had some new reporting on exactly what is happening in Western Australia in the youth detention facility there. So this week I thought it was really important that we bring those issues further out into the open and

explain them more. These are things that all really relate to what we're trying to do with Curtin, which is not only expose the innocence of Kevin Henry and the flawed system that's seen him in prison for twenty six years, but why this continues to happen. Many people may understand why things went so horribly wrong in nineteen ninety one and nineteen ninety two when Kevin was arrested and then placed on trial. That was the height of the Fitzgerald

Days in Queensland. Police corruption was rampant, and we know from what we've exposed in this podcast so far, there is very serious questions to be answered about the police actions involved in the arrest and imprisonment of Kevin Henry, and we do have some more information on that for you in the coming weeks. But unfortunately in twenty eighteen, these issues still will continue. Just this week, we've heard about a juvenile in Western Australian detention who's been held

in solitary confinement for the last three hundred and two days. Now, almost every international law that relates to solitary confinement rights of the child, as well as world's best practice in terms of how best to deal with children in detention, absolutely goes against the use of any kind of solitary confinement or these sort of harsh punishment methods. They are breaches of basic human rights. But for a child to be imprisoned in solitary confinement for three hundred and two

days is absolutely disgraceful. And again, Western Australia has had more than its fair share of problems. As many people will know, mister an Aboriginal elder died while in a prison van in Western Australia. His death was brutal and horrific, and yet no one is in prison as a result. We also know about what happened to missed You, dying

in custody for unpaid fines. We know the way the police treated her was absolutely appalling, serious crimes against humanity, and not a single officer charged or imprisoned over her death. And from that same state we now have a young boy in prison in what the government is trying to claim is an intensive support unit, but is really solitary confinement. And this young boy has been stripped of many rights that detainees should have. That includes deprivation of family contact

and education. How is this child supposed to rehabilitate without education and family contact? Excessive use of force and disproportionate restraints. Now, this is exactly what we saw going on in Dondale in the Northern Territory. We've all seen the pictures and videos of what was done to Dylan Volla and the other boys in Dondale and that resulted in a royal commission.

The fact that it's going on in Western Australia and more obviously in every other state in this country means we need a Royal commission not only into juvenile justice, but into the entire prison system. And I'll give more evidence for that as the podcast goes along. This child has also been subjected to degrading treatment in a war situation. If Australia was handling prisoners of war, these would be

crimes against the Geneva Convention. And yet this is being done to a young child in detention in Western Australia. There's also been a serious lack of medical treatment for this child, including psychological care. And one thing that we do know about solitary confinement is that it absolutely worsens a person's medical and quite obviously psychological condition at a very very fast rate. Peer reviewed reports and journals have shown that in as little as forty eight hours a

drastic impact on someone's psychological wellbeing can take place. And this is with adults who are not suffering any mental health issues at the time. So for a child who may have these, and we believe they do, to be in solitary confinement for three hundred and two days nearly a full year, is absolutely disgraceful and the West Australian government needs to fix this asap and WA Corrections must release this young boy into the general population of the

prison immediately. Now. Just as disturbing in Western Australia is some further information that's come out about the Banksy Hill Juvenile Detention Center, and there's been a study and it was done by a medical institute by a number of leading professors in the field, and it has been published in the peer reviewed medical journal BMJ Open, which is also then peer reviewed by the largest database of medical

journals on the planet. And this is what this peer reviewed science has found about West Australia's Banks Hill Juvet Nile Detention Center. That nine out of the ten young people assessed were suffering at least one form of severe brain impairment. That's ninety percent of the children have at least one form of severe brain impairment. The medical term is a neurodevelopmental impairment and it's on the severe end

of the scale. Now, to compound that, sixty five percent of these young people, these are all people under the age of eighteen, had three or more forms of these severe brain impairments. Sixty five percent, twenty three percent had five or more severe brain impairments. Now, this is not kids just making things up. This is not just small

issues that these children are facing. They were assessed by medical professors whose work was then peer reviewed by other highly qualified medical professionals before it was allowed to be published first in this journal BMJ Open and then more widely around the globe. And it's the sort of work that is accepted by the Surgeon General in the United States as being absolute fact. Now it should come as no surprise, sadly that seventy four percent of these children

are Aboriginal males. Despite being only two percent of the population, seventy four percent of Aboriginal males have these disabilities, and

rather than being cared for, are in prison. One of the other issues which we've spoken about previously in this podcast is the issue of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or faz D. And there's been a number of experts who Amy's spoken to and written about over the years, and I'll provide some links to their works that have been saying this for decades, that a large number of those in custody, especially children, but adults as well, are suffering from faz D. These young people never had a chance.

They need medical care, not imprisonment. Now, I want to remind you that again, seventy four percent of these young people with these severe brain injuries and brain impairments that are in custody are between the ages of ten and seventeen years old. Ten and seventeen, These are children. Now, this is the highest incidence of FASD ever discovered in a population in the world. These are young people who need a great deal of not only medical care, but

family and psychological support and of course educational support. Is it any wonder that they're in prison when they haven't been provided these things. But here's what's most startling is that the vast bulk of these children had never been

properly medically assessed. That means the children themselves and their parents had no idea their children were suffering these conditions, and the State of Western Australia has decided, rather than provide them with the care they need, where they should be in their communities, with their families, in school and

being looked after, they're being locked in jail. Now we can understand why children suffering such severe medical conditions would often act out, and perhaps it's inappropriate social behavior small theft. These are not children who have committed major crimes. The young people suffering neurodevelopment impairments that are very very serious, and yet they are being held in a juvenile detention

center that quite frankly resembles a maximum security prison. And what these medical professionals are recommending is that these young people should not be in prison, that what they really need is, as I've just said, the support and care of their community and the government. The professors were heavily critical of almost every department, from health, Education, Justice, child

protection and everyone who intervenes in these children's lives. These are the departments and the people who work for them who are supposed to help these children, but instead they throw them in jail, and they throw seventy four percent of them are young Aboriginal boys between ten and seventeen. This is an absolutely racist policy by the Western Australian government and it targets Aboriginal children who need medical care

and not imprisonment. And once again we need people to step up and call on the Western Australian government to release these children, and not only just release them, but to ensure that they undo the damage that they've done to these young people. This cannot be allowed to continue.

If that wasn't bad enough, international organization Human Rights Watch released a new report less than two weeks ago, and it deals with prisoners in Australia who have a disability, and this is adult prisoners, male and female, right around the country and they spoke to one hundred and thirty six former and current prisoners with disabilities from fourteen prisons

around Australia. Of those one hundred and thirty six they spoke to, forty one reported experiencing physical violence at the hands of not only fellow prisoners but also staff, and thirty two described being sexually assaulted by either fellow prisoners or staff. Now, this is around twenty percent of those disabled prisoners who were sexually assaulted in prison. Again, a

lot of these people were, no surprise, Aboriginal people. Once again, the racist system in this country where the incarceration rates of Aboriginal people are criminally high. And as we've discussed previously on this podcast, there's a lot of reasons for that, and I won't go into them right now because we

have been over them before. But clearly, when you incarcerate Aboriginal people at a criminal level, when courts, police and governments are not only just failing Aboriginal people but locking them up either innocent people, people with mental health conditions, disabilities, people are being failed by legal centers and legal practices who are not defending them in an appropriate manner nor anywhere near the level that should be required of a

proper defense. And here we have disabled people not just slipping through the cracks and finding themselves in prison where for the most part they're being incarcerated for quite minor crimes. They are now being on top of the disability they also already face on top of being in prison for often trivial matters, now they are being physically and sexually abused,

both by fellow inmates and worse by staff. A senior nurse assigned to a prison told Human Rights Watch that six of the eight current prison careers in their facility will convicted sex offenders. So these are people assigned to look after disabled people in the prison, sex offenders who are then going on to perpetrate sex crimes inside prison, and they are targeting vulnerable people like those with disabilities.

What we also learned from this report is because prisons often aren't equipped to deal with those who are suffering with disabilities. Let's remember that the broader society and broader community is not doing a good job at all in assisting those with disabilities. That's why we needed the NDS, And sadly, the rollout of the NDIS has been full of problems and the horror stories continue for those suffering

with disabilities and their families. And yet we're finding Aboriginal peace people with disabilities, and people from the general community with disabilities in jail. And what this report showed is that the inability of prisons to care for these people adequately meant that up to thirty percent of the disabled prisoners reported having been placed in solitary confinement for a considerable period of time, and nearly all of those who were spoken to by Human Rights Watch had been placed

in solitary confinement at some point during their incarceration. Now, what has occurred with a number of these people who spoke to Human Rights Watch is, in addition to their disability, they've come out of prison with new conditions, most notably post traumatic stress disorder, and many are still suffering severe bouts of anxiety, depression, flashbacks, and a whole range of mental illnesses that they now have to deal with on

top of their current disability. Post Traumatic stress disorder is something that is developed generally in a response, as the name would suggest, to a very traumatic incident. We know this occurs when people return from war, people who have been sexually assaulted, those who have been physically assaulted, women who have been continually abused via family violence, and young children who suffer the same. And this is being done

to vulnerable people by the state in prisons. A prisoner reported this to Human Rights Watch about the particular prison they were in and Human Rights Watch was able to say speak to a senior psychologist who was in charge of dealing with this person. This senior psychologist conceded that the prison and the prison staff often struggled to deal with people with disabilities, and that the custodial staff hadn't been trained and weren't equipped to deal with both complex

mental health issues and other disability behaviors. And so what ends up happening is solitary confinement becomes the last resort, and this contributes to severe harm to these prisoners. Once again, we have governments asleep at the wheel, totally ignoring what is being done to prisoners who were disabled, an aboriginal torrestrate, islander, men, women and children who are over incarcerated and being abused

inside prison. The very people who are supposed to uphold the laws and watch those who are supposedly criminals are committing heinous crimes against some of society's most vulnerable people. If ever, there was a case for a royal commission, what we've spoken about in this podcast so far today lays that out very clearly, as our listeners will know when we've spoken about this on the podcast before. But of course, many of you know this already because it

is such a big issue in the Indigenous community. Is that we already have had a Royal commission into Black deaths in custody that also looked at the treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in prison. And sadly, as we call for a new Royal commission into the way all our prisons are run, we have to report that in the last few weeks there's been further deaths in custody. In Townsville, a young man who was being detained in his thirties by police became unconscious, as the

police would say, after he was taken into custody. And this was very shortly after he'd been taken into custody, and sadly, any attempt at the hospital to save this man's life were unsuccessful and he passed away. How does someone come into contact with police and then in mere seconds be unconscious and then die from those injuries, and yet not a single one of these police officers have been charged, even with assault. People don't just drop dead for no reason. This man died in the hands of

police in mere moments. Once again, all we've had is a commitment that there'll be a coronial inquest. Well, there's been coronial inquests into virtually every one of the four hundred deaths in custody that Aboriginal in Torrestrate Islander people have suffered in the last twenty five years, and not a single police officer has been charged and convicted. Are we seriously meant to believe that Aboriginal people simply just dropped dead for no reason? Now, this wasn't the only

death in custody. Three days apart from the incident in Townsville, a young Aboriginal man was being chased by police. This was a young man known to police who was suffering from health and mental health issues. Despite knowing this, the police kicked a door in and chased the young man. He fell from the thirteenth floor of a multi story

building and tragically passed away. This once again highlights the police's total inability and failure to deal with issues such as mental health and disability, and their complete lack of regard for the life of Aboriginal entres Strait Islander people's. If this was anyone else, a mental health team would have been assigned to take care of the incident, but instead the police kicked in the door. They acted like a swat team. This was not a murderer they were

going after. This was not someone who had committed a series of bank robberies. This was a young Aboriginal man who was no doubt suffering issues and it is believed had been taking illicit substances that would of course caused him to panic even further. And yet, rather than handle this in the delicate manner police are supposed to protect and serve the community, they chased this man to his death. Just three days Apart from police having an Aboriginal man

die in their hands, how did he just die? Why was this young man chased to his death? And there's been other debts in custody in the last two weeks that for cultural reasons, we won't discuss in this episode. But again it highlights what's going on in this country. And yet we hear nothing from the ministers responsible. The Minister for Indigenous Affairs Nigel Scully, and gave a lengthy interview to the ABC just two days ago, these issues

were not touched on once. He spent the first half of that lengthy interview speaking to the nation talking about the leadership of his own political party, and he was backing Barnaby Joyce, who has now been sacked, who is now facing claims of sexual misconduct, above and beyond everything else he's been caught up in. Now these are just

allegations at this stage we have to stress. But why is the Minister for Indigenous Affairs spending half of a national address that's nearly thirty minutes long defending someone in a position of power accused of these things and not speaking out about the consistent and constant death of Aboriginal people for absolutely no reason at the hands of police and correctional officers, The abuse of Aboriginal and Torrestrait Island to people in prison with disabilities, the abuse of Aboriginal

and Tostras Made Islander children as young as ten who are being placed in solitary confinement, and the sexual and physical assault of Aboriginal and Terrestraight Islander children in prison. This demands a royal commission. But more than that, it demands swift action. Any day a child, an innocent person, a vulnerable person is in prison one day more than they need to be, is damaging their life forever. And for those who have passed away, they cannot be brought back.

Next week could very well bring more deaths in custody, and yet these will be needless deaths. They won't happen to anyone but Aboriginal and Terrestraight Islander people. And yet those in charge of the welfare of Aboriginal Interrostraate Islander people around this country remain deathly silent. Next week we'll have more damning evidence against those involved in putting Kevin

Henry falsely behind bars, an innocent man. But until that time, I ask you all to reflect on exactly what's going on in this country and why the media and politicians are not doing their job in fixing these issues immediately. If you'd like to help us continue our work, please consider supporting us through Patreon, which is on our website at www dot Curtin the Podcast dot com, and you can also find us on Facebook and Twitter at Curtin the Podcast