In one video, a 17-year-old is hooded, shackled to a restraint chair by his ankles, wrists and neck and left alone for two hours.
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Adam Giles, the chief minister of the Northern Territory, said the territory would build a new youth detention centre but insisted he and other senior ministers had not been shown the footage.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the treatment of youths by the Northern Territory corrections system needed a thorough enquiry.
Juan Mendez, a United Nations special rapporteur, told Australia’s Radio National Thursday that video footage showing mistreatment of six aboriginal boys at the Don Dale Youth Detention Center indicated a “very worrisome development that can amount to torture”.
“What we would want to see is that the government considers not merely the individual detention centre, the Don Dale Centre, but much wider issues than that, going to the whole of the juvenile justice system in the Northern Territory”, Dreyfus said.
“He has told me he’s anxious about his safety, he’s told me that three of the guards who are guarding him presently – who were on the show that we saw the other night on Four Corners are brutalising him – three of them are there now as prison guards”. “This will be clearly focused on the Northern Territory and will be focused on the failings of the youth detention system there”.
“We need a proper inquiry and the facts need to be determined and then we can determine whether people should be charged”, she told ABC TV’s Q&A program.
The program showed videos of abuse taking place at several centers across the Northern Territories, including the Don Dale center in Darwin.
“The royal commissioner [will] consider whether any such treatment might have been a breach of any Commonwealth or Northern Territory law, a breach of the Northern Territory’s Duty of Care or other relevant duty, a breach of human rights obligations adopted by Australia or the Northern Territory”.
At the time, the incident was described as a riot but the CCTV and video camera footage appears to show only one boy who had escaped his cell.
After Mr Middlebrook’s exit, Mr Giles announced a “root and branch” review of NT corrections policies and procedures.
“Any government that enacts policies created to harm children and enables a culture of brutalisation and cover-ups, surrenders its right to govern”, spokesman John Paterson told Reuters.
A still from the ABC Four Corners investigative report.
Australia’s Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, who backed the inquiry, said: “We have been reporting on this question of indigenous incarceration, particularly of juveniles, for many, many years and we have had many, many reports.on the appalling conditions in which they are held”.
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This includes youths at the Don Dale Detention Centre in Darwin being tear-gassed and placed for long periods in isolation cells.
