Northern Territory Corrections Minister John Elferink was sacked because of the scandal and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull immediately ordered a royal commission into the abuse of the children by the detention centre guards.
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National Children’s Commissioner Megan Mitchell has called for the shutdown of the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin, where the CCTV footage was recorded.
The allegations, which appeared on Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s “Four Corners” investigative program, showed children as young as 10 being stripped naked, assaulted, tear-gassed and kept in solitary confinement.
The program also showed one boy being shackled to a “mechanical device” chair before being left alone for two hours and another being tackled, lifted and hurled across a room.
Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles said he was “disgusted” by the revelations, but added he had “full confidence in the majority of custodial officers” working in such institutions.
Less than 12 hours later, prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a royal commission into what had occurred, pledging to “get to the bottom” of the issue that occurred predominately in 2014.
Detention staff are heard calling the 14-year-old escaped detainee an idiot and a “little f****r”.
“Like all Australians, I have been deeply shocked, shocked and appalled, by the images of mistreatment at the Don Dale center” in Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory, Turnbull said. The programme also examined long-running issues and instances of mistreatment in the Northern Territory youth justice system.
“Amnesty International has repeatedly raised concerns of abuse of children being held in youth detention centres in the Northern Territory”, Julian Cleary, indigenous rights campaigner at Amnesty International Australia, said. “As this program shows, these are not isolated incidents”.
O’Brien has been demanding Voller’s immediate release and says the PM’s Royal Commission “needs to be as broad as possible”.
Amnesty International said Aboriginal children are 26 times more likely to be jailed than their non-indigenous counterparts and face poor educational prospects, high unemployment and substance abuse.
“I turned up for one shift and Dylan was in the chair and the other two times they were on incident reports I read once I got to work”, he said.
Teens kept in Don Dale’s isolation wing were allegedly locked in small cells for nearly 24 hours a day with no running water and little natural light.
“I would have thought that’s an irresponsible attitude to take to this”, he said of Mr Giles’ reaction.
“I sat and watched the footage and recognized horror through my eyes”.
The video is part of an extensive investigation by Four Corners that has helped brought use of excessive force in Australian juvenile detention centers, especially the ones in the Northern Territory, into focus.
‘It was some of the most disturbing footage I have ever seen, ‘ he said.
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He added: “We want to know how this came about, we want to know what lessons can be learned from it, we want to know why”.
