Frank Baxter Juvenile Justice guard convicted of assaulting detainee
A Juvenile Justice guard thought a detainee could be armed after making death threats two days earlier. The teenager was upset because his room had been ‘tossed’ and clothing seized. What happened next would see the guard convicted of assault.
A Frank Baxter Juvenile Justice Centre guard has lodged an immediate appeal after being convicted and sentenced to 250 hours of community service for assaulting a young detainee.
Peter Charles Buckworth, 55, of Tumbi Umbi, was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault after lashing out and punching a teenage detainee five or six times in the head shortly after 9.30pm on November 10, 2018.
The Juvenile Justice guard with 14 years experience pleaded not guilty but was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm after a magistrate found the “number of blows was excessive”.
The magistrate also found Buckworth was best positioned to see if the detainee was holding anything — such as a weapon — but declined to answer whether he could see the boy’s hands “because it didn’t help him”.
The back-up charge of common assault was withdrawn and dismissed.
Gosford Local Court heard Buckworth, who had previously been in the military, arrived for night shift about 9.30pm and saw the detainee sitting on a kerb outside the cells talking with an inexperienced officer who was struggling to convince him to go to his room.
Buckworth told the court he went in to get a couple of more staff before coming back out to “up the level of assertiveness” to get the child inside.
“Having experience I said very firmly, `you have to go inside because I have to do a headcount’,” he said.
The detainee told the court he told Buckworth “don’t f...ing talk to me like that, you’re so f...ing rude”.
Buckworth replied words to the effect “move to your f...ing room”.
The court heard the detainee was upset at the time because his room had been “tossed” by guards a few hours earlier who seized some items of clothing, which were not on the property register.
The boy said his parents had given them to him and they were worth a lot of money.
Buckworth’s barrister told the court his client was on high alert because the detainee had told a psychiatric nurse just two days earlier that he wanted to kill a Juvenile Justice officer and the only thing stopping him was “he had no access to a suitable weapon”.
He said his client believed the child was on a Detainee Risk Management Plan (DRMP) — the second highest security alert level — and feared the boy was concealing a “shiv” or some other weapon.
However two other guards called to give evidence said they were unaware if the detainee was on a DRMP, but had he been on one, they would have known about it.
Giving evidence Buckworth said when the boy stood up he felt he was being confrontational.
“I had to do something to stop him coming into my personal space,” he said.
“I punched him ... I was keeping a distance.”
He then said he tried to “take him down” and the pair went crashing through a small garden bed onto some grass where they wrestled before other staff pulled them apart.
The detainee was left with bruising to his mouth, some bleeding and a `cauliflower’ ear.
Buckworth’s barrister told the court his client would lose his job as a result of a conviction and that it would be difficult, at his age, to find employment.
Magistrate Ron Maiden today put Buckworth on a community corrections order to be of good behaviour for three years and fined him $500.
He was also ordered to perform 250 hours of community service.
Buckworth lodged an appeal and the matter returns to the District Court next month.
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