Northern Territory detention shame: The image that shocked a nation

DYLAN Voller — the hooded face of the Northern Territory’s child prisoner shame — was a little kid with a big mouth, lost in a hell’s nest.

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DYLAN Voller — the hooded face of the Territory’s child prisoner shame — was a little kid with a big mouth.

Childhood trauma compounded behavioural issues and ADHD. He was difficult to control, and that big mouth saw him in and out of detention since he was 11.

His offending escalated and now 18, Dylan is serving out the final few weeks of a 20- month sentence in an adult prison for an ice binge during which he tried to run over a police officer in Alice Springs.

Dylan Voller.

“His mouth was his weapon, because he’s tiny,” his sister Kirra told the NT News.

“He’s always been a little boy and he’s never had a father figure. He’s always been lost, looking for that role model.”

Pictures chronicling Voller’s abuse at the hands of the NT justice system have shocked Australia. The vision, first aired on Four Corners, showed Dylan, then 13, slammed to a mattress on the floor by a prison guard. Footage of other incidents show Dylan growing up with institutional abuse the only constant in his life.

In the final frames, a 17-year-old Voller sits eerily still, shackled to a chair by his ankles, wrists and head, a hood obscuring his face.

Kirra said she found the footage difficult to watch.

“I wanted to turn the TV off,” she said. “The minute it started, I couldn’t watch it. But I needed to watch it because I needed to know what my brother had been through so I could be there for him.”

She said she was overwhelmed and humbled by the support from all over Australia and welcomed the news of a royal commission, but said it would mean little to her brother in practical terms. “It won’t do anything for him. He’s not even in Don Dale anymore, he’s 19 this year; he’s in an adult jail. It’s not going to help him so it doesn’t really mean anything to me at all,” she said.

But Kirra said it was sweet to finally be vindicated in her belief that what happened to her brother was wrong.

“We thought for so long it was wrong,” she said. “But everybody else is saying ‘no, it’s right’ and you start to think ‘OK, maybe it’s right’.

“But after seeing the response, it’s not right at all.”

People rally in protest against Dylan Voller’s treatment in Alice Springs.

Dylan Voller has released this handwritten letter via his lawyer.

Dylan is eligible for release next month. It will be the first time he will exist in the real world as an adult. He has a job lined up in Humpty Doo but with NT recidivism rates the worst in the country, the odds are stacked against him.

Kirra said Dylan was robbed of a childhood by the NT justice system. “He’s just a lost little boy on the inside who needed guidance and love and support but from the age of 10 he was isolated and separated from everyone and everything rather than being built up into that person he was supposed to be,” she said.

Despite everything he has endured, Kirra said Dylan still had a chance to build himself a life, and was optimistic about his future. “Anyone who saw the footage wouldn’t have thought he was that boy in the video,” she said. “He tries to be funny and smile and laugh things off for the sake of everybody else around him. I think that personality trait will help him get through.”