Child abuses shame us all

AN appalling treatment of child prisoners has been revealed by security videos from a Northern Territory youth detention centre.

The Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Berrimah, Northern Territory. Picture: ABC Four Corners/AAP

AN APPALLING treatment of child prisoners has been revealed by security videos from a Northern Territory youth detention centre.

As great a shock as the distressing images seen in the security footage is that this abuse of child prisoners has taken place in the 21st century.

What is accurately described as the physical and mental torture of children as young as 13 at the Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre is beyond the imagination of most Australians.

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It is as unforgettable as it is unforgivable. Children being tear-gassed and cowering in tiny cells, believing they were about to die at the hands of prison guards, might have been the victims of a brutal and repressive.

But this has been happening in Australia, under a Northern Territory Government.

The abuses uncovered by the ABC Four Corners program cannot be denied. The image of a teenager, held down in a specially designed “mechanical restraint chair’’ with a hood over his head and left in a cell, was taken this year.

A screengrab from footage of the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre shows a boy strapped to a mechanical chair. Picture: ABC Four Corners/AAP

It could have been a terrifying image from the infamous Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq war, when such abuses were uncovered and those responsible sent to prison.

The cruel and unusual punishment suffered by the 13-year-old boy and other child prisoners was excused by prison authorities as being in response to a riot.

But the security camera film obtained by the ABC shows there was no riot, only the reaction of guards to the actions of a boy screaming to be allowed out of long-term isolation.

He was one of six children teargassed at the Don Dale youth centre in 2014 until they fell choking to the floor of their cells.

Two of the boys had been playing cards. Their only drinking water came from a toilet. They exchanged sobbing goodbyes, thinking they were about to die.

There can be no excuse for such outrageous abuse and criminal mistreatment, no matter how difficult these children might have been, or how they might have behaved.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has moved swiftly to call a royal commission into the abuses suffered at the centre’s notorious Behavioural Management Unit.

This is a system out of control. The Northern Territory Government cannot be trusted to inquire into abuses carried out repeatedly under its watch, having ignored reports by its own Children’s Commissioner as well as a virtual whitewash of a program of incarceration that has seen more than 90 per cent of children in jail coming from Aboriginal communities. No matter what they have done, these children, many of them repeat offenders, cannot be treated with such indifference and deliberate brutality.

Northern Territory Corrections Minister John Elferink has been sacked in the wake of the ‘Four Corners’ report..

The Northern Territory Minister for Corrections, whose job it was to oversee what under his watch became a criminal system of degradation, has been sacked. Incredibly, John Elferink remains as Attorney-General and Mental Health Minister although these portfolios also carry a duty of care in what happened at the detention centre.

Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles blames what he calls a culture of cover-up within the corrections system, but it is one of which he should have been aware.

Full transparency is necessary in any system dealing with children, even children who may have been put in detention for serious offences.

The broader community will not tolerate crimes against the person, whether it is against the innocent victims of violent teenagers or against the offenders themselves while in custody.

The royal commission announced by Mr Turnbull is an opportunity to not only bring forward changes to the Northern Territory juvenile detention system, but to provide a framework for all governments to follow in the treatment of children and young offenders.

While they should not be excused for what they have done, nor should they be abused.

What has happened in the Northern Territory cannot be tolerated on any level. Those responsible should be sacked. Jail should be an option for them. The nation is shamed by what has happened.

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Australian walker Jared Tallent had to wait four years for his gold medal after Russian Sergey Kirdyapkin was found to have cheated his way to victory at the London Olympics.

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