Intellectually disabled inmate restrained, shot with tranquilliser

THE UN has been asked to investigate the barbaric case of an intellectually disabled NT prisoner strapped to a chair and shot full of tranquillisers, 17 times.

Start of it all ... Dylan Voller, strapped and hooded in youth detention in the NT. Picture: ABC

THE United Nations Human Rights Council has been asked to investigate the treatment of an intellectually disabled Aboriginal man in a Northern Territory prison.

Malcolm Morton, 25 has a severe intellectual disability, and was found unfit to plead to a murder charge in 2012 over the stabbing death of his uncle when he was a teenager.

He was sentenced to 12 years prison and has been housed in the maximum security wing of Alice Springs Correctional Centre since a jury returned a guilty verdict of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.

In that time, he has been placed in restraints 17 times, but not hooded.

His guardian, Patrick McGee, is pleading with the UN to intervene and investigate.

“Because he spends large amounts of time in his cell, he can often get frustrated or angry or bored, and so he will bang his head against the cell bars or the cell walls, and he will do so quite violently and for long periods of time, Mr McGee told the ABC.

“And because he has an intellectual disability and this is a maximum-security prison, often many of the prison officers don’t have the necessary set of skills to actually manage him and they strap him into a restraint chair and then they usually inject him with some type of tranquilliser until he’s compliant and calm.”

Mr McGee’s appeal comes in the wake of Four Corners’ broadcast last week of an aboriginal boy, Dylan Voller hooded in a ‘spit hood’ and strapped to a restraint chair at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in Darwin.

And it seems Mr Morton is not alone in his treatment — Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs said it has received at least 10 similar complaints of forcible restraint from the guardians of other intellectually disabled prisoners, most of them Aboriginal.

“I’m aware over the last two or three years of something like 10 or so of these kinds of complaints,” Professor Triggs said.

“They should be in a facility designed for people with intellectual disabilities, where the medical staff are fully trained to understand what restraint is humane, what is necessary and what is in the best interests of that patient,”

She claimed the Federal Government had “washed their hands of the whole affair” when the issue was raised, saying it had “nothing to do with the Commonwealth”.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, issued a statement in the wake of the Four Corners story, saying he was shocked at the treatment of children at Don Dale.

The complaint about Mr Morton has been lodged with the UN. Professor Patrick Kwyzer, who wrote the complaint, believes the UN will be similarly concerned that restraint chairs are used elsewhere in the NT, “particularly in relation to vulnerable prisoners”.

It’s understood Mr Morton has not been hooded when restrained.

Mr Morton was a teenager in the remote central Australian community of Santa Teresa when he fatally stabbed his uncle Simon Wallace in 2007.

Doctors had repeatedly warned that without proper treatment Mr Morton would be a danger to himself and others.

Mr Morton is currently allowed day release to a secure health unit next to the prison, but Mr McGee says he needs to be given appropriate disability care and released from prison.

“He’s never been taught to communicate using verbal language, and his disability is such that he has very poor receptive and expressive language,” Mr McGee said.

“He often spends large amounts of time in his cell. Ten out of every 12 hours could be spent in his cell. He has to be escorted when he’s out of his cell by prison officers.

He said the use of the restraint chair was barbaric and unnecessary.

“The position of the prison is that they can’t allow him to continue to hurt himself,” Mr McGee said.

“In the absence of any other alternatives what they do is they enter the cell and manhandle him into a restraint chair.”

A spokesman for the lawyer general, George Brandis, said the use of restraint chairs had been suspended ahead of the royal commission, and it was a matter for the NT government.

Originally published as Intellectually disabled inmate restrained, shot with tranquilliser