Warning: this report contains the name and image of Cleveland Dodd, with his family’s permission.
A 15-year-old detainee is tonight speaking out from inside the notorious Unit 18 youth wing at Casuarina Prison, where 16-year-old Cleveland Dodd recently took his own life.
In a phone call recorded by his mother, the boy claims young prisoners are being painfully shackled for hours, even after the death of their fellow inmate.
Last year Four Corners published disturbing footage showing guards at WA’s youth detention facility Banksia Hill using the “folding-up” technique, sparking outrage.
Now this detainee, who cannot be named for legal reasons, claims officers are using three-point restraints as the method of choice.
“Chains around your ankles, and chains from the chains to the handcuffs. So like a frog,” the teenager told his mother.
“They made my wrists go numb.”
The boy’s mother is considering legal proceedings.
He claims he was three-point restrained twice in one day. Both times for hours after he covered a security camera and smashed a TV. He also says three more detainees were shackled the same way in the same 24-hour period.
By law the restraint technique should only be used to prevent harm or escape.
The teen’s grandmother said the family knew the boy had done something wrong.
“But if we were to do that, keep our kids tied up at home locked in a room, oh my God we’d be on charges,” she said told Nine News Perth.
Dana Levitt of Levitt Robinson Solicitors said the treatment was unacceptable.
“We’re talking about eight-plus hours of being chained up like a dog in a rip-proof gown with no underpants on,” she said.
The Department of Justice released a statement, but said they did not discuss individual cases or details of security matters.
“Safeguards are in place to ensure the safety and wellbeing of detainees who are in restraints,” the statement said.
“This includes ongoing monitoring, medical review by the onsite nursing staff and counsel by staff. Other supports may be called upon for assistance.”
Incidents where restraints were used were recorded and reviewed and if found not to be in line with procedures were referred to the department’s professional standards directorate. Restraints were removed as soon as it is deemed safe to do so.
But youth detention expert and advocate Gerry Georgatos said using handcuffs and ankle cuffs on children was an abomination.
“Last year, I helped expose to the nation, the horrific and potentially injurious figure-four-folding technique on children by guards,” he said.
“They have learned little, when degenerating to three-point shackling of children. These children should be urgently relocated to therapeutic mental health facilities where psychologists and psychiatrists can validate them, disable their diminution, contextualise their lot and ways forward, listen to them and counsel.
“Unit 18 must be shut before the horrors of that gulag translate to children and youth tragically propelled to killing themselves or to ricocheting the cruelties of their time in Unit 18 to horrific crimes. We can prevent all of this.”
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