Papalia defends support of Unit 18 guards after self-harm that led to death

Warning: this report contains the name and image of a deceased Indigenous person, with his family’s permission.

Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia has continued to defend his strident support of the guards on duty at the state’s notorious Unit 18 youth detention facility in the hours after an Indigenous boy was rushed to hospital after self-harming.

Cleveland Dodd, 16, died in hospital on October 19 after the incident in his cell at Unit 18 in the maximum-security Casuarina Prison. He is the first young person to die in Western Australia’s youth detention system.

Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia was questions about the death of Cleveland Dodd in parliament on Tuesday.Credit: Holly Thompson/ Supplied

Just hours after Cleveland’s self-harm attempt, while he was still on life support, Papalia spoke in firm support of the staff and said they had acted appropriately.

However, an ABC report on Monday offered a very different chronology of the events Papalia first outlined, raising questions about how quickly Dodd was attended to after he first alerted staff that he intended to take his own life.

In response to opposition questions in parliament on Tuesday about the different timelines, Papalia said he appeared in front of the media in the hours after the incident in the public interest, and had relayed the information as he understood it, based mostly on personal accounts.

“Any other information or access to further detail was not available to us at the time,” he said.

Preceding that question time on Tuesday, Papalia had continued to back the staff’s actions on the night and said they did a good job in confronting circumstances, performing CPR on someone they knew.

“When you’re looking at someone who’s got blue lips, and you have to resuscitate them and you know and care about them, you have to overcome the natural inclination to actually freeze up and not act,” he said.

Papalia has not denied the ABC reports but told parliament that an internal investigation as well as a Corruption and Crime Commission investigation and coroner’s inquiry were ongoing.

“All of those three investigations will be far more informed,” he said.

The day after Cleveland was rushed to hospital, Papalia said he admired the staff actions and said they responded in a matter of minutes after Cleveland contacted staff on their intercom.

“It was only a matter of minutes from that moment until he was checked and found to be unresponsive and the officers commenced resuscitation,” he said.

Citing confidential leaked documents, the public broadcaster has instead reported that Cleveland called the intercom twice, telling guards he intended to hang himself, but it was 16 minutes after the first call that guards checked on him.

The report also said the guard who first checked on him was not aware of his suicidal calls because he did not have a radio on him, which also meant he couldn’t call a “code red” until eight minutes after discovering Cleveland unconscious. The guard also had to return to the control centre to get keys for Cleveland’s cell.

The ABC report also contained claims that guards had not looked at the CCTV feed from Cleveland’s cell for close to 12 hours because it had been covered with a strip of toilet paper that had not been removed. It further claimed that welfare check logs for that day were filled in up to 6am – 3½ hours after Cleveland attempted suicide and was taken to hospital.

Some members of Cleveland’s family said they did not believe the version of events that had been made public.

Cleveland’s grandmother, Glenda Mippy, told 9 News Perth on Monday she wanted corrective services and the government to release the intercom recordings, the CCTV of the incident and Cleveland’s medical records.

Liberal leader Libby Mettam told parliament the ABC report has revealed that there was so much more that could have been done to prevent Cleveland’s death.

For 24/7 crisis support run by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, contact 13YARN (13 92 76).

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