‘Shred the originals’: Ex-Ashley reviewer says critical incident documents were shredded

A former serious incidents reviewer at Ashley Youth Detention Centre says staff were told to shred documents, with repercussions for those who disagreed.

CORE staff at Ashley Youth Detention Centre had told other workers to “change their reports and shred the originals” when crises struck, an independent reviewer has claimed.

On Monday, Veronica Burton – who worked as a reviewer for the state government’s Serious Event Review Team (SERT) for Child and Youth Services – told the child sexual abuse commission of inquiry the centre management was “deliberately obstructive” when incidents occurred there.

She said in her time at SERT, she conducted four reviews at Ashley over a year – including a standoff that involved detainees standing on the roof, and another incident where two detainees sexually assaulted a younger boy with a water bottle.

Ms Burton said while Ashley had an electronic system, it was rarely utilised, with incidents recorded in paper files.

Ms Burton told the inquiry the centre manager, Patrick Ryan, controlled where she went and who she spoke to, with details of the incidents controlled through an “information vacuum”.

“The file-keeping was so poor, we often didn’t know which staff were involved and who we needed to speak to.”

Ms Burton said staff told her they felt “bullied when they expressed opinions different to the core group of managers and staff that seemed to have more, I guess, sway or power at the centre than they did”.

“People felt very intimidated to raise issues with them,” she told the inquiry.

“They described incidents of verbal abuse, being yelled at, being physically assaulted on a couple of occasions by being pushed, and prevented from leaving a room, and being spoken over the top of in meetings when they tried to express concerns about decisions that were being made.”

Veronica Burton, a former Serious Event Review Team reviewer who was tasked with looking into serious incidents at Ashley Youth Detention Centre, gives evidence to Tasmania's child sexual abuse commission of inquiry.

She said staff told her their incident reports had been changed, or were “told to change their reports, and shred the originals”.

“Staff did disclose to me that they were instructed to change minutes,” she said.

“Accuracy of records was an issue, just whether the records were there or not – often they weren’t. They were missing or they couldn’t be found when I requested them.”

Ms Burton said she was rarely permitted to speak to the detainees after a critical incident.

She said when a young boy was sexually assaulted by two other detainees, the matter wasn’t referred on to her for four months.

Ms Burton said when she requested to see the documents, a staff member – Lester* – wouldn’t permit her to see them.

She said the sexual assault should have been reported immediately to Tasmania Police and Child Safety Services.

Ms Burton said she believed SERT was dissolved in 2020 “because of the issues that we were raising”.

“There was a comment made by one of the other directors … that ‘we shouldn’t be airing our dirty laundry in public’.”

Ashley whistleblower reveals staff abuse of children

IT WAS Christmas Eve of 2019 in the Ashley Youth Detention Centre.

Each of the units had been given a Christmas tree and decorations – something young detainee Ben* had never experienced before.

Along with Alysha, the new clinical practice consultant who’d been brought in to help staff improve the way they worked with detainees, Ben decorated his first-ever tree.

“He got so excited. We had more baubles and tinsel that the tree could accommodate, but he made it work,” Alysha told the child sexual abuse commission of inquiry on Monday.

“The tree ended up looking very sparkly.”

But when Alysha returned after the Christmas break, Ben’s tree was no longer there.

He was “crushed”, she said.

“He told me that one of the workers threw it across the room and broke it,” she said.

“His reason was, ‘because the worker was a d … head’.”

Alysha is the key whistleblower whose disturbing revelations about Ashley led to the Tasmanian government announcing it would close the troubled facility within three years.

On Monday, she outlined some of the horrific situations she encountered while working at the facility, including “a sexualised incident” that happened to a young female detainee Margaret*.

She said Margaret had been blamed for the incident, which happened before Alysha’s time at Ashley.

She said some staff also referred to Margaret as a “slut” for pulling her pants up high.

Alysha said she’d been asked by a male operations coordinator to “tell her to stop dressing provocatively”.

Ashley Youth Detention Centre whistleblower Alysha giving evidence before the Tasmanian child sexual abuse commission of inquiry.

But Alysha refused to do so, instead asking Margaret what was happening.

Margaret replied that she’d recently lost weight and her pants no longer fit properly, so she needed to pull her pants up just to keep them on.

She said another female staff member was told to speak to her – which ended up being the cook from the kitchen – who gave Margaret different clothes that were not going to “rile up the boys”.

“It was a highly misogynistic place,” Alysha said.

“It was bizarre and distressing to me because she had no choice in what she was wearing … they were setting her up with clothing that didn’t fit that she could then be shamed about.”

Alysha also spoke about Lester*, who she raised concerns about after hearing he’d allegedly sexually abused one of the detainees in the past.

She said an eye witness told her he’d seen Lester in an isolation room, standing behind a child who was crying naked on all fours.

Alysha raised the allegations to her bosses, expecting it would be reported to the police.

She said instead of Lester being stood down while an investigation took place, he continued working at Ashley – and even continued strip-searching children.

“I actually shared an office wall with that person … it was quite torturous having to see him and try to be professional and say ‘good morning’,” she said.

“Knowing that he’s working among the most vulnerable children in the state, I’ve never felt so helpless in my life, there was nothing I could do to reduce the risk.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d been concerned about Lester.

Once while speaking to a detainee with complex high needs, Ashley heard Lester telling him “if he continued behaving the way that he had, he would turn his face into an owl”.

Out in the courtyard, Alysha asked him what he’d meant.

“He laughed and said it meant he’d cave the child’s face in so it was concave like an owl.”

She said many staff at Ashley had a “punitive” approach – and were sometimes physically abusive to the children.

“They would belittle them and humiliate them, name-call,” she said.

“It seemed to me that it … was often their intention to ensure the young person knew who was in control and that they had less power than the grown-up did.”

Stolen bag of Doritos cost Ashley detainee her dignity

ERIN* was sent to Ashley after stealing a packet of Doritos when she was homeless and hungry.

The 14-year-old had wanted to make nachos for dinner.

When she was arrested, her stepdad told police he didn’t want her – so she was left in Hobart’s adult remand centre for two days, where she was strip-searched by male guards.

“They didn’t know what to do with me … I was too old for foster care,” Erin told the child sexual abuse commission of inquiry on Monday.

Erin was initially relieved when she heard she was being moved to Ashley Youth Detention Centre, thinking she was able to be moved somewhere secure.

But instead, it was worse than she could have imagined.

As the only girl there, she was sexually assaulted and forced to perform sexual acts upon the other detainees.

One of the guards also assaulted her, then along with the other staff, made her life hell for reporting it.

Ashley Youth Detention Centre near Westbury in northern Tasmania.

Eventually, Erin decided she needed to just “go along with it” – terrified she’d have her “head kicked in” for being a “dog”.

“I learned that you don’t say anything in Ashley, it was more trouble than it was worth,” she said.

“I would describe the staff at Ashley as being like a pack of animals. Some of them had been working there for 30 years … they all looked after each other.”

One on occasion, Erin was sexually assaulted when she was left in a room by herself with about 10 male detainees – and no supervision.

She was too afraid to speak up.

Another girl reported the assault, but Erin was given no support and no medical attention even though she was in pain.

Instead she was released from Ashley a few days later, “and that was it, end of story”.

Erin was later returned to Ashley for stealing clothes and makeup after the other girls in a shelter had taken hers.

On her return, she was told “the boys were going to hate me”.

“I walked through the yard where all of the boys were. They barked and yelled at me,” she said.

Ashley Youth Detention Centre near Westbury in northern Tasmania.

“(They) told me they were gonna kick my head in … the workers hated me too because they got told off for what had happened.”

The sexual assaults and abuse continued, and was forced to give the boys “hand jobs” – with some of the staff “just happy watching”.

“They would leave me unattended all the time … eventually I was put on the contraceptive pill. I would go to the nurse’s office every day to receive it,” she said.

Erin said while she was never bashed at Ashley, she saw plenty of other detainees who were.

She said she saw the guards “break arms and legs”, and fearful of repercussions, Erin didn’t report their continued sexual harassment of her.

“The guards constantly made comments about my body and breasts.”

She said she was subjected to random and repeated strip searches with “two or three male guards” watching at a time, and was watched by a guard once as she showered.

“It was so twisted,” she said.

“I was never given the option for a female to do the search.”

She said she wasn’t allowed to wear a bra or use tampons – because other female detainees had “abused” that privilege in the past.

After leaving Ashley, Erin said her life went down into “a massive spiral” – and she started using drugs as her way of “blocking things out and helping me forget”.

“I now think there’s more that happened to me in Ashley that I have permanently blocked out,” she said.

“Being treated like that every day … really impacted who I am as a person. I’ve been involved in abusive relationships that I have never spoken up about. Ashley made me feel like it was normal and it was okay for men to treat me like that.”

Erin told the commission of inquiry that girls and boys should never be placed together, and that she doubted claims the proposed new facilities would be “therapeutic-based”.

“Building a new centre and putting a ribbon on it won’t change anything.”

* Name changed to protect identity.

If you or a loved one is struggling, further support is available:

Lifeline Australia – 13 11 14

Beyond Blue – 1300 22 46 36

Rural Alive and Well – 1300 4357 6283

Kids Helpline – 1800 551 800

Follow @ambervwilson

Originally published as ‘Shred the originals’: Ex-Ashley reviewer says critical incident documents were shredded