By Aaron Bunch
Warning: This story carries the name and image of a deceased Indigenous person, with his family’s permission.
Western Australia’s justice department lied about a trouble-plagued youth detention facility before transferring children to it, an inquest has been told.
Cleveland Dodd was found unresponsive inside a cell in the youth wing of a high-security adult prison in the early hours of October 12, 2023.
Cleveland Dodd.
The 16-year-old Indigenous boy was taken to hospital in a critical condition and died a week later, causing outrage and grief in the community.
The Perth inquest into his death had been told Casuarina Prison’s Unit 18 was established with little planning in July 2022 as the agency struggled to cope with a small disruptive cohort of youth detainees at Banksia Hill Youth Detention Facility.
Counsel assisting Anthony Crocker on Friday read a series of letters the agency sent to detainees’ families and stakeholders, such as the Aboriginal Legal Service.
The documents falsely stated Unit 18 would have a full suite of services available for detainees, including therapeutic programs, cultural support, dedicated health services, education and recreation.
In reality, Unit 18 had few of these and detainees were held in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours per day, often in cells that didn’t have running water.
Former Department of Justice director-general Adam Tomison conceded it was an “appalling state of affairs” for the agency to write letters containing “untruths”.
He also agreed with Mr Crocker that it was “incomprehensible the department would lie to people”.
“It is simply wrong, misleading, deceptive to describe it as a full suite of programs,” Mr Crocker said.
One of the letters says “you will have everything you need” and detainees will have access to visits and telephones to call families.
Coroner Philip Urquhart heard that wasn’t accurate and in reality, children as young as 14 were handcuffed and transported in a vehicle with blackened windows through a maximum-security prison to a room with no privacy to meet their families or lawyers.
The coroner previously heard Cleveland made eight threats to self-harm and numerous requests for medical treatment and drinking water in the hours before he was discovered in Unit 18.
He had covered a CCTV camera in his cell with tissue paper, blocking the view of correctional staff monitoring him from a control room, but it wasn’t uncovered until they were fighting to save his life.
The teen was taken to hospital but suffered a brain injury due to a lack of oxygen.
He died, surrounded by his family, on October 19.
The inquest continues.
AAP
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