‘If you want a monster this is how you do it’: WA judge slams prison he says ‘treated a child like an animal’

A 15-year-old boy suffering severe trauma spent Christmas in solitary confinement in Western Australia’s only juvenile prison during a heatwave that hit 42 degrees, breaching state law.

Perth Children’s Court president Hylton Quail said the boy spent 79 of 98 days held in a “fishbowl” cell at Banskia Hill Detention Centre, where he wasn’t even given the right to exercise or breathe fresh air for 33 of those days.

Caged: Banksia Hill Detenion centre’s ISU exercise pen.Credit: Custodial Services Inspector’s Report 2020

“When you treat a damaged child like an animal, they will behave like one and if you want a monster this is how you do it,” Judge Quail said in court on Thursday.

Judge Quail’s comments came after WAtoday revealed he would prefer to send a 17-year-old boy to a men’s prison rather than to Banksia Hill due to the lack of resourcing, education and staff.

He said at one stage the 15-year-old, who suffers from Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, post-traumatic stress and anxiety disorders, ripped every page out of the books provided to wet and stick across the cell door to give himself some reprieve from watching prison guards.

The boy, who lashed out every time he was marched to the Intensive Supervision Unit, sometimes in handcuffs, was never given confinement orders to be held in what children at the centre call “the cage”.

The ISU is meant to be a place of last resort, where under an order the boy would have been entitled to exercise three times for 30 minutes each a day, or at least one hour a day, according to the Young Offenders Act.

Instead, he spent all of December 24 to December 28 locked in his cell, with nothing to do but look at primary school-aged books. The same again happened on January 1 and 2. He was joined by up to 25 children held in ISU on two occasions within that festive week because of extreme staffing shortages and rolling lockdowns.

When he was let out into the small bare yard, with no basketball or soccer ball, for mostly 30 minutes a day, he fought guards off not to return. He tried tying his T-shirt around his neck or threw urine and kicked, bit and spat at officers.

He saw a prison psychologist 39 times over acute fears that he planned to kill himself.

His lawyer Mel Sanders said the boy often felt taunted by the 180 centimetre-tall male prison guards, many of whom had no training in youth detention as they had been transferred from adult prisons due to staffing shortages.

‘Fishbowl’: Banksia Hill ISU cells.Credit: Custodial Services Inspector’s Report 2020

The female psychologists found the boy polite and kind, the court heard, and out of the 21 charges of assaulting a public officer, only one was a female. They assessed him as needing nurturing, having suffered among the worse abuses and neglect during his upbringing that resulted in him become a ward of the state at age seven.

Instead, they caged a compulsive brain-damaged child who could not remember rules due to his FASD and attention deficit disorder, with no interactions save an occasional phone call or visit from a chaplain or Aboriginal liaison officer, the court heard.

“[The boy’s] experience of detention at Banksia Hill has been one of prolonged systematic dehumanisation and deprivation, it has had no rehabilitative element or effect and has been unjustly given,” Judge Quail said.

“The conditions of his detention have not met the bare minimum standards that the law requires and the court expects.

“Further I am satisfied there is a direct causal link between [his] treatment at Banksia Hill and dehumanisation and when the majority of the assaulting a public officer offences has occurred.”

It was for that reason the boy was released back to his elderly grandmother, who was in COVID-19 isolation and caring for other children, to serve his one-year sentence in the community rather than be detained any longer at Banksia Hill.

The only danger to the community was for burglaries, where in one case he broke into a woman’s home to get new clothes because he couldn’t afford any and waited until she wasn’t home to break in, the court heard.

Where a 15-year-old spent all of Christmas locked away.Credit: Custodial Services Inspector’s Report 2020

“The rules are simple. Don’t break into people’s house and don’t hurt people,” Judge Quail told the boy, who nodded agreement.

“This sentence is going to hang over your head and if you breach it, you’re back before me and you’re back in Banksia.”

Judge Quail told the court that he did not blame officers or those in charge, or even the department,“who have been trying very hard for a long time to get government to address the problems in Banksia Hill.”

“It is the responsibility of government to resource, train and replace the inadequate infrastructure at Banksia Hill. I can only sentence [the boy], nothing more than that.”

More prison officers were not expected to be brought on until late April, with only a “lick of paint” and some other minor changes planned for the ISU, when “much more is required”, he said.

Yamatji-Noongar woman and Greens senator for Western Australia, Dorinda Cox, has called for an immediate investigation into the alleged human rights violations at Banksia Hill.

“It is absolutely unacceptable that children as young as 10 are being kept in inhumane conditions that are akin to torture,” she said.

“That judges are too concerned to send kids into these appalling conditions says so much about the horrific conditions that these children are being kept in.

“The Western Australian government has a responsibility to take care of these children, instead, they’re being traumatised in ways that will deeply harm them for the rest of their lives.

“This benefits absolutely no-one.”

Senator Cox called on the government to raise the age of legal responsibility to at least 14 years, in step with advice from Australian Medical Association and the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The WA government has yet to act on the issue, despite the WA Labor Party passing a motion to ‘raise the age’ at their state conference in October 2021.

Questioned over judge’s comments on Thursday, Premier Mark McGowan said there were no easy answers and there were rehabilitation programs offered at the centre.

“Imprisoning children is always last resort, but certainly only ever used in the most extraordinary or serious of cases. But there’s no easy solutions with this,” he said.

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