‘Harrowing:’ Australian Human Rights Commission complaint over alleged child sexual abuse inside WA youth detention centres

A complaint involving 100 people who allege they were sexually abused while incarcerated as children inside West Australian youth detention centres has been filed with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

The complaint spans two decades from 1999-2019 and often involves the same youth custodial and medical officers who allegedly offended under similar circumstances despite the victims not knowing one another.

It details disturbing allegations that children were coerced into performing sexual acts under threats of solitary confinement and warnings they would never see their families.

There are also claims youth custodial officers failed to prevent younger detainees from being sexually abused by older inmates.

Lawyer Dana Levitt said most victims in the complaint were disabled and had very long and harrowing histories of trauma.

Levitt Robinson Solicitors, the Sydney firm behind the complaint, will begin a class action against the Western Australian government in the Federal Court if a conciliation process through the AHRC fails.

“The state may be more willing to come to the table on this one because the allegations are so harrowing and disturbing, things that they probably don’t want their constituents to have to hear about,” Ms Levitt said.

“There are commonalities between people’s complaints that relate to protected attributes … age, disability, and sex being three of them.

“It highlights the extent to which sexual abuse is the result of people taking advantage of a number of vulnerabilities.”

Ms Levitt said many complaints related to youth custodial officers and children (now adults) who claimed they were abused by the same handful of officers, and there was evidence that described the alleged offenders in the same ways.

The allegations of abuse occurred in youth detention centres across the state, and some of them are now closed, including Longmore, Riverbank and Rangeview.

Others include the Banksia Hill Detention Centre and units 11 and 12 at Hakea Prison, an adult facility that was temporarily used to detain youth after a riot at Banksia Hill in 2013.

“The way in which these officers groomed the children and then threatened and intimidated them and gained their compliance has been similar,” Ms Levitt said.

“There’s also a number of allegations made against medical officers who have done things under the guise of medical assessments, which I mean are definitely not things that you would expect to happen.

“Forced masturbation of children, penetrative searches … under the guise of STD checks, that sort of thing, like we’re talking about pretty awful stuff that happened almost routinely.

“It seems to have been almost a means of asserting their power and dominance over children in circumstances where children had no voice.”

Ms Levitt said investigations were ongoing to identify the alleged perpetrators and she couldn’t be certain if there were more cases of abuse after 2019 because there had been no other complaints.

“It’s hard for me to give a conclusive answer on that because I don’t want to say yes or no either way. I don’t know who’s going to call me in 10 minutes and tell me a story that I haven’t yet heard,” she said.

“There’s 100 people that we’ve got pretty detailed accounts from, 54 of which are very detailed, and they’re split between boys and girls, 87 boys and 13 girls.

“The Western Australian Government is obviously alive to the problem since it has listed Banksia Hill and Rangeview among participating institutions in the National Redress Scheme.”

A Department of Justice spokesman said as these matters were the subject of ongoing legal processes, it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.

“The Department of Justice takes the safety and wellbeing of young people in its care very seriously,” the spokesman said.

“The department works closely with relevant oversight bodies, and where necessary WA Police, to ensure appropriate accountability and continuous improvement.”

An AHRC spokesman said it operated under strict secrecy provisions and was unable to disclose information about complaints it received or the actions it undertook in relation to specific matters.