A former juvenile detainee at Tasmania’s Ashley Youth Detention Center said that while he was there, he was sexually assaulted and raped 50 times, with guards using his medicine as a sort of payment.
Warren spoke in Tasmania’s Commission of Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings while under a pseudonym.
He was given Ritalin when he was three years old for his ADHD, and he continued to be reliant on it when he was at Ashley Youth Detention Center.
Warren said that he was mistreated for the most of his childhood, with his mother being the first to hit him and demand that he leave the house.
“I often got facial bruises that extended all the way to my ribcage.” She once hit my face on the kitchen bench, he said.
I think mom did this so that the teachers would notice that I had bruises and hope that she would take me away when I went to school.
Warren claims that despite being eventually put in a number of foster homes, he continued to run away and conduct small offences like stealing clothing in the hopes of being returned to his parents.
Instead, at the age of only 13, he found himself at the Ashley Youth Centre, where his first term lasted four months while he was on remand.
While in the facility, where he was taken 21 times over a five-year period, Warren primarily attempted to stay to himself.
Warren’s Ritalin prescription had to be given to guards twice daily, in the morning and in the afternoon. Warren said that this is when the guards would assault him sexually.
The guards would seize my arms and pin them behind my back when it was time for me to take my medicine, he said, making him feel as if his arms were ready to snap or his shoulder would dislocate.
Depending on what they could get away with that day, oral sex and masturbation were alternated as forms of abuse.
Along with forced oral sex and masturbation, “(one of the guards) would also puncture my anus with his penis while another held me so I could not move,” the witness said.
“I was anally raped over 20 times throughout my stay at Ashley,” the victim said.
Warren said that during “degrading” strip searches, he was regularly the victim of sexual assault.
He claims that throughout his time at Ashley, he was sexually raped roughly 50 times, with the abuse beginning when he was only 14 years old.
He said, “I never informed anybody what was happening to me.”
“They would tell me that because I’m just a little criminal, no one would believe me anyway.”
If Warren reported the abuse, the guards reportedly threatened to harm his family or set the other detainees against him.
Warren admitted: “I didn’t want to say anything because I was terrified of what they may do.”
Warren now claims that he is still ‘in and out’ of jail due to drug addiction, which he claims was brought on by his time in Ashley.
“I am a parent, and if my children followed in my footsteps, I would never want any of this to happen to them. I really hope not,” he replied.
I have struggled with drug misuse and poor mental health ever since I moved into Ashley.
Since breaking up with Ashley, “I have felt suicidal and attempted suicide.”
Warren encouraged the commission to increase the number of cameras at the Ashley Youth Detention Center, which is still in use and is known as Ashley School, and to establish a kid-friendly external complaint mechanism.
Simon, who was transferred to Ashley about seven times starting when he was ten years old, also spoke before the panel.
Simon claimed that while he was at the centre, staff beat him, watched him take a shower, and subjected him to humiliating strip searches.
He said that once, as punishment for disobeying staff orders, he was made to spend two weeks in isolation with nothing but a horse blanket to keep him warm.
It seemed like it was snowing, and I’m telling you, it was frigid. I was shivering,” he said.
Simon said that the guards would violently punish convicts for minor infractions of the rules, such as staying up late.
“The way they treat kids is simply awful, you know what I mean, there was no need for it.” They are incapable of defending themselves, he remarked.
Simon said, “I’m simply a criminal, that’s the law,” when questioned about why he didn’t report the assault. They’ll trust the law before a shady old criminal.
When Simon was 17 years old, he requested to go to Risdon, an adult jail, rather than going back to Ashley because he was sick of being mistreated.
I can tell you right now that the security personnel at Risdon Prison are much superior than those at Ashley Youth Detention Center, he stated.
Former worker Alysha called working there “torturous” and said management knew full well that Ashley was being abused.
Never in my life have I felt so powerless. She informed the panel that there was nothing she could have done to lower the danger.
The lengthy periods of punishment at Ashley, according to former Tasmanian Children’s Commissioner Mark Morrissey, were a “kind of torture.”
Due to staffing issues, he added, “we’ve heard evidence of young people being put in their cells for a week or two or longer alone, often on weekends.”
“In my opinion, locking a young child in a room does constitute torture,” the speaker said.
Mr. Morrissey said that when lawmakers contacted him and instructed him to stop working, he was speaking out against Ashley practises.
I got a call urging me to realise that any issues I had with the current system would have an impact on my work, he stated.
It was (Ashley) a very significant employer for the Deloraine district, and (the politicians were) effectively telling me to back off.
Even though I wasn’t shocked, I was startled that a politician would really say it to me.
For the mistreatment they experienced at the prison, more than 100 former detainees of the Ashley Youth Detention Centre have launched a class action lawsuit against the Tasmanian government.
Ashley’s case will still be heard by the commission until Friday.
Legal representation for the commission The audience of the inquiry was forewarned by Rachel Ellyard that the witnesses’ accounts did not represent isolated instances but rather revealed a pervasive abuse system.
Reviewing Ashley’s past over the previous 20 years, she said, “invites the prospect of discovering that Ashley the institution is itself abusive, that it is intrinsically hazardous for children, and that it has overcome every effort that has been made so far to make it safer.”
“Here, you may discover that it’s Ashley that’s the monster, rather than it being about monsters that have been able to join an institution which was otherwise protecting the interests of children.”