Shocking videos of the severe mistreatment of youths in detention in Australia’s Northern Territory have urged the prime minister to call a royal commission into the allegations.
Monday night’s Four Courners program on the ABC aired security camera footage, some of which is dated as far back as 2010, showing guards at a NT youth prison beating, stripping, throwing and humiliating an adolescent over several years.
Full video here on ABC. Below is a clip of one of the incidents:
According to the report, the youth being mistreated is Dylan Voller who was also one of six children tear gassed at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre near Darwin in 2014.
Further footage apparently shows Dylan Voller again, this time strapped into a chair by his arms and legs and with a hood over his head, eerily remeiscent of the infamous torture photos from Abu Graib prison in Iraq.
Dylan Voller, now 18-years-old, is suing the NT government for mistreatment and damages over his time in juvenile detention, along with five other former inmates.
On Tuesday, it was announced that John Elferink had been sacked as the NT’s Corrections Minister over the affair.
Also on Tuesday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that a royal commission would be set up to investigate.
“Like all Australians, I have been deeply shocked, shocked and appalled by the images of mistreatment at the Don Dale Centre, ” he said.
“This centre has been a controversial one in the past, and there have been as we know, inquiries into it in the Northern Territory,” he said.
“And yet this evidence was not revealed in those inquiries.”