By AARON BUNCH
Western Australia’s justice department told “blatant and grievous” lies 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.
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 young detainees at Banksia Hill Youth Detention Facility.
Cleveland Dodd, 16, died a week after self-harming in his cell at an adult prison’s youth wing.
Counsel assisting Anthony Crocker on Friday read a series of letters the agency sent to detainees, their families and stakeholders, and the briefing it provided to the corrections minister, seeking approval for Unit 18.
The briefing was an essential document that enabled the government to legally establish the unit.
It also laid out how the “circuit breaker” facility would work and stated it would be suitable for youth detainees and comply with state law.
Former Department of Justice director general Adam Tomison conceded the document he signed contained a series of “grievous lies” that led to the unit being created.
He also agreed the minister should not have been misled and if the government knew the truth it would not have approved Unit 18.
“I accept responsibility as head of agency,” he said.
The briefing stated Unit 18 would have a full suite of services available for detainees, including therapeutic programs, cultural support, dedicated health services, education and recreation.
Letters falsely stated Unit 18 would have a broad array of services available for detainees.
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 did not have running water.
The briefing also said detainees would spend more than nine hours per day outside their cells and there would be up to 120 visitor appointments available five days per week, which was not possible due to ongoing staffing issues.
Dr Tomison agreed it was a “blatant lie” and the people who prepared the document had “lied to the minister”.
He told Coroner Philip Urquhart that “it looked pretty good” when he approved the document in July 2022.
The department sent letters about its plans for Unit 18 to detainees, their families and stakeholders.
The letters also falsely stated Unit 18 would have a broad array of services available for detainees, such as specialist services, case management and enrichment programs.
Mr Crocker said the conduct was “much more egregious” because the letters were written by senior staff who knew the services, as the inquest has previously heard, could not be provided.
“It is simply wrong, misleading, deceptive to describe it as a full suite of programs,” he said.
Dr 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”.
One of the letters said, “you will have everything you need” and that detainees would have access to visits and telephones to call families.
The court 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.
Mr Urquhart said it was “one thing to paint a rosy picture” for stakeholders, detainees and their guardians, “but quite another to continue with that rosy and false picture … for a minister”.
He was dumbfounded that Dr Tomison had not realised the documents were untrue until he was asked questions about them at the inquest.
He asked how Dr Tomison felt about the revelations, to which he replied he was embarrassed and had failed.
“Can’t believe I did it,” he said.
“Clearly, I should have looked into it much more intensively.”
The inquest continues.
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AAP
