Exclusive: minutes of meetings and an intelligence report obtained by Guardian Australia reveal regular concerns about child protection and self harm in detention centres

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Staff at Nauru detention centres have reported persistent acts of child abuse and self harm within the offshore camps over several months, a series of leaked documents obtained by Guardian Australia reveal.



A Save The Children (STC) staffer says allegations that staff working for the agency coached asylum seekers to self-harm, and are responsible for a fabricated political campaign, are “an insult”. Ten STC employees have been suspended as a result of these allegations.

“We would never train a client to self-harm as we see the effects of what happens there, we realise it can lead to suicide and death. We are trained and committed humanitarian staff,” the Save the Children staffer said.

After the allegations were raised by the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, on Friday, Dr Peter Young, the former chief immigration psychiatrist responsible for the mental health of all asylum seekers detained by Australia, said the immigration department had “no understanding of self-harming behaviours at all”.

Guardian Australia has obtained, from a number of sources, minutes of welfare meetings and a Transfield intelligence report, which detail some of the child protection and abuse concerns in Nauru camps.

Those documents show, in the week beginning 2 June:

A 17-year-old boy who attempted suicide with a razor after being told he was not allowed access to the internet.

A 16-year-old girl who told her case workers she had been tormented and sexually harassed by detention centre security guards. The girl reported a number of male Nauruan employees “have tried to hug her, kiss her, told her they would marry her and asked her to have a ‘sexy party’”.

A 17-year-old boy who attempted suicide by strangling himself.

A nine-year-old boy from a war-torn country who had begun bed-wetting, and pulling clumps of hair from his head. His mother talked openly about suicide, and “states that she wishes to be dead and would gladly kill herself, however this is a sin and she will be punished so will not do this”. The boy’s mother had discussed being returned to her country of origin because she “knows this will result in her being killed”.

An eight-year-old boy regularly in fights with other children, and who staff struggled to deal with because there was no interpreter who spoke his family’s language.

A 13-year-old boy who had only irregular access to his sleep medication, and who was uncontrollably manic at school after not sleeping for 24 hours. His mother was missing.

A 15-year-old boy who was not eating, and was “displaying signs of depression” after his father was taken to Brisbane in a medical emergency.

In the report for the week ending 13 April, reports raised concerns about:

An eight-year-old boy who bullied and fought with other children and had attacked teachers, but who cried under a blanket each night, hiding his distress from his parents.

Several children, the youngest aged four year, who had had both parents arrested for taking part in protests, and were left with no family to care for them.

An eight-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother who were attacked by other detainees because their father was accused of assaulting another detainee.

A 10-year-old boy who had to be physically restrained from attacking other children and had been banned from school because of the threat he posed to other students.

Guardian Australia has also obtained a copy of a Transfield Services intelligence report for Saturday 2 August. It shows:

Eight detainees were required to be under constant ‘line of sight’ monitoring, four for acts of self-harm.

One man, who had “self-harmed by banging head” was not permitted to be more than arm’s length from a guard at any time.

Three women were deemed high security risks because of attempts and threats of self-harm, and aggression towards staff.

Other detainees were on half-hourly monitoring, others on three-hourly, also because they had committed acts of self-harm, or were deemed “vulnerable”.

Guards were instructed to monitor detainees’ moods and whether people were refusing food and water.

Morrison announced on Friday that his acting department head, Phillip Moss, would head an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse of children in Nauru’s detention centres.



But the minister also said he was concerned by allegations staff of detention centre service providers were facilitating protests by detainees and even encouraging them to self-harm.

“Allegations of the abuse and misconduct are serious and they need to be addressed … making false claims and, worse, allegedly coaching self-harm and using children in protests is also completely unacceptable, whatever their political views or whatever their agendas.”

An STC contractor who has worked for an extended period on Nauru told Guardian Australia Morrison’s comments and the intelligence report arguing STC staffers encouraged self-harm were “an insult to the work we do on the island”.

“Self-harm happens in the centre on a weekly basis and we would never encourage self harm as a means to get to Australia,” the contractor said. The STC staffer said they had no direct knowledge of abuse claims raise by the Greens immigration spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, earlier in the week.

Ten STC employees were identified for removal by the department. One has already left the organisation, and three are rotated off the island. The six remaining on Nauru have not been told to leave the island, but are not allowed access to the detention centre.

All nine workers still employed by STC are suspended indefinitely, at the behest of the department. They are on full pay but have been given no reason for their suspension, and Morrison stressed there was no suggestion any had behaved improperly towards detainees.

Hanson-Young said the incidents revealed in the reports were just the tip of the iceberg, and Morrison’s reaction amounted to “shooting the messenger”.

“These reports make it clear that the minister has known for a long time that Nauru is toxic. The fact that this trauma is so clearly documented and the minister did nothing is shocking.

“Why didn’t he act and initiate an investigation before this week when he was dragged to one, kicking and screaming, by extremely serious allegations?”



Peter Young branded the minister’s comments over self-harm on Nauru “ill-informed”. He said he was aware of documented instances of child abuse across the detention network, and that they occurred “periodically”.

“Child abuse is inevitable in this type of institution, we’ve seen it in other [detention] institutions,” Young said.

A leaked independent assessment of the healthcare available to asylum seekers on Nauru warned in February that children inside the centre were vulnerable to sexual abuse as no working-with-children checks were undertaken on Nauruan staff who make up more than 50% of the detention centre workforce.

Guardian Australia has documented numerous examples of the abuse of children in the centre. One case – a sexual assault – occurred on 16 November 2013, when a teenage boy was grabbed in the groin by a local cleaner, who was later sacked.

In another instance, on 27 March, it was alleged that a young girl was hit over the back of the head by a detention centre guard so hard that she fell to the ground.

Morrison has declined to answer questions on either of these instances and has provided no answer to why working-with-children checks are not undertaken on local staff.

Young said that on the mainland healthcare workers were often asked by immigration department staff to seek approval before reporting child abuse to external agencies.



He said Morrison’s comments on Friday indicated that the minister displayed a “real level of ignorance” about mental health problems in detention.

“At the beginning of mental health week, it shows just how little he knows or cares about the issue,” Young said.

“Self-harming rates increase rapidly after six months - they [the immigration department] know this, their own research shows it and it’s not at all surprising. Experts have been warning the government and the department about this for many years. It’s a consequence and responsibility of the policy,” Young said.

Guardian Australia has also reported the contents of a leaked report written by mainland detention centre managers Serco in which the department is clearly warned that the effects of long term indefinite detention will result in greater levels of self-harm.

Morrison’s office did not respond to a request for a response.

• The crisis support service Lifeline can be reached on 13 11 14. A list of hotlines outside Australia can be found here.