Rachael Brown reported this story on Monday, October 5, 2015 12:17:03

ELEANOR HALL: The family of a young Iranian woman who was raped in Nauru is pleading with the Immigration Department to let them be by her hospital bedside.



The family says authorities only transported the 23-year-old to a Brisbane Hospital, when she was at risk of organ failure three weeks after the attack.



Rachael Brown has this report.



RACHAEL BROWN: Twenty-yearold Nauru detainee Omid says he watched his sister dying, now he's watching his mother die.



He says she tried to commit suicide on Saturday because she can't bear being separated from her 23-year-old daughter, Nazanin, any longer.



OMID: It's really hard for her to bear any more knowing that her daughter has deteriorated mentally and is laying on a bed in hospital.



She's saying that, "My daughter is sick, mentally and physically; I just want to be supportive for her."



RACHAEL BROWN: Nazanin is receiving treatment for kidney failure in a Brisbane hospital after her rape and subsequent suicide attempts on Nauru.



Her brother Omid says he and his mother were promised to be sent over as well to aid Nazanin's recovery, but he says Immigration went back on its promise



They'd been relying on quick phone conversations every few days.



OMID: The last time that I talked with her, she started to screaming and crying, and my mother just hang up the phone.



RACHAEL BROWN: But Omid says they're upsetting his mother too much.



OMID: Even this morning in front of the officers she tried to harm herself, but the officers were just grabbing her hand. She's completely deteriorated; she's getting completely hopeless.



RACHAEL BROWN: He says two doctors from International Health Medical Services working on his family's case have resigned, including the mental health team leader



OMID: She told me that from different sides, she means from Immigration and the other side, they put lots of pressure on her because she cared about her patients.



JANET GALBRAITH: It must be pretty extreme because they've been there two and three years. It's this case that has pushed to them to the point where they've said 'we can't do it'.



RACHAEL BROWN: Janet Galbraith is from the group Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites.



She reads from the statement of psychiatrist and international trauma specialist Dr Helen Driscoll.



JANET GALBRAITH: She writes about Nazanin, "Treatment cannot occur in isolation; being treated as prisoners and with purposeful rendering of utter powerlessness. The fact that Nazanin and each family member is utterly crushed, and the only option to ease intolerable suffering is suicide from total despair is entirely predictable."



And she goes on to say, "I hold IHMS (International Health and Medical Service) and DIBP (Department of Immigration and Border Protection) totally responsible for their continued suffering and their pending demise."



RACHAEL BROWN: Professor of Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, Joseph Pugliese, says he doesn't understand why the Government isn't acting, given the amount of cases of suffering.



JOSEPH PUGLIESE: There were the two rapes of the refugees on Nauru that were reported on the 7.30 Report, and just this morning you would have seen in The Sydney Morning Herald where two young refugee boys were beaten by a Nauruan gang, and showing their wounds, effectively.



RACHAEL BROWN: The Immigration Department has told the ABC it takes the health and welfare of transferees very seriously, and says there's been no reports to the department of a suicide attempt.



Omid says the department knows full well, and that's why his mother was moved to another unit and put under stricter guard.



OMID: This is not the first time that she tried to suicide.



RACHAEL BROWN: And do you always report those attempts?



OMID: Two other times she tried and the officers came and why now they sent us (inaudible) in unrelated area. Why now she has two officers who observe her 24/7?



RACHAEL BROWN: Nor does the Immigration Department's reply surprise Professor Pugliese.



JOSEPH PUGLIESE: There is a history of the Department of Immigration denying that any of these incidents happen: the rapes, the self harm, the brutal attacks. And in fact, it's one of the reasons why Researchers Against Pacific Black Sites formed as a group, in order to establish a platform to begin to expose and disseminate these sorts of instances in the face of the ongoing denials by the Department of Immigration.



ELEANOR HALL: That's Joseph Pugliese, the Professor of Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, ending that report by Rachael Brown