This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Australian government has settled out of court to pay compensation to the family of a young Iranian girl for “negligence” in her treatment while detained on Nauru.

In May 2015 the family of the then five-year-old girl launched legal action against the commonwealth and the minister for immigration and border protection, Peter Dutton. It was alleged her treatment on Nauru had resulted in severe mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder.

On Friday morning the Northern Territory supreme court heard the parties had reached a compensation settlement, subject to court approval. The amount was not disclosed but it was acknowledged the agreement was compensation for negligence and did not include court costs.

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John Lawrence SC, acting for the family of the girl – referred to as SGS – told the court they had “not significantly” compromised on the damages they were seeking.

A trial was set to begin in July but those dates have now been vacated. The family’s lawyers have until the end of this month to apply to the court for approval of the settlement and to provide evidence – including affidavits from SGS’s father and reports by psychiatrists and psychologists.

The family has been living in Brisbane since the department granted them a transfer from Darwin’s Wickham Point detention centre into community detention in 2015. They were brought to Darwin in late 2014 from the Nauru immigration centre for the father to receive medical treatment.

They had been on Nauru for a year after some time on Christmas Island – where it was alleged SGS was exposed to sexualised behaviour.

Medical reports about the child’s condition, seen by Guardian Australia, detail severe psychiatric symptoms and extreme anxiety triggered by thoughts or reminders of Nauru. Three separate psychiatric reports stated categorically SGS should not be returned to the island.

The case is the latest in a string of settlements by the government, which has decided to pay damages to current or former detainees of its maligned immigration detention system rather than proceed to trials.

Legal and human rights groups have suggested the government has chosen to settle cases in order to keep evidence of the conditions and treatment inside detention away from a public forum.

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On Wednesday the federal government settled the largest human rights compensation claim in Australian history, agreeing to pay more than $70m to a class action on behalf of 1,905 men who are or have been held on Manus Island.

As part of the settlement, the government denied any liability. Dutton said the government “strongly refutes and denies” the claims made in the case, and that the settlement was to avoid a costly trial.

Both he and the former prime minister Tony Abbott publicly criticised the case, with Abbott attacking the judiciary over the result despite it being an agreed settlement made out of court.

In April the government agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to a nine-year-old girl who was put in detention on Christmas Island when she was five. The case was originally key to a class action launched by the Maurice Blackburn law firm but the Victorian supreme court ruled the cases lacked commonality and it was disbanded.

The Human Rights Law Centre’s Daniel Webb said: “It’s not good enough to just continually throw hush money at past abuses - the government needs to stop perpetrating them.”

“Stop being deliberately cruel to innocent people and start treating people seeking asylum with decency and respect for their basic rights. Then the government won’t continually be hauled before the courts to defend the indefensible.”



This article was amended on 17 June 2017 to remove a quote included in error.