ABC’s Four Corners program given CCTV vision and handy-cam recordings to prove the boys were not trying to escape, as corrections staff had said

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Footage of teenage boys being sprayed with teargas while in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory shows most were locked in their cells, not in the process of escaping, as reported by corrections staff.

Staff at the Don Dale juvenile detention facility in Berrimah, outside Darwin, used teargas on youths who were reportedly attempting to escape on 22 August 2014.

The six boys, aged between 14 and 17, were said to have armed themselves with glass to break out from their cells in the isolation wing of the prison, known as the behavioural management unit.



The former NT children’s commissioner, Dr Howard Bath, investigated the incident, which found corrections staff had inappropriately used restraints and instruments.

The then corrections commissioner, Ken Middlebrook, disputed much of the report, saying it was full of inaccuracies.

But CCTV vision and handy-cam recordings made by staff and obtained exclusively by the ABC’s Four Corners program show only one boy escaped his cell after it had been left unlocked by a guard.

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The footage shows 10 bursts of teargas being sprayed into the enclosed area over 90 seconds. Of the six boys who were exposed to the gas, five were locked in their cells, and not all were misbehaving.

Two are shown on the CCTV footage playing cards.

The program, due to be screened on Monday night, reports that several of the boys were “highly distressed [and] afraid for their lives” during the ordeal and were still suffering flashbacks two years on.

Following the footage publication justice agencies called for immediate action on the state of youth detention.

The human rights lawyer George Newhouse labeled the incident “a disgrace to Australia”. Newhouse has previously acted for a group of boys detained at WA’s Banksia Hill and subject to what he said were similar conditions.

“The treatment of these young Aboriginal kids is scandalous,” Newhouse said.

He called for more diversionary measures and action to address the precursors of juvenile crime, including educational, health, social and economic disadvantages.

The footage is part of an investigationthat Four Corners says reveals “a pattern of abuse, deprivation and punishment of vulnerable children” in detention in youth facilities in NT.

The United Nations has previously been told by legal experts that the NT youth justice system risked breaching human rights.

In February 2015, a damning review by a former Long Bay prison head, Michael Vita, found youth justice was in a “climate of daily crisis”.

The NT corrections minister, John Elferink, declined to comment to Guardian Australia before the broadcast on Monday, but he told Four Corners the government had learned from the mistakes of the past.

He has previously labeled the juveniles in question as a core group of troublemakers who were “young men essentially”.

In October the NT chief minister, Adam Giles, said the teenagers had “given up an opportunity they had to have a second start in life”.

The NT children’s commissioner, Colleen Gwynne, told Four Corners there were still serious issues with youth detention in the state and she called for “urgency and some dedicated resources” to be put towards addressing them.