Child Protection Board says less than 1% of cases result in criminal convictions and immigration department cannot be sure of number of incidents

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The response to almost half the reported incidents of child abuse in Australian immigration detention was inadequate and the immigration department cannot be sure of the number, nature and severity of incidents, an independent panel has found.



Those are the conclusions of the Child Protection Board’s damning Making Children Safer report, released by the federal government on Friday.

It details a detention system plagued by the premature closure of child abuse investigations, miscategorisation of incidents and lacking capacity to respond to complex incidents.

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The report called for considerable improvement in the reporting of abuse and found that less than 1% of cases resulted in criminal convictions.

The panel assessed 242 alleged incidents of child abuse and found responses were “adequate” or “good” in only just over half (57.4%) of the cases.

But the panel said there were a total of 1,211 “possible incidents of child abuse” between 1 January 2008 and 30 June 2015 and the immigration department “cannot be assured on either the number, nature or severity of the reported incidents of child abuse”.

Detainees gave examples of submitting complaint forms or making oral complaints but hearing nothing from the department or service providers, it said.

The panel found that reports of incidents involving children were “very brief” with inadequate “often generalised, nonspecific descriptions being used and an apparent reluctance to describe exactly what happened”.

For example, a person of interest was described as “rubbing against” a child without a description of what they were “rubbing with and where on the victim the rubbing took place”, making assessment of the incident difficult.

A number of reports involved pornographic material on USBs being used during serious child abuse offending or to groom children within the facility.

The panel called for improved categorisation of the nature and seriousness of incidents. It noted problems including using separate incident classification systems, systems not requiring a detailed description, double counting and miscategorisation both in overstating or understating incidents’ severity.

“There was a pattern of premature closure of matters and a lack of transparency in the complaint process,” it said.

The panel said that the immigration department’s capacity to investigate child abuse had to be “significantly strengthened” to ensure that inquiries are not finalised until all available facts are established and effectively responded to.

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Over the past three years the remote immigration detention facilities have been plagued by reports of shocking conditions, poor management and deteriorating mental health of asylum seekers.

The Guardian’s publication of the Nauru files showed the trauma and abuse inflicted on asylum seekers and refugees – particularly children – on Nauru.

But one of the consistent concerns raised in the Nauru files has been the practice of “downgrading” incident reports, where incidents in detention that should be classified as “critical” or “major” were downgraded to “minor” or “information”.

The panel said the department and service providers “often lacked the capability to effectively respond to complex incidents”.

For those in community detention, the panel found there were “no risk frameworks in place”. It said service providers’ policies on abuse “in many cases” were inadequate.

Despite the serious nature of many instances of child abuse in immigration detention, less than 1% of all cases resulted in criminal convictions, the panel found.

Only one case at the Nauru detention centre was referred to the Nauru public prosecutor and the case did not proceed.

But the panel noted that some government policies, including the prioritisation of children for community detention and the policies of enhanced border protection, had resulted in a “significant reduction in the number of child abuse incidents”.

The Australian government claims to have removed all children from detention, a disputed claim based on recategorising sections of some centres as “community detention”.

The panel said Nauru’s regional processing centre’s move to become an “open centre” in the last 18 months had a “clear and positive impact” on families and children.

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In its response, the immigration department said it was developing a risk management framework but it was “not possible ... to be present with families in the community to fully identify all emerging risks”.

The department accepted most of the recommendations, including to improve categorisation of incidents, to require service providers to deliver accurate and complete incident reports, and to ensure inquiries were not finalised without all available facts and an effective response.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, blamed the problems in immigration detention on the “impossible burden” he said the previous Labor government’s policies had created.

“Protecting children is everyone’s responsibility,” he said. “[The immigration department] has and will continue to work with state and territory child protection agencies which have legislative responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of children.”

The child abuse board consists of Margaret Allison, Dominic Downie and John Lawler. It recommended its report be sent for consideration to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, which the government agreed to do.