TeenT girl’s detention ordeal
Court reveals long periods in solitary for ward of state at Cleveland
A teenage ward of the state who suffers from cognitive impairments was kept locked in a cell alone for more than 21 hours on 47 days and for 24 hours on five days at the controversial Cleveland Youth Detention Centre.
The girl, with no criminal history and who has been diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, was unable to access the centre’s education unit during that time.
Judge Tracy Fantin said the periods of isolation during the
child’s 94 days in pre-sentence detention were a “significant burden” for the now 16-yearold, whose disorders and cognitive issues made her incarceration particularly onerous.
In a judgment published this week, Judge Fantin revealed the child had been kept in isolation for much of her 94 days on remand at the detention centre and the Mareeba Watchhouse across two separate periods in 2022 and 2023.
She said during the first stint in mid-2022, the girl spent four days in the watchhouse before going to the detention centre.
On 17 days she was locked in a cell for 21 hours a day, and on two of those days, was alone for 24 hours.
In a second 59-day period that ended in February this year, the girl was locked in her cell for at least 19 hours daily for 40 days.
For 30 of those days, she was locked in a cell for between 21 and 24 hours a day and on three days she was again kept isolated for a full 24 hours.
“Significantly, you were not able to access the education unit in Cleveland Youth Detention Centre so you did not have the benefit of being able to go to school there,” Judge Fantin said in her judgment, delivered in Cairns.
“It also was a much more significant burden for you because you have been diagnosed with a number of impairments.
“I am satisfied the conditions in which you were incarcerated were more onerous than they would have been for a child who does not have your diagnoses.”
Details of the girl’s isolation come a month after a judge raised concerns over reports a 13-year-old boy had been held in solitary confinement for all but 60 seconds a day on 11 days of his 32 days at the same detention centre.
The conditions the girl was kept in were revealed during a sentencing hearing last month for offending committed between March and November 2022, when she was aged 15.
In the first instance, she was with a girl who assaulted an employee at a hotel. The girl participated in the offending by hitting another staff member who intervened on the back. Both victims suffered injuries.
Months later, she was involved in a “terrible assault” on a 14-year-old girl who was bashed and kicked when she refused to give the PIN code to her phone the offenders stole.
Judge Fantin sentenced the girl to a six-month probation order after taking into account the mitigating factors. As part of her probation conditions she will be referred to a pediatrician and to intensive therapeutic support services that specialise in young people with cognitive impairments.