A warning this story contains content that some viewers may find distressing. It discusses self-harm and includes the image of an Indigenous person who has died. The former head of WA’s Department of Justice who was in charge when the state recorded its first death in juvenile detention has broken down while giving evidence to a coronial inquest.
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00:00Well, this was Adam Thomason's second day on the stand, recounting his time as the Director
00:07General of the Department of Justice.
00:08It was a seven-year stint that came to an end earlier this year, but crucially included
00:14much of the problems within youth detention here in WA, as well as the period where Cleveland
00:20Dodd, a 16-year-old boy, self-harmed in his cell and died in hospital a week later.
00:25That was WA's first recorded death in juvenile detention.
00:30Dr. Thomason was giving evidence in quite general terms at points today, and at one
00:37point acknowledged that he had been quite defensive in his response to various issues
00:43that were coming up with the department's handling of those issues in youth detention.
00:49And he broke down crying giving that evidence at one point, saying that after 30 years in
00:54welfare, he was now the guy who was hurting kids.
00:58He said that was hard to deal with, it was hard to reconcile with his own ethics and
01:03his view of who he wanted to be as a professional.
01:07He wanted to do a good job, he said, but they were just failing.
01:11Nothing they were trying to improve the situation in youth detention was working.
01:16This came after yesterday he directly apologised to Cleveland's mum, who's been sitting in
01:21court throughout this inquest.
01:24That's an apology which the family's representatives say they don't really accept, because he was
01:29in a position of power at the time, he could have done something to avoid this, they say,
01:35and he didn't.
01:36Quite interestingly, he also acknowledged that at times the department he was overseeing
01:42was involved in the institutional abuse of children because of the lockdowns that were
01:46happening 23, 24 hours a day at some points.
01:51He said that wasn't child abuse as he saw it, it was institutional abuse and it's really
01:55one of the first times we've heard that level of acknowledgement from the government.