A warning this story contains content some viewers may find distressing. It discusses self-harm and includes the image of an Indigenous person who has died. The former head of Western Australia’s Department of Justice has told an inquest into the death of a First Nations teenager, that the children in youth detention had been subjected to ‘institutional abuse’ on his watch.
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00:00For years, WA's Department of Justice has defended its treatment of young people in
00:07detention.
00:09But now an admission from the department's former boss.
00:12Adam Thomason resigned as Director-General of the Department of Justice last year after
00:17seven years at the helm.
00:18The last three and a half years of his tenure plagued by riots, self-harm and two court
00:24rulings that children were being treated unlawfully.
00:28He's been called to appear at the inquest into the death of teenager Cleveland Dodd,
00:33who died after self-harming in his cell in Unit 18, a youth wing inside Casuarina Prison
00:39set up in mid-2022 in response to the deteriorating situation inside Banksia Hill Youth Detention
00:46Centre.
00:47Mr Thomason, who is an international expert in the prevention of child abuse, was asked
00:52about a defensive testimony he gave in 2022, where he denied the treatment of detainees
00:59at Banksia Hill had been cruel and abusive.
01:02In response, he broke down in tears on the stand and said the department had been defensive
01:07because it knew its practices were not good.
01:11He told the court he was being personally defensive because after spending 30 years
01:15in welfare, he was now the guy hurting kids, adding,
01:19It goes against my ethics.
01:21It goes against my whole career.
01:23With him crying, he knew the truth, it wasn't right.
01:27What they did to those kids was just inhumane, inhumane and cruel.
01:32How could he let this human rights violation be perpetrated against a young child?
01:37That's unacceptable.
01:38We all want to save the community and we're not going to get that while children are being
01:41abused in such ways as they have been.
01:44Mr Thomason, who was one of the state's top paid bureaucrats, told the court he should
01:49have raised the need for a second youth detention site with the government months earlier than
01:54he did, and conceded that failing to do so meant Unit 18 was hastily opened and deficient.
02:01Rhiannon Shine, ABC News.