Coroner paints complex picture of tragic youth DARWIN, Dec 21 AAP|Published: Friday December 21, 2:11 PM
The death of a 15-year-old orphan in a Darwin detention centre galvanised the nation's opposition to the mandatory sentencing of children. The rallying cry in Canberra that threatened to split the federal government was simple - the boy had been killed by an unjust sentencing regime. But Coroner Dick Wallace this week painted a more complex picture of the tragedy on February 9 last year and of a victim repeatedly let down in life. While mandatory sentencing no longer exists in the Northern Territory, other evils behind the tragedy cannot be so easily excised. Mr Wallace described the orphan - who cannot be named for Aboriginal cultural reasons - as a lonely, neglected boy. His mother died of natural causes before he was two and his father was killed in a car accident in Darwin when the boy was almost 11. Since his father's death in 1995, no one person had assumed the role of parent. He lived in at least five communities - Umbakumba and Angurugu on Groote Eylandt, Bickerton Island, Numbulwar in Arnhem Land and Darwin. When he was free from the Don Dale Centre and Wildman Wilderness Camp juvenile detention facilities, he lived in at least six households. He drifted in and out of petrol sniffing and cannabis abuse. Mr Wallace found that no-one was willing look after him long-term. "If I am right about this, it is not surprising that the deceased seemed towards the end of his sentence at Don Dale less keen than one would expect at the prospect of returning to Groote Eylandt," the coroner said. The lack of any sense of belonging shed light on the teenager's thwarted hope to live in Darwin with his blind grandmother Marianne Bara, who was hospitalised with kidney disease towards the end of his final 28 day stint in Don Dale. "It seems quite likely that she was the person by whom he believed himself to be most valued," Mr Wallace said. It is not difficult to image an urban white boy from a supportive family achieving a similar record of petty crime as that of the troubled Groote Eylandter. But it is almost impossible to image a youth from the more privileged background so haplessly falling victim to a bungling bush court system. Mr Wallace was scathing of the magistrate, prosecutors and Aboriginal legal aid lawyers who twice condemned the boy to serve 28-day mandatory sentences when he could have walked free. * The boy was sentenced to 28 days on October 19, 1999, despite mandatory sentencing provisions not applying to him because he was under 15 when he committed previous offences. * He served an extra 10 days because the court failed to backdate his sentence to when he was taken into custody. * No-one told the magistrate that there was a victim-offender conferencing program available as a sentencing alternative when the boy was last sentenced to detention on January 18 last year. "It was while serving that perhaps unnecessary 28 days, that the deceased died," Mr Wallace said. "It almost beggars belief that any defendant, let alone a legally represented defendant, should have been subjected to three errors in two appearances." On crime-prone Groote Eylandt, Mr Wallace found the delinquent behaviour of the troubled, substance-addled youth was normal. "His offending against the criminal law which brought him to Don Dale was normal, almost to be expected," the coroner said. No-one who had contact with the boy in Don Dale suspected he was at risk of self harm although in retrospect, some conceded the signs were there. Staff have spoken of the boy's paranoid and moody behaviour, a previous threat to suicide and claims of voices in his head. But none of their concerns were noted on his file. Psychiatrist Robert Parker told the inquest that when he hanged himself, the boy was probably suffering a major mental illness that had gone undiagnosed. Carers had probably overlooked severe depression and psychosis, he said. Dr Parker listed stressors on the boy to include his belief that he should not be in detention, his isolation as the only detainee from Groote Eylandt, the recent death of an aunt and uncertainty over who he would live with after his release. Given the scant evidence available, Mr Wallace could not find on the balance of probabilities that the boy had suffered a major depression. "I can only say that there was a fair chance that he was, a strong possibility," Mr Wallace said. Mr Wallace recommended Don Dale staff receive formal training in recognising risk factors and mental illness in young people. The boy hanged himself with a bedsheet within 10 minutes of being locked in his room for refusing to do chores. The coroner could not decide whether the teenager meant to kill himself or had died from misadventure. By Rod McGuirk http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/2001/12/21/FFXGKVLVOSC.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/ until 11 March, 2001 and Recoznettwo is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznettwo%40green.net.au/ from that date. This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use."
