What They Did To Another Girl In Care
By: Bruce Grundy (April 2000)
Surely, one would think, nobody, ever, would handcuff a 15-year-old girl in their care to a fence, in the open, and leave her there for ten hours during a cold Brisbane September night.
At any time that would be a rotten thing to do.
But, as any 15-year-old girl, or any woman at all for that matter, would tell you, there are times when that would be an absolutely, positively, wretched thing to do -- to a female.
But they did it to "Judith".
It was so cold Judith said. Freezing. Amberley air-base reported an overnight minimum of 2.9 degrees C. And the woman left in charge during the night wouldn't get her any more blankets. She remembers it was a woman.
It was nine o'clock the next morning before she was released - when the man who had put her there the night before arrived for work.
She remembers she wrapped a blanket around herself, not to keep warm, but to save herself from the embarrassment of what had been happening inside her body throughout that rotten night.
Judith has not forgotten.
She has also not forgotten that the State of Queensland then gave the man who handcuffed her a gift of almost thirty thousand dollars - a payment later found to be illegal. She also remembers that to get the money he had to sign a piece of paper saying he would never speak, write, or otherwise tell anyone or anything what had happened in that place.
Judith, of course, got nothing.
When the matter of the handcuffing, or some of it, was investigated donkeys' years later by the Forde Inquiry, she didn't even get a letter or a note saying sorry.
She got zip.
It has not been easy since her days in that place, but Judith has managed to pull the remnants of her childhood and her teenage life together and the last thing she wants is for it all to be dug up again.
She has her life and her family now, and has put it all behind her. But at the same time she knows the stories of that place should be told because they managed to cover it all up for so long and so far they have got away with it.
And they have so much to answer for. They destroyed all the evidence that had been taken during an official inquiry into what was going on in the place at the time she was handcuffed.
She has always wondered about that handcuffing. She and a teenage boy in another room in their wing were calling out to each other and being noisy. Nothing very serious.
Whether it was Judith, and not the carer, who was punished over the letter- writing is a matter of conjecture (he was required to sit on a seat a couple of metres away, and watch over her all night -- on a double shift) , but there is a far more serious aspect of the incident. It has considerable relevance to the inquiry into the John Oxley Centre that was shut down by the Goss government and had all its evidence shredded.
When she was admitted to John Oxley, Judith was just into her teens - 14. She was in strange and tense environment, away from her family, sharing an accommodation block with several other juvenile offenders or children in the care of the state, boys as well as girls, and mostly under the supervision of men, 24 hours a day. All the while she knew she was facing a serious criminal charge for something the two adult men she had been with had done. She was scared about what might become of her. And she was very depressed.
It is difficult to imagine a more vulnerable position for a child to be in. She was in great need of comfort and support. And she was, at this time, on remand. She had not been found guilty of, nor pleaded guilty to, anything.
Within a short time she was transferred to Osler House in the Wolston Park psychiatric hospital down the road. She says her psychiatrist told her he did not want to send her there, but there was nowhere else he could send her.
She said he also told her that one of her carers had taken advantage of her.
While she hated John Oxley, she hated Wolston Park even more. She remembers the woman who poured a pot of boiling tea over herself and the awful way her skin blistered up -- like burning plastic. And another woman who took a bite clear out of her own arm.
While in Osler House she exchanged some letters with one of her carers in John Oxley. He was about twice her age and married. "I am the youngest chick here", she wrote. "The next person is 18".
She told him about the terrible boredom of Wolston Park: "I have counted the number of leaves on the trees and the number of bricks on the wall and am contemplating counting the number of wires on the fence", and, she said, "I am mixing with crims from Boggo Road. They are teaching me a few things I never even dreamed of". The food she said was "really, really, really, really terrible."
She also had a few words to say about John Oxley and its manager. She said she was behaving herself, to the best of her ability. "I think I make a hopeless crim," she wrote. "When will I ever get out of this mess???" There were some quite personal things in the letters for her carer too. They were love letters and they were intercepted. The carer was recommended for disciplinary action, but this was rejected. He was given permanency instead and a pay rise.
Back in John Oxley she recalls there may have been other reasons why the decision to conduct an inquiry into the place was well-founded. For instance, it seems that boys and girls in the centre did manage to spend time together - alone.
There were at least two ways this was done. Although they had separate rooms, boys and girls shared the same wings. Given teenage ingenuity, and things that happen to young people at this time of life, it is hardly surprising that teenagers living in the same accommodation block might attempt to beat the system. It could be done.
What is more surprising is the punishment they got. In one case, when they were found out, they were given four hours time-out. Four hours was nothing in John Oxley. Kids were doing 24, 48, 72 hours. Mrs Forde reported one case (long after the Heiner Inquiry) in which a resident spent 17 days in separation. Judith says she simply could not count the number of hours she spent in time-out.
She remembers other things about the place - like the boy across the corridor "flashing" at her, and telling him to get lost, or words to similar effect, and the embarrassment of being dragged by a male staff member across the room with her nightie riding up her near-naked body to her neck, and the time she pushed the alarm button to get the staff because a worker had trashed a kid into a door. And so on.
There is no doubt Judith was a difficult kid and hard to manage. She hated the place so much. She was angry at being punished for what she believed the men she was with had done, and she was bitter. She tried to hang herself from the ventilation grille above the door to her room and remembers the staff who got to her in time. Years later, during the Forde Inquiry, a boy did hang himself from the grille above the door to his room. Nothing was done about that hanging point during all those intervening years.
Judith's arms and legs are very hard to look at. They are heavily cross-hatched with scars - the result of cuts and gashes from glass, knives and razor blades. She once smashed a glass and swallowed some of the broken bits and went to hospital. Other kids slashed themselves too. The Sun newspaper reported two suicide attempts and a girl in the centre having a miscarriage all in the one story. The Minister, Ms Warner, said the girl was just having a heavy period. Judith believes otherwise.
Now that it is all over Judith considers it remarkable that she did not go on to graduate to the big house across the road from John Oxley, the one with the really big fences and razor wire everywhere. She knows that others did.
Nine weeks ago we asked for access to the transcripts of the public hearings of the Forde Inquiry to see how much of the John Oxley story was raised in public with that inquiry. The Department of Justice wrote a couple of weeks ago to say they were awaiting legal advice to see if it was OK for us to see the transcripts. There is still no word. So much for public hearings.
And a final thought. If the department was able to arrange to give to give the former manager of the John Oxley Centre an illegal payment of almost thirty thousand dollars, for entitlements to which he was not entitled, is there anybody who would object if we paid Judith at least as much for what they did for her?
I doubt she would sign a secrecy agreement though. And that might be a problem.
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