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Boy 'blacked out' after being restrained by guards at Don Dale

Boy 'blacked out' after being restrained by guards at Don Dale

A teenage detainee allegedly blacked out after he was restrained by guards at Don Dale in December, the royal commission into the protection and detention of children in the Northern Territory has been told.

CCTV footage of the incident, tendered on Thursday, shows the male detainee walking across an open area of a Don Dale block, when he is approached by two male staff members.

Both the detainee and one of the officers drop items they are carrying, physically engage with each other, and the two officers wrestle him to the ground and remove some clothing.

In his statement to the commission the detainee said he believed he might have pushed the officer away but he couldn’t fully recall.

“The next thing I remember, I was being forced down into the concrete floor,” he said.

“I blacked out. When I came to, the guards were on my back holding me down, pushing my face into the concrete. They were yelling at me, ‘stop resisting’, but I wasn’t resisting and they kept pushing me down. I was swearing because I was in a big mob of pain.”

The detainee said he vomited, felt dizzy and had blurred vision, while he waited with a nurse for an ambulance.

He said he was given a tablet for a headache at the hospital, where he vomited again, and was returned to Don Dale by 10pm, where he was placed in the high security unit (HSU) which contained isolated back cells, at-risk cells and normal cells.

The detainee alleged he was put in “a really bad cell” with no fan or TV and with a blocked toilet and broken water tap.

The boy said he was awaiting transfer to the HSU prior to the incident because he had kicked his door in frustration and it had swung open. He had been pacing, and was upset and crying when the guards approached him, he said.

News Corp reported the Northern Territory government’s lawyers would make no statement in response to the allegations, but would instead tender relevant incident reports. Guardian Australia understands they will be made public on Thursday.

The chief minister, Michael Gunner, told media in Darwin he wasn’t aware of the incident until Thursday, but that lawyers, government departments and the children’s commissioner were all given access to the footage and the complaint had been dropped.

“It’s important to have independent scrutiny at youth facilities,” he said. “There’s always going to be moments of tension at youth justice facilities … and those moments have to be handled. That’s why you want to have independent scrutiny.”

The incident occurred on the same day the inquiry heard testimony from Dylan Voller about his alleged mistreatment by officers.

The detainee’s statement, which was addressed in a closed session and has not been cross-examined, comes as the royal commission hears evidence from detainees, guards, managers and ministers about the operations and failings inside Don Dale and the Alice Springs juvenile facilities.

It has also heard testimony from at least one guard and the head of the professional standards unit, of staff failing to attempt talking down agitated detainees before responding to them physically.

The boy told the commission he had been in the new Don Dale detention centre – housed in the former adult prison – about eight times for periods of between one and two months, both as a sentenced prisoner and on remand.

He described multiple instances of “getting angry” and acting out, including trashing his cell.

He said he had been taken to the HSU about six times, including one stretch of about four weeks, and at least once with four or five detainees crowded into one cell. He said he never knew how long he was being held in the HSU.

During lockdown guards watched detainees shower, he alleged.

He also alleged overhearing a guard describing how he had opened the cell door of a detainee who was verbally abusing him and told the boy to “run at me as hard as you can” before lifting his leg and kneeing the boy in the stomach.

“I heard him say that he pushed the kid back into the cell, closed the door and left him crying on the ground.

“I remember seeing the same sort of things happen all the time at Don Dale. A kid would swear at a guard and then the guard would swear back, making it worse.”

He said the situation would escalate until the guard took the detainee to the back cells.

The NT solicitor general, Sonia Brownhill, had earlier raised the issue that the royal commission was accepting evidence from detainees – treated as vulnerable witnesses – which her team was not able to adequately cross-examine.

Gunner said: “There have been some very broad accusations made at the royal commission ... but you’re not going through the same level of scrutiny or testing as you would through a court process,” he said.

On Thursday morning the royal commission heard from the head of the professional standards unit, David Ferguson, whose 2014 investigation found a complete failure by management to resolve long-running issues, and a “boys club mentality and attitude” which saw a core group of guards, allegedly led by then deputy general manager James Sizeland, refuse to follow rules or procedures. Sizeland is expected to appear before the commission next week.

He said violent incidents by detainees were probably “entirely preventable”.