The lawyer representing former detainees of an Australian youth detention centre announced in a media release on Friday that the Tasmanian state government plans to give AU$75 million to members of a class action abuse lawsuit against the state.
The class action arose as a result of alleged abuse that had been taking place at Tasmania’s Ashley Youth Detention Centre since 1960, with children still recounting abuse in 2023. The 2023 Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s Response to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings details that victims reported sexual abuse including “rape (54 clients), grooming (11 clients), oral rape (nine clients), object rape (10 clients), forced sexual acts between children (two clients),” and also “contact abuse.” Physical and psychological abuse was also reported in the form of “isolation” and “beatings.”
The commission’s report says that there have been hundreds of claims of the above circumstances of abuse, and yet “it is likely the Department of Health and Human Services knew of serious allegations of abuse against current staff working at Ashley Youth Detention Centre from at least 2006.” Thus, until the class action’s formation, there has been a gap in assistance to the victims of approximately 16 years from the first instance of Governmental notice.
The report further provides corroborative detailed accounts of those incidents that occurred to the detainees at the Ashley Detention Centre. However, the names have been changed for privacy purposes. One former detainee reports that “a staff member violently sexually abused him and two other young people from the Centre during an off-premises activity. The three boys were not yet teenagers.” The staff then reportedly threatened “to hurt” them if they did not keep the incident a secret.
Upon announcing the settlement, lawyer Angela Sdrinis said that the matter has thus been resolved “in principle,” with the courts still needing to agree to the figure. The aim is that the matter will be fully resolved within 12 months, given that the court may take up to six months to agree to the payout amount, which would still require distribution to the victims. The 75 million would be split between the class members based on the individual facts, circumstances, and evidence connected to their cases. The case has been in court since 2022.
The subsequent recommendations made in response to the scenarios reported at Ashley Youth Detention Centre included a call to “divert” young people from entering the detention system. The report also called for the Centre to require appropriate “qualifications, attributes and skills” for staff. Finally, if an event of abuse occurs, the victim’s “complaints must be taken seriously and acted upon without them suffering any reprisal.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that the damages would be split equally among class members. It has been updated to reflect that class members will receive amounts proportionate to the facts, circumstances, and evidence of their individual cases.
