Cleveland Dodd inquest: Closing Unit 18 ‘as a matter of urgency’ among coroner’s provisional recommendations

The urgent closure of Unit 18 is a possible recommendation arising from Cleveland Dodd’s inquest, as harrowing revelations from the teenager’s mother laid bare her torment over his last moments in a “hellhole”. Oral evidence around WA’s first recorded death of a child in detention wrapped up on Wednesday but it will be June before Coroner Phil Urquhart hands down his official findings. However, closing Unit 18 was among 18 provisional recommendations Mr Urquhart detailed in court in his closing statements. Mr Urquhart said it was “not appropriate” to detain young people in a maximum-security adult prison over the long term. He noted Unit 18 was only ever intended to be temporary but was now in its third year. It was hastily opened inside Casuarina Prison in July 2022 in response to turmoil at Banksia Hill Juvenile Detention Centre. Mr Urquhart said that if Unit 18 remained open, a “model of care” needed to be implemented urgently. Detainees should only be housed there for a maximum of six weeks at a time and not be returned from Banksia Hill for at least two months. The coroner said he did not list the possible recommendations in any particular order of importance, with others including funding for training. Outside court, Cleveland’s mother Nadene Dodd and aunt Bonnie Gentle agreed Unit 18’s closure was the recommendation that mattered most. “We know we aren’t going get him back, but I reckon Unit 18 should be closed down for good,” Ms Gentle said. “The kids still in there should be immediately removed. It shouldn’t be still open after what happened.” The coroner also said that the new $100 million replacement announced in September by Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia must have “rehabilitation and trauma-informed, culturally appropriate care foremost in mind”. It is expected to take years to complete. Ms Dodd said “it would mean the world to me” if Unit 18 was shut down. Earlier, the bereft mum gave a heartbreaking impact statement that was read out in court by family friend Connie Georgatos. After the 16-year-old fatally self-harmed in his Unit 18 cell in October last year, Ms Dodd said she saw images of her son that “cannot be unseen”. He was “surrounded by uneaten plates of food” in a “concrete box” left “barren and filthy”. Ms Dodd used the same term that Department of Justice director-general at the time, Adam Tomison, gave in evidence to describe the lockdown of young detainees, many suffering fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. “Institutional abuse of children is unacceptable, in the same way that any abuse of children is unacceptable,” she said. “We should hold governments to a higher, not a lower standard. “My son, like so many other young Aboriginal men, lost the will to live, having been subject to inhumane conditions in detention and left in a cell with an obvious hanging point. “I am tormented knowing that for 75 of the last 86 days of my son’s life, he was confined to a cell for 23 hours a day, often without access to running water. “On his final night in Unit 18, my son’s pleas for help and a cup of water, the most basic of needs, went unanswered. “It fills me with sadness knowing that, in his darkest hours, he was alone.” Ms Dodd also referred to lies being told — described by Dr Tomison as “grievous” — about the services and support that would supposedly be offered at Unit 18. “They did not do what they were required to do and what they told us they were doing,” she said. Earlier testimony suggested the senior officer was asleep when the alarm about Cleveland was raised. And the boy’s request for paracetamol and to see the nurse were among his pleas that night that went unheeded. Ms Dodd said the department and State Government kept her son there “long after they knew” it was “unlivable, inhumane, disgusting”. “The loss of my son will be with me wherever I go, for as long as I live,” she said. The final witness Gary Budge, who was acting Corrective Services commissioner when the facility was being planned, was asked by Tom Penglis, representing Ms Dodd, if he was aware of any efforts to make youth detention “look better than it was”. Mr Penglis then read out an email from top corrections official Christine Ginbey to Mr Budge and Banksia Hill superintendent Wade Reid, sent the day after Unit 18 opened. In it, Ms Ginbey told them “the young people will need to be out and actively participating” when Commissioner for Children and Young People Commissioner Jacqueline McGowan-Jones came. Mr Budge said he believed, from what he’d heard in senior management meetings, that all the services available at Banksia Hill would be offered at Unit 18 and he “would never consider putting detainees in a place if it was unsafe”. He also testified that he was uncomfortable about the use of three-point restraints when transporting youths. These are wrist and feet shackles linked together by a chain, and he said he called for a “more humane” alternative. Lifeline 13 11 14