Dylan Voller was not a violent boy before he went to detention and was mistreated by guards, his long time caseworker has told the royal commission into the protection and detention of children in the Northern Territory.
Antoinette Carroll said Voller, one of the teenage detainees at the centre of the juvenile detention scandal in the Northern Territory, had never been given the option of therapeutic or rehabilitative options and was “set up to fail” in a cycle of incarceration.
In 2015 Voller was shackled in a restraint chair for almost two hours and footage of it formed part of a Four Corners report that sparked the royal commission. Other footage showed him being stripped and thrown to the floor by guards and, in another incident, struck by a guard.
“When you look at the footage everyone has seen … it’s big men dealing with a very small child,” said Carroll, who is the youth justice advocacy project coordinator of the Central Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency.
She said this was the learning environment Voller, who has been in and out of detention since he was 11, was raised in, and she believed it contributed to his subsequent violent offending.
Carroll’s experience with him was “very empathic” and so, when he was later convicted of a violent crime, “it was very sad to see him go down this path”.
Carroll said she had worked with Voller since he was given his first “devastating” sentence of 18 months at the age of 11 for a combination of breaching orders and further offending, which she described as low order.
Carroll broke down as she described going to visit Voller in an Alice Springs youth residential rehab facility at Christmas when he was just 13 and alone except for one other older detainee.
“It was just a very sad situation for someone so young,” she said.
She said staff were untrained and unable to deal with young detainees such as Voller who had behavioural issues, which led to frequent bouts of isolation and restraint.
“I think essentially a child went into that system,” she said later. “The fact he went into a detention centre system so young exacerbated his challenging behaviours, which were already identified way early in the piece.”
In one instance Voller had opted to be transferred to the adult Alice Springs facility to distance himself from some guards but, when she visited him, he was held in isolation because of his young age and shackled.
“I visited him in the second week and was deeply distressed by what I observed in his appearance,” she said. “He was shackled, it wasn’t good. We made a request to get him out of there as soon as possible.”
Over the course of multiple arrests and charges, Voller had always pleaded guilty and never received diversion, Carroll said. He has been granted bail on occasion but never parole despite applying.
She said he had never been permitted to take part in youth justice conferencing with any of his victims, which Carroll said “would have been a good thing” had he been allowed.
“It just became very evident from the get-go that there would be a punitive approach taken to Dylan,” she said.
She said in many cases the department couldn’t present an alternative to detention, as should be the priority under the NT’s Youth Justice Act. Instead Voller was “subjected to a punitive social work approach to his needs void of any conflict resolution approaches”.
“When Dylan first came into the care and protection system his mother was genuinely seeking some supports, some respite in how to manage Dylan and his challenging behaviours,” she said.
“What became apparent was that his care workers were somewhat helpless in dealing with his complex issues. The department seemed unwilling to resource the appropriate therapeutic approaches to disengage him from at risk behaviours.”
She said it became “adversarial” for each of the many caseworkers he went through and people became judgemental.
“Decisions were made on behalf of him, on behalf of his mother, and I think that was very problematic.”
On Monday the commission heard from Voller, who described difficulties with ADHD and raised multiple allegations and incidents of abuse and mistreatment by guards.
Monday’s evidence also revealed Voller had been held in isolation for 24 days immediately preceding his release in 2013. Carroll was asked if that was ever appropriate.
“Clearly not, because he re-entered the criminal justice system,” she said.
Voller was arrested after a violent crime spree in Alice Springs and is now finishing his three-year sentence in Darwin’s adult jail.
“He was very much set up to fail,” she said. “The whole point is to ensure that a young person isn’t re-entering the community a hardened criminal and then committing more crime.”
On Tuesday afternoon lawyers for the NT government put a number of assertions to Carroll that were raised during Voller’s testimony – who they were not allowed to cross-examine on Monday.
She said she was unaware that Voller – who described his history of spitting as a defence mechanism – had spat at staff including female nurses and officers hundreds of times.
The commission’s public hearing continues in Darwin.
