Australia teenager tells of Northern Territory youth detention ordeal

Dylan Voller gives evidence at the royal commission

A teenager says he was deprived of food, repeatedly strip-searched and forced to defecate in his pillowcase while in youth detention in Australia.

Images of Dylan Voller wearing shackles and a spit hood caused outrage when they were aired on television in July.

They prompted the government to appoint a royal commission into youth detention in the Northern Territory.

Voller, now 19, told the commission on Monday that detainees were regularly mistreated by staff.

"I'd been asking to go to the toilet for four or five hours and they kept saying no," he said.

"I ended up having to defecate into a pillowcase because they wouldn't let me go to the toilet."

The Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory follows widespread condemnation of the treatment of detainees at the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre in 2014 and 2015.

Last year Amnesty International described the regime at the centre as "institutionalised brutality", with teenagers being held in solitary confinement with no access to light or water for long periods.

Shocking images

Testifying on Monday, Voller recounted the incident where he was placed in a restraint chair for almost two hours wearing a spit hood - a device designed to prevent the wearer spitting or biting.

"I was getting dizzy from panicking. I was getting agitated because the officer holding the camera was sitting there," Voller said on Monday.

"He'd act nice and then turn the camera off and start trying to agitate me and then turn the camera back on," he said.

Voller vomited into his mouth and wet his pants during the ordeal.

The inside of the Don Dale centre in the Northern Territory

The teenager said he feared the guards "could have done anything" to him and he would have been powerless to stop them.

After a separate incident in which he was tear-gassed, Mr Voller claimed he felt like he "was going to die" as he struggled to see through burning eyes.

'Denied food'

Voller also said guards at Don Dale charged detainees "rent" of A$1.50 (£0.88; $1.11) per day, which they paid in money earned through good behaviour.

He claimed detainees would sometimes be denied food by guards. He recalled one instance where a staff member gave water to other detainees but not him.

"Because that officer didn't really like me, he said, 'do you want water, Voller?' and I said, 'yes'," he said.

"Then as he was walking out, he threw the water onto the ground… and said, 'there you go' and walked off."

Voller said one guard had taken pity on him after he had been refused food, and pushed fruit and muesli bars into his cell.

"He could see how hungry I was and he didn't agree with them starving me, I guess," he said.

Voller is now an inmate at an adult prison in Darwin.

Other Don Dale detainees are expected to give evidence in the coming days.