An alleged sexual assault of a detained person at the Alexander Maconochie Centre
30 November 2023
CONTENT WARNING: This review discusses sexual assault and may be distressing for some people.
This review concerns an allegation made by a detained person that he was sexually assaulted in the AMC.
After reporting the allegation, he was taken to the Forensic and Medical Sexual Assault Clinic at The Canberra Hospital, and in response to his physical condition or injuries, he was admitted to hospital. The admission to hospital triggered ACTCS reporting this incident to OICS as a critical incident under the ICS Act as ‘an assault or use of force that results in a person being admitted to hospital’.
This report does not consider and makes no comment about the veracity of the allegation. This report considers how ACTCS and Justice Health Services responded to the reported sexual assault, including what worked well and identifying any areas for improvement.
Despite there being a lack of clear policy guidance, this review finds that the ACTCS corrections officers responded appropriately to the allegation. ACTCS reported the alleged assault in a timely manner to ACT Policing and referred the detained person to JHS for a therapeutic response. However, potential evidence was not handled by ACTCS in accordance with the relevant policy and procedure.
This review also notes there is extremely limited Canberra Health Services policy guidance for clinical teams in AMC about responding to reports of sexual assault, and none specific to a correctional setting. This review makes recommendations to address this deficiency.
The review makes five recommendations.
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