Self-harm and sexual abuse incident reports filed on Nauru were routinely altered and downgraded in seriousness by the security company tasked with protecting asylum seekers on the island, new documents reveal.
Save the Children, one of the major agencies in the detention centre, protested that they were “usually downgraded without any clear justification”. A spokeswoman for Wilson Security said the company followed the reporting guidelines established by Australia’s immigration department and denied that incident reports are systematically downgraded in breach of the guidelines.
The Guardian’s investigation into the Nauru files, the largest cache of leaked documents published about the immigration detention system, reveals that more than 100 reports made by other Australian companies working in the detention centre were downgraded in seriousness by Wilson Security.
While there may be a legitimate reason to downgrade the risk assessment of an incident if it has been incorrectly recorded, the Guardian’s analysis of the documents shows a number of incidents that appear to have been altered in breach of the reporting rules for these events.
Wilson Security is the company subcontracted to provide security on Nauru. It is contracted directly by Transfield Services (now Broadspectrum) which is in turn contracted by Australia’s immigration department to run the Pacific detention centre.
The 2,000 incident reports published by the Guardian are records written by guards, caseworkers and medical officers on Nauru. Their reports include allegations of self-harm, assault, abusive behaviour, accidents, sexual assault and bullying. Events are classified in seriousness as “critical”, “major” or “minor”. Some are labelled simply as “information” reports. How these reports should be filed are set out in Transfield’s incident reporting rules.
The downgrading by Wilson was recognised by other providers, and apparently admitted by Wilson.
On 6 September 2015, a senior Save the Children’s manager on Nauru wrote an email to staff on the island.
Message for staff: downgrading of Incident Reports by Wilsons
Hi All,
In recent months Wilsons have been downgrading SCA Incident Reports when they are submitted to them at Command. They are usually downgraded without any clear justification.
In a meeting with Wilsons yesterday, it was agreed that Wilsons will not downgrade incident risk ratings when SCA submit them to Command. They may discuss with you differences in the interpretation of the incident, but they will not actually change the risk rating.
If Wilsons believe an incident should be downgraded, this will occur during the Incident Management Group (IMG) meeting which is held every weekday – SCA’s Operations Manager attends this.
Please advise me or [REDACTED] if you continue to have IRs downgraded, or if you feel pressure to downgrade an incident.
Thanks,
[REDACTED]
In one case an incident report of a self-harm threat by a child was made by a Save the Children worker in January 2015. The asylum seeker child had stopped taking her medication but told the worker “she will die and she doesn’t care about anything anymore”.
The Save the Children worker reported it as a “major” incident. At the bottom of several report forms guidelines state: “Threat self-harm & assault incidents involving minors (under 18) is classified as a major incident. Actual self-harm incidents involving minors (under 18) is classified as a critical incident.”
But a Wilson Security officer overruled the caseworker’s decision. They crossed out the word “major” and instead labelled it as a “minor” incident.
A spokesperson for the immigration department said a mechanism for reclassification was entirely appropriate.
Other reports that have been clearly edited, apparently in breach of the policy, include:
- An allegation of sexual abuse of a child asylum seeker under 10, when a local Nauruan security guard was alleged to be “playing with his bottom”, was downgraded from “critical” to “major” by Wilson Security.
- An allegation that a male asylum seeker had sexually assaulted children on the island, which one demonstrated by “pinching herself on the bottom and [pointing] to her vagina”, was reclassified from a sexual assault to an assault.
- A report that a girl had been assaulted by an officer was reclassified from an “assault on minor” to an “information report”.
- A report from a female asylum seeker that a Nauruan guard on a school bus had “touched her body” was downgraded from a “major” report to “information” by the security company.
- Concern about threats of self-harm by an asylum seeker who said she was concerned she might kill herself in her sleep and was “more down than normal” was reclassified from “minor’ to an “information” report.
- In February 2015, the company altered a report of “abusive/aggressive behaviour” alleged about one of its own guards to downgrade it from “minor” to “information”.
- A report about an asylum seeker who said she had been refusing food and water for three days and was feeling dizzy and wanted to see a doctor was reclassified from a “major” incident of “food & fluid refusal” to an “information” report.
Critical incidents must be reported verbally within 30 minutes and in writing within three hours. Major incidents must be reported verbally within an hour and within six hours in writing. Minor incidents don’t require a verbal report. A written report only needs to be filed within 24 hours. Timeframes for reporting incidents to the department are extremely important because failures to meet these deadlines can trigger financial penalties.
A former Save the Children staff member, Tobias Gunn, said he was regularly pressured to downgrade the severity of reports.
Reporting a case of child abuse, when a two-year-old asylum seeker was being assaulted by an adult relative and was still in the presence of his abuser, Gunn assessed the witnessed assault and the ongoing risk of further abuse as “critical”.
“I used the metric produced by the immigration department that was for everyone to use,” he said. “It ticked all the boxes, so to speak, I graded the incident correctly to the metric. I told the Wilson guards and they all agreed with my assessment.
“But then a senior Wilson Security officer came back into the tent, telling me I needed to downgrade it. I refused to do it, I said I didn’t have the authority to do it, and that they could speak to my manager. They left, but they came back and told me again I needed to downgrade it.”
Gunn’s Save the Children superiors agreed with his assessment and said he had correctly followed reporting procedures. “But Wilson continued to try to pressure me, they were intimidating in their body language, they stood over me, saying I needed to downgrade it.”
Ultimately, Gunn said, Wilson Security held a meeting with a senior manager of Save the Children and the report was downgraded.
“There was no reason to downgrade it. Everything matched up with the matrix, I followed the protocols I was supposed to, and everything was supported by the matrix. There was a constant pressure on the island to downgrade the severity of incidents.”
Gunn raised his concerns about downgrading in a submission to an Australian Senate committee inquiry into conditions and circumstances in detention on Nauru.
In its response to his concerns in the Senate Wilson Security’s executive general manager, south Pacific, John Rogers, wrote: “Wilson Security ensures that all incident reporting is carried out in strict accordance with the relevant guideline. Incident report categories and incident severity classifications are determined by the department and communicated to service providers in a guideline.”
The psychologist and traumatologist Paul Stevenson, who undertook 12 deployments to Nauru, working to counsel and support Wilson Security guards, said reports were regularly downgraded and there was a constant financial pressure to de-escalate the reported severity of fights or acts of self-harm.
“The reporting arrangement is such that if they don’t adhere to the strict guidelines that are set under their contract, they face enormous fines,” he said. “For example, if there’s a critical incident and it takes four hours to report it, Wilson could lose $80,000 in a fine because it hasn’t respected its reporting arrangements.
“So what we find is that mostly there are very, very few reported as critical. They de-escalate to majors, and the majors de-escalate to minors, and there’s a whole number of incidents that de-escalate to no particular incident, so they’re not classified as anything at all. All along the line, incidents are de-escalated for the purpose … of avoiding extremely heavy fines under their contract.”
Stevenson said the de-escalation served to play down the suffering on the island. “The way that the documents are reported can minimise. There are only some cases where you can’t minimise: if somebody dies, if somebody’s burned themselves to the point where they’re almost dead, if somebody’s hanged themselves to the point where there is continuing harm, some things you can’t find a way to minimise, but a lot of things you can.”
The situation on Nauru and in Australia’s other offshore processing centre, Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, was worse than the incident reports reveal, Stevenson said. “The documents tell a story but they don’t tell, in lots of respects, how something led to [an incident], what happens after it, and they don’t reflect the actual severity sometimes. I’m not saying it’s a blatant failure to report, but I think there is a minimisation about those reports.”
A spokeswoman for Wilson Security said: “Wilson Security strictly follows the incident reporting guidelines set by the department of immigration and border protection to ensure the correct grading of incident reports filed by all service providers. Strict protocols are followed in the event that the rating of any incident report is being considered for amendment, which is only done in consultation with other service providers.
“Wilson Security categorically rejects any allegation that incident reports are systemically downgraded in breach of the incident reporting guidelines, and notes that incident reports are also regularly upgraded if required.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said allegations were reported in line with the incident reporting classification framework: “A mechanism for reclassification is completely appropriate.
“The classification of particular incidents can and does change over time – this is not inconsistent with our published statement. Reclassification of incident reports shows that we take each claim very seriously and act upon these with all due diligence.”
Wilson Security previously told the Senate inquiry into conditions at Nauru that it was responsible for the control room that records incidents at the detention centre.
But months after the inquiry, Wilson Security was permitted to continue to downgrade incident reports being reported by other private contractors. The result was – as Stevenson has outlined – a sanitised set of incident reports that in some cases do not correspond with the seriousness of the events on the ground.
It is unclear why the practice was allowed to continue until September 2015. The Guardian provided details of the incident report changes to Australia’s immigration department and asked it whether it was aware of the rate and frequency the changes were occurring.
