There’s the father who threatened to kill his children four times. The girl under six who was bullied, allegedly sexually abused and became the subject of 60 separate reports over two years. And there’s the woman whose apparent psychotic episodes became the subject of a debate over whether she was “putting it on”.
Sometimes the incidents recorded in the Nauru files appear as one-offs. But often they follow a pattern. A cry for help would become a threat, a threat would become an act, the act would be belatedly and often inadequately handled. Rinse, repeat.
The files show the progression of trauma as individuals’ distress escalated without remedy. A sample explored below are among countless stories of men, women and children growing increasingly distressed, some falling into deep mental illnesses, and some threatening violence against themselves or their families.
The pattern is displayed in the thousands of pages of documents. But what isn’t shown, according to some former employees, are caseworkers “going ballistic” behind the scenes.
“We’re watching it and yelling at our managers,” one said. “That’s all we can do. That’s what it is all the time. That’s what is happening.”
‘I’m ready for her to die’
A father in Nauru threatened to kill himself and his children at least three times before the children were eventually moved, the Nauru files show.
The man first reached out to caseworkers in July 2014 to say he wanted to relinquish care of his children. He was “failing as their father and it’s torturing me”, he told one.
The caseworker passed on the information to high welfare watch, and said a senior caseworker would see the man again the following week. But eight weeks later the asylum seeker made his first recorded threat to kill himself and his children after their application for refugee status was rejected. He was apparently not referred to mental health services.
Another two months later he made his second threat after becoming frustrated that his daughter was not receiving treatment for an almost year-long medical issue.
He said he would leave her with International Health and Medical Services, the health provider in the detention centre, until it was resolved. “If they return her prior to this then he will kill her and himself,” the report said. “[REDACTED] would not state a time period for this to occur in or a method for killing himself and his daughter.”
The caseworker reported being unable to change the man’s mind, and said a welfare officer would speak to him before an IHMS appointment the next morning.
Five days later the father again told caseworkers he was going to leave his daughter at IHMS. “He stated if this didn’t happen he would kill himself and the children.”
A senior caseworker was notified but it wasn’t until the next day the man was interviewed again. Despite the history of threats he was told his children would be “accommodated” for just one night, but only if he signed a consent form.
He refused, believing the form would be “held against him”, the report said.
The children spent the night in the care of a friend of the father’s and were eventually separated and placed with Save the Children and welfare staff.
At a meeting with caseworkers and behaviour management specialists a few days later, the father spoke of his desperation and again voiced threats to kill his children and himself. “I will commit suicide, I will not look after my children,” he said. “I’m mentally unwell and blame IHMS. They made my children unwell.”
He said he had “cried and requested before” but nothing had happened about his daughter’s medical treatment. “I’m ready to do, if she dies or gets worse. I’m aware of the impact and I’m ready for her to die.”
He said he would pour boiling water on his daughter if she didn’t get treatment.
Asked four times if he wanted to desert his children, he said yes, and the behaviour management specialist said his concerns “would be raised”.
He was also given information regarding the Nauruan criminal code and was pointed to relevant sections (286, 308, 359, 364).
Eight days later the father told a caseworker he would not harm the children but would kill himself.
The next month the family appeared to be reunited, according to a report which described the father yelling at his daughter after she engaged in “defiant behaviour” towards staff, warning that Safe the Children might take her away from him.
‘She kicked me to the floor’
Separately in 2014 to 2015 there were at least 60 incident reports filed which related to one child under the age of six. The girl was frequently fighting or being bullied by other children. In July 2014 caseworkers witnessed her father assaulting her. In January caseworkers were made aware of an older child exhibiting sexualised behaviour towards her. It happened a number of times, according to incident reports. Less than three months later a caseworker was told the child had twice attempted self-harm. A welfare check was carried out and the child “did not seem distressed”.
She kept fighting with other children and indicated that an adult male had been sexually abusing her. Two more months went by and the girl began displaying dangerous behaviour and became extremely distressed. She self-harmed. She alleged – again – that her father had hit her. In May she was among a group of children who were sitting on a shade cloth when a guard allegedly cut the cloth from under them, causing them to fall.
Guards became increasingly unable to deal with her.
A caseworker described one outburst: “I attempted to calm [REDACTED] down by going down to her level and comforting her, asking her to please move away however she hit and kicked me to the floor.
“Staff member [REDACTED] came and attempted to help. [REDACTED] continued to hit Wilsons guards, Wilson’s guards said ‘can you do something about this I can’t touch her’. At this point [REDACTED] was very aggressive and it was clear she was beginning to hurt herself, banging against the fence.”
More than six months later, in a discussion with the girl’s father about how he could better discipline his children, he said his daughter had repeatedly told him she would kill herself.
‘Planning a big event to show that we are here’
In 2013 a father said he’d had enough of his children being bullied about their dead mother and if nothing was done he would kill them and himself. This threat followed at least four prior reports to staff including one in which the father expressed his fear that other detainees would harm his children.
During late September and early October 2014 dozens of people self-harmed, protests escalated, the centre was in crisis. Numerous detainees warned of impending chaos.
Children warned of plans to set fires. One detainee told a caseworker he was happy because it felt like “the calm before the storm” and there was a group of people planning a big event to “show people that we are here”.
Others warned of plans for a mass suicide attempt.
In early 2015 a detainee self-harmed by consuming washing detergent six months after he told a caseworker he wished for some poison to take his own life.
In the same year a woman was so distressed about missing her husband, who was in Australia, that she carved his name into her chest. She was struggling with being a single mother and told caseworkers she believed that if she was “out of the picture” the Australian immigration department would send her child to live with their father.
Six days later she attempted suicide. In the coming weeks she expressed fear she would kill her child “because I cannot control him”. The following month she said she would take her own life if the department did not respond to her request to be reunited with her husband.
How this happens
These cases are not outliers. According to former detention centre employees this was – for at least the time they were there – the usual trajectory for people trapped in an incoherent response system which allows the hierarchy of service providers to trump expertise.
This meant a security company employee could and sometimes would overrule a case manager on a mental health or child protection case. “The child protection manager could be talking till they’re blue in the face,” one former detention centre employee told the Guardian.
A former centre employee described one case of a woman who appears fleetingly in the files, who had an apparent psychotic episode. Despite the urging of caseworkers to have her medically evacuated for psychiatric care, the former employee said, a Wilson’s employee decided instead they should encourage the woman to practise “self-care” because they believed she was “putting it on”. “She was in psychosis. Even I could see. She couldn’t focus, she couldn’t have a conversation.”
They said the woman’s condition worsened and she was eventually medevacked out of Nauru.
Peter Young, the former head of mental health services for the health provider International Health and Medical Services, said Save the Children was supposed to be the equivalent of a child protection agency but had to do that “without any sort of legislative framework at all and without any sort of capacity for the Nauruans to investigate”.
It was not until May this year that clearer laws relating to child neglect were passed among a raft of Nauruan legislative updates which also included decriminalising suicide and broadening the definition of rape to apply it to married and de facto couples.
A man may threaten or hit his children, or be accused of assaulting others, but there is no child protection framework on Nauru to trigger a response, as would happen in Australia. The children could be moved no further than to another part of the crowded centre.
“There wasn’t anywhere to remove them to. There wasn’t any infrastructure which allowed that,” Young said.
“Particularly when it was aspects of the environment driving the behaviour of the parents, when they were at their wit’s end themselves, there was literally no room to move.
“There were lots of cases where because people were so closely crowded, the tents they were living in, they were continually exposed to the people abusing them.”
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. Hotlines in other countries can be found here
