An Indigenous woman will this week allege in court that she was tortured and treated in a “cruel” and “inhuman” way by prison officers who pinned her down, forcibly strip-searched her while holding a knife, and ignored screamed warnings that she couldn’t breathe and was experiencing chest pains.
The ACT supreme court will on Monday begin hearing disturbing allegations about the treatment of Ngunnawal woman, Julianne Francis Williams, while on remand in the territory’s only adult prison in early 2021.
The territory government has kept handheld camera footage of the incident secret, rejecting an earlier request from the Guardian for its release through freedom of information laws and arguing for its suppression in earlier court hearings.
Court documents show that Williams, who has consented to being identified, had been moved to the jail’s crisis support unit due to her distress at a decision refusing her leave to attend her grandmother’s funeral.
A guard noticed her put something down her pants and assumed, wrongly, it was a weapon or other contraband. Williams was, in fact, menstruating and had placed sanitary tissues down her pants.
A team of officers decided to use force to strip-search her. Before they entered the cell, Williams says she was lying on her bed in a “calm state”.
She had a pacemaker for a heart condition and a collapsed lung, according to court documents. Prison authorities allegedly knew about her medical conditions, but did not bring a nurse or doctor with them.
Williams was pinned down. Officers discussed using a knife to cut her clothes off. According to transcripts of the recordings of the incident, one officer asked colleagues “who’s got the knife?”, prompting another to reply: “I do”.
The first officer then said to Williams: “If you comply, I’ll get them [your clothes] off you and we’ll get this over and done with.”
Williams yelled that she couldn’t breathe and was experiencing pains in her chest. She alleges this did nothing to interrupt the search.
The court documents allege two male officers were in the “immediate vicinity” of Williams’ cell as the strip search was carried out, though a previous report into the incident found “the search did not occur in front of male officers”.
It was also watched live in the jail’s operation room via CCTV, the court documents allege. The court documents say that Williams agreed to comply if the knife was not used, and she was then taken to a bathroom with two female officers.
The incident was recorded on a handheld camera. Last year, the Guardian used freedom of information laws – with Williams’ consent – to apply for release of the footage. The application argued the release of the footage was clearly in the public interest, given it depicted the alleged mistreatment of an Indigenous Australian behind bars.
The government rejected the request. It said the footage could not lawfully be disclosed due to secrecy laws related to the ACT’s prison facilities, and feared the vision would reveal the identities of prison officers, despite the Guardian indicating a willingness to have their faces blurred.
The ACT supreme court has also previously suppressed the footage after it was tendered during a bail application made by Williams and her lawyers, Ken Cush and Associates.
In 2021, the ACT’s Inspector of Correctional Services (ICS) released a report finding the search was “not a last resort as required” and did not comply with the territory’s Human Rights Act. The inspector reviewed the footage of the incident and recorded that the woman had told officers she “cannot breathe” at various times while detained.
“During the use of force there are up to 12 staff in the immediate vicinity, some at times enter the cell, and others stay by the door or in the corridor outside the cell,” the report said.
Williams is arguing the search breached her rights under the territory’s Human Rights Act – including her rights to not be tortured or be treated in a cruel, inhuman, or degrading way – and is seeking a declaration from the court to that effect.
The ACT’s prison, known as the Alexander Maconochie Centre, is supposed to be human rights-compliant.
Julie Tongs, chief executive of Canberra’s Winnunga Nimmityjah Aboriginal Health and Community Services, said:
“The ACT Labor/Greens government should be ashamed of themselves. They hold themselves up as the most progressive government in Australia – definitely not when it comes to Aboriginal issues. It’s a huge fail.”
The ACT government is expected to argue that many of Williams’ allegations were not supported by the evidence. It will also argue that, for something to constitute torture, the ill-treatment must reach a minimum level of severity.
It will argue that the term “torture” is reserved for the deliberate inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering.
“It has been held that interrogation involving ‘stress positions’, full-time ‘hooding’, continuous loud noises, sleep deprivation, and deprivation of food and drink did not amount to ‘torture’,” the government argues in an outline of its opening argument.
