Solitary Confinement in Youth Detention Puts Children at Greater Risk of Sexual Abuse
Content Warning: This article contains topics surrounding child sexual abuse in institutional settings which may be confronting or distressing for readers.
Child sexual abuse in youth detention is a horrifying reality that occurs far too often in Australia’s youth prisons. Many children who enter these centres are already vulnerable to violence and abuse, and some may have even experienced sexual violence already in their lives. Combining existing vulnerabilities with the traumatic environment of the detention centres means that young people are at a particularly high risk of abuse while in detention.
The frequency of child sexual abuse in Australian youth detention centres makes it very clear that these centres are not safe places for young people. While sexual abuse can be perpetuated anywhere, the inherently traumatic nature of these detention centres means that there are strong grounds for abuse to occur.
The lack of trauma-informed care services, of rehabilitation-focused programs, and the general disdain and denigration with which youth detainees are treated, all combine to create an unsafe environment. The 2017 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse also recognised this, observing that any “organisational culture that tolerates violence or other abuses of power can facilitate sexual abuse”. Such violence and abuse of power can be found in the continued use of solitary confinement measures in youth detention, despite the plethora of evidence against its effectiveness.
The use and, more importantly, the normalisation of isolation and solitary confinement in Australia’s youth prisons, fundamentally contributes to unsafe environments in which sexual violence occurs, particularly where perpetrators are people in positions of power over the detainees. Isolating a child in a room by themselves, while it may be intended to be for their safety, can, and very often does, have the opposite effect.
Not only can this expose the child to perpetrators even more, but the harmful and punitive nature of isolation can also discourage young people from speaking out about abuse. Very often, the perpetrators of sexual violence are the same staff who also weaponize solitary confinement as a form of punishment.
The Tasmanian Commission of Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings found that not only had isolation measures at Ashley Youth Detention Centre been misused to punish and degrade young people, but that the “unregulated and unreported use of isolation increased the risk of, and opportunities for physical and sexual abuse”. Further, the effects of such dehumanising practices on the children’s sense of right and wrong as well as their trust in the adults at the Centre, meant that these children were less likely to report the abuse.
The intersection of sexual abuse and solitary confinement in youth prisons is an underacknowledged one, likely because while sexual abuse is – as it should be – completely unacceptable in the eyes of general society, the use of solitary confinement in detention does not receive the same criticism.
The reality, however, is that the psychological, emotional, and physical effects of solitary confinement, particularly on youth development, exacerbates the potential for sexual violence against children. The result is that young people are released from youth detention with life-long trauma, rather than being afforded appropriate care and protection in an environment that is responsible for their safety and wellbeing.
Young people need increased safeguards and meaningful reform to ensure that their time in detention does not further traumatise them or expose them to harm that has an immeasurable impact on the rest of their lives. Institutions in which harm is normalised cannot be standard practice; children in detention must be safe from violence and abuse of all kinds.