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Inquiry raps Australian immigration department over woman's treatment
Published on: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 03:44:55 GMT
An inquiry into why an Australian resident was wrongly locked up in jail and immigration detention for almost a year has found that the mentally ill woman should have been sent to a hospital within a week.
A draft report, which was tabled in Queensland state parliament late Tuesday, found that German-born Cornelia Rau's illness was also likely aggravated by the 10 months she spent in detention.
Under immigration department rules, people who are deemed to be living in Australia without a valid visa, as Rau mistakenly was, should only be jailed as a last resort and only spend a maximum of seven days in detention.
But Rau, a former Qantas flight attendant who at the time claimed to be a German tourist named Anna, spent six months in a Queensland women's prison because there was no immigration detention centre in the state.
Immigration officials failed to check up adequately on Rau, who displayed confused -- but not violent -- behaviour while in jail, the inquiry found.
This behaviour "should have triggered a response and action to remove (Rau) from prison detention much earlier," according to the draft report by former police commissioner Mick Palmer.
Palmer, who held a closed inquiry into Rau's detention, which was later expanded to include other wrongful detentions and a deportation, described 39-year-old Rau as "simply a person who desperately needed help."
His draft report finds that "the duty of care attended to her... was, by any measure, demonstrably inadequate."
The poor level of care given to Rau continued after she was transferred to the Baxter Immigration Detention Centre in South Australia state where she spent four months until her real identity was discovered in March.
The health care she received there was "inadequate by any standards," Palmer's report says.
"...the provision of psychiatric services by a consulting psychiatrist who flies infrequently to service a needy cohort beggars belief.
"Lacking continuity of care and assertive clinical leadership, the detainees at Baxter are vulnerable and exposed to aggravated risk of mental illness."
Australia's immigration policy allows for the mandatory and unlimited detention of illegal immigrations including children and has been widely criticised by rights groups here and abroad.
The government recently softened the laws to release into the community children and long-term detainees who cannot be sent home.
A spokesman for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said Wednesday that the government would not respond to the findings until the final report was completed, which is expected to be late next week. - AFP An inquiry into why an Australian resident was wrongly locked up in jail and immigration detention for almost a year has found that the mentally ill woman should have been sent to a hospital within a week.
A draft report, which was tabled in Queensland state parliament late Tuesday, found that German-born Cornelia Rau's illness was also likely aggravated by the 10 months she spent in detention.
Under immigration department rules, people who are deemed to be living in Australia without a valid visa, as Rau mistakenly was, should only be jailed as a last resort and only spend a maximum of seven days in detention.
But Rau, a former Qantas flight attendant who at the time claimed to be a German tourist named Anna, spent six months in a Queensland women's prison because there was no immigration detention centre in the state.
Immigration officials failed to check up adequately on Rau, who displayed confused -- but not violent -- behaviour while in jail, the inquiry found.
This behaviour "should have triggered a response and action to remove (Rau) from prison detention much earlier," according to the draft report by former police commissioner Mick Palmer.
Palmer, who held a closed inquiry into Rau's detention, which was later expanded to include other wrongful detentions and a deportation, described 39-year-old Rau as "simply a person who desperately needed help."
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