Wait, We’ve Known About This Tragic Don Dale Footage Since 2015

You've probably already seen the Four Corners footage. It's harrowing.

Although children are no longer held in Don Dale in 2016, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called for a royal commission into the abuse that went on while the centre was in operation. Tuesday morning, he told the ABC, "We want to know why there were inquiries into this centre which did not turn up the evidence and the information that we saw on Four Corners last night."

The thing is, the evidence did turn up. The Northern Territory's Children's Commissioner tried to warn the territory's Children and Families Minister about abuse in 2014—and even said he had footage.

In 2015, the Children's Commissioner tabled a report which describes, in great detail, the same CCTV tear gassing footage you saw Monday night. The ABC made that report public in September last year: it's on Document Cloud. You could have read it. I could have read it. The prime minister could have read it.

Don Dale isn't the story of one explosive leak blowing the lid, though Four Corners' work is outstanding. It's a story about how people cry abuse, and we fail to listen—over and over again. It's a story goes back years: but it's one worth knowing.

Here are the main players: the Northern Territory's current Children's Commissioner Colleen Gwynne, her predecessor Dr Howard Bath, and Ken Middlebrook, who was the NT Corrections Commissioner at the time Don Dale in operation. He resigned in December 2015, after a convicted killer escaped an adult's prison while on work assignment. As we can see from a line of media reports and internal communications, all of them knew something wasn't right.

Dylan Voller, who was 13 at the time, being held up by his neck and thrown into a cell in the behavioural management unit at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre.

In 2014, Dr Bath wrote a letter to NT Children and Families Minister John Elferink about the findings of an ongoing investigation he began in 2012, into the treatment of Dylan Voller, now 18 years old. He's the boy you've seen strapped to a mechanical restraint chair, hooded, in that Four Corners video.

Dr Bath's letter to Elferink, obtained by the ABC, described "excessive use of force against a child," who we now know to be Dylan, and "excessive periods of isolation to manage behaviour."

Dr Bath suggests staff outright lied about Dylan's treatment, giving an "apparently untruthful statements in response to interview questions and within a statutory declaration."

Dr. Bath also mentions "portions of three videotapes acquired as evidence during the course of the investigation," which show the abuse. Four Corners appears to have acquired this footage.

Basically, Elferink has been warned about abuse and "failures to report abusive incidents to the police" as far back as October 2014. Within days, the ABC made the letter publicly available on Document Cloud.

Elferink was told about a child being held in isolation; he was told about cover-ups. He knew a boy was being abused. Nothing changed. Elferink was sacked Tuesday morning by NT chief minister Adam Giles.

In August 2014, there were widespread reports of a riot at Don Dale. Corrections Commissioner Ken Middlebrook told the media six teenagers had escaped their cells on Thursday, August 21, armed themselves with glass, and had began smashing windows and light fixtures. Staff pepper-sprayed all of the boys. Dr Howard Bath launched another inquiry into this event, independent of the long-running investigation he'd already written to John Elferink about.

By August the following year Dr Bath had amicably left the position. Colleen Gwynne took over as Children's Commissioner, and released the report into the riot which Dr Bath had began. The report was damning: the riot never happened.

"One young person had escaped their cell because the door had been left open by the staff. The other young juveniles had not got out," the report reads, citing CCTV footage as proof. It wasn't all six, as Middlebrook claimed. The "riot" had been concocted to justify the use of pepper-spray, which, given the actual circumstances, was uncalled for.

The report also found Don Dale's unnamed general manager tried to cover this information up. They wrote a factually incorrect email briefing Middlebrook on the incident, claiming "all detainees" had become "disruptive." The same story was given to former minister John Elferink.

Similarly, five hours after the incident, police were were told multiple "detainees had escaped their cells, caused significant damage and assaulted staff with shards of glass, bricks and steel poles."

NT chief minister Adam Giles says the footage Four Corners aired had been "withheld" from him, Mr Elferink and "many officials in government." He said he saw it for the first time "on television last night."

That feels improbable.

All the footage from the riot was described in the report. The report was tabled in NT Parliament in 2015, and again, made public by the ABC. The CCTV footage was meticulously detailed, audio was transcribed. There were photographs taken from the CCTV footage in the report. Even if Giles and Elfernik didn't see it, they were told about it. In a sense, we all were.

A detainee is tear gassed by prison staff at Don Dale

In the wake of the Bath-Gwynne report, Middlebrook spoke with 105.7 ABC Darwin to defend Don Dale's use of tear gas. "I was there on that night," he said, "I was the one who authorised the use of gas because I had an obligation to bring that to an end and bring it to an end quickly."

In Handicam footage described in Bath-Gwynne report, Middlebrook can be heard saying, "Mate, I don't care how much chemical you use, we gotta get him out." Again, as of September 2015, anyone with internet access could have read this.

In the same ABC radio interview, Middlebrook explains, "There were two sprays from an aerosol into the area. Now it wasn't overuse of gas." As we can witness in the Four Corners footage, 10 sprays of tear gas were used.

In December 2014, all the children at Don Dale were moved to Berrimah, a prison deemed unfit for adults because it was falling down.

At a youth justice forum held in Darwin during October 2015, a former Don Dale detainee said teens had been forced to fight and eat bird poo during his time there. Travis, 15 at the time, said the winner of the fights was rewarded with soft drink and chocolate—which they would otherwise only get once a week.

Travis also said staff coerced kids into eating bird faeces, so they could film it on Snapchat. "There was poo sitting on the ground one time," he told the ABC, "and a young fella got dared to eat its shit and they videoed it and put it on SnapChat to all their friends and they gave him a Coke and a chocolate."

"If we didn't go to our rooms, it would be the hard way, [staff] would drag us," he said, "they would hit us with torches and stuff, in the kneecap."

Middlebrook doubted the events ever occurred. "If in fact those things happened, between official visitors, the Children's Commissioner and other methods in place, I wouldn't have heard this from the floor of a conference."

It was less than a month after the riot report had been made public, but Colleen Gwynne wanted another investigation. This behaviour was different, she said: it wasn't a response to any children misbehaving, it was "premeditated." It deliberately "degraded young people."

The Child Abuse Task Force of the Northern Territory police investigated the claims, despite Middlebrook's apathy. No findings have been reported.

In Berrimah, where children are currently held after Don Dale was closed, the abuse reportedly continues. Jared Sharp from the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency (NAAJA) told VICE "There have been incidents at the 'new' Berrimah. The abuse has continued, it continues to this day."

He's seen "alarming levels of self-harm" at the Berrimah jail. John Paterson, from the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory (AMSANT), believes the culture of staff violence comes from the highest levels of government.

He says says it's beyond belief that the government claim no one saw the footage before Four Corners. "They must think we came down in the last shower."