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WA isn't the only state in Australia to let fine defaulters do jail time, but it's definitely the most keen on the idea. This is just one of a number of policies, along with mandatory detention and community closures, that deliver Aboriginal people into the state's prison system.But back to the timeline. When Ms. Dhu was taken into custody she started to complain of a pain in her right side, but the police didn't believe her. All evidence suggests they thought Ms. Dhu was lying. They knew she used meth once in a while and they assumed she was either a junkie in withdrawal or just plain faking it.CCTV video shows Ms. Dhu sitting in the charge room of the South Hedland Police Station in pain for an hour before she was taken to the South Hedland Health Campus to be looked at by a doctor. When she got there, she was seen by a Dr. Anne Lang. Dr. Lang's notes show she had written "behavioral issues" after speaking with Ms. Dhu for about five minutes. When Dr. Lang testified on Thursday, she could not explain what her diagnosis had actually been, but the result was that the police took Ms. Dhu back to a cell. The whole thing took about 20 minutes.The next night she was back in the hospital and was seen by Dr. Vafa Naderi. Like Dr. Lang, he too wrote "behavioral issues" in his notes after a brief conversation and did not offer a diagnosis. Once more, Ms. Dhu was sent back.Her father, Robert Dhu, said it best when he took the stand last Monday: "She was treated like a dog."
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