Abuse Law – Institutions – Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre, QLD 

In 1999, the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions (also known as the Forde Inquiry) provided in its’ final report that the children’s needs and educational entitlements at Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre were being neglected, that the children were stigmatised as criminal and psychiatric cases, and that the children were exposed to a significant risk of sexual and physical abuse by staff. The corporal punishment and physical abuse inflicted upon the children was found to be completely hypocritical with the concept of the institution as a medical facility; as one witness put it, “It was called a hospital, but I don’t know why; maybe you needed the hospital when they were finished.” Ultimately, the Forde Inquiry recommended that the Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre close as a matter of urgency.  

In 2003, a former chaplain at Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre provided a submission to the Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care, in which he wrote: 

On my first visits to Wilson, I could not believe what I saw taking place…Many young people – in fact, most of the girls on their first admission – were placed in Wilson for non-criminal offences…Wilson was a place of institutionalised violence. Most children had not committed serious crimes, contrary to what the Minister for Children’s Services, Mr John Herbert, often used to say: “Wilson is full of murderers, rapists and arsonists.” … All young people who had the misfortune of entering Wilson were treated psychiatrically which often meant in practice that they were treated with drugs. The result of this in many cases was that these young people were released from Wilson with a drug habit…Staff were also using drugs to control the young people. Young people were often injected with sedatives. If some staff wanted to have a quiet shift, they were not above giving sedatives to their young charges. Some young people who did not have a drug problem when they entered Wilson certainly had a raging habit by the time they were discharged.

In 2017, a former officer at Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Detention Centre was charged in relation to 41 offences of indecent treatment of boys, carnal knowledge, and deprivation of liberty between 1981 and 1995.