Speaker 1: Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty
Speaker 1: verdicts against all three defendants.
Speaker 2: It was absolute shambles, to tell you the truth, just
Speaker 2: absolutely really.
Speaker 1: Heamous blood on his clothing the day after the alleged.
Speaker 3: Attap on a shallow mud bank and if bit through river.
Speaker 2: Basically, I think most of the people are used to
Speaker 2: me are good people.
Speaker 3: I think a really important question we need to ask
Speaker 3: is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia are innocent.
Speaker 1: This is Curtain, a podcast where we pull back the
Speaker 1: blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of
Speaker 1: our justice system and ask who are the victims. I'm
Speaker 1: Amy Maguire and I'm.
Speaker 3: Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate for the Foreign Prisoner Support Service.
Speaker 3: And a warning, this series contains the names of deceased
Speaker 3: peoples and has distressing content that might upset some listeners.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Curtain the podcast. Today, we're going to take
Speaker 1: you back to the case of Kevin Henry and we're
Speaker 1: going to be doing it with a very special guest. Now,
Speaker 1: we've previously told you on this podcast about how we
Speaker 1: came to know about Kevin's case, How Mardin and I
Speaker 1: became involved and how we began investigating. But today I
Speaker 1: want to tell you something a little more personal. Back
Speaker 1: when I first heard the name Kevin Henry, I called
Speaker 1: someone very close to me. At that point, I had
Speaker 1: no idea about the case. I didn't know what happened.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what Rockhampton was like. Back then, I
Speaker 1: was only three years old, and I definitely didn't know
Speaker 1: if there was any truth in Kevin's claims of innocence.
Speaker 1: But I thought to us someone I could rely upon,
Speaker 1: I consider him a reliable witness. And that person is
Speaker 1: my father, Sterling macchuire. Now I didn't just consider him
Speaker 1: a reliable witness because he was my father. I also
Speaker 1: had another reason, and the reason was this, for the
Speaker 1: majority of my life, from when I was one until
Speaker 1: my early twenties, my father had actually worked as a
Speaker 1: prison officer at Etna Creek Jail, the jail at Kevin
Speaker 1: Henry had spent the majority of his sentence. He's currently
Speaker 1: on parole. Dad is a drumble and South Sea Islander
Speaker 1: man and he grew up his whole life in Rockhampton.
Speaker 1: He had known Kevin from when he was incarcerated on
Speaker 1: non violent offenses as a teenager, and he had actually
Speaker 1: been there on Judy the night that Kevin Henry was
Speaker 1: wrongly convicted of rape and murder, all the way back
Speaker 1: in nine ninety two. He had seen the guards bring
Speaker 1: him in. So when I heard the name Kevin Henry,
Speaker 1: I immediately rang my father. And before I had even
Speaker 1: mentioned the question of innocence or why I had heard
Speaker 1: about the case, Dad had told me straightway, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was a bit suspicious. All those years that Dad was
Speaker 1: at jail, all those years in which he was watching
Speaker 1: Kevin Henry. He thought that there may be questions, there
Speaker 1: may be reasons to believe him when Kevin protested his innocence,
Speaker 1: and there were a couple of reasons. He thought that
Speaker 1: today we're going to bring Dad on the podcast to
Speaker 1: tell you why. Martin and I interviewed him from Rockampden
Speaker 1: earlier this week.
Speaker 2: Hello listeners out there, I'm Stirling Amy's dad, and yeah,
Speaker 2: nice to welcome you to the podcast from Darable Country.
Speaker 1: And how would you describe yourself? Dad?
Speaker 2: Who are you born and bred in Rockampton, Queensland. I'm
Speaker 2: of Aboriginal and South Sea Islander descent and spent the
Speaker 2: majority of my life here in Rockampton except for Stintony.
Speaker 2: Australian Army was down in Sydney down there for a
Speaker 2: short period. Oh well six year period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Dad, do you remember when I first asked
Speaker 1: you about Kevin Henry's case?
Speaker 2: Oh, I can remember it. I'm just forget how long
Speaker 2: ago that is now, it seems to be a fair period,
Speaker 2: a fair time now since that was, I can remember it,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it come out of the blue. And one
Speaker 2: thing with my experience out there in the correctional center
Speaker 2: is they come across many people over the course of
Speaker 2: my time out there, and people from all walks of
Speaker 2: life going to jail convicted of crimes and never really
Speaker 2: took an interest really and what they were in for
Speaker 2: or what happened or anything like that. And so I
Speaker 2: never asked questions. Really there was none of my business.
Speaker 2: But different different prisoners would tell me. Some would tell
Speaker 2: me what they did. They admitted their crime, would say
Speaker 2: if they didn't do it, and what happened to was said, well,
Speaker 2: that's you know, they were convicted in a court of law.
Speaker 2: There's nothing I would say, Well they told me they
Speaker 2: were innocent. Well, I said, well that's something that you know,
Speaker 2: what you tell me if you of what you say, Well,
Speaker 2: there's that's something that you know, you know, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: I plody of prisoners tell me about the crimes they
Speaker 2: admitted they didn't. There's others out there that said that
Speaker 2: they didn't do it. So I had no doubt that
Speaker 2: there may have been There may be people that were
Speaker 2: wrongly convicted. So put it that.
Speaker 1: Way, But there was When I called you that day,
Speaker 1: Kevin Henry immediately stuck stuck out in your mind, didn't he?
Speaker 1: Why Why did you immediately have recollections of Kevin Henry
Speaker 1: when I asked you that that day.
Speaker 2: Well, Kevin Henry, when I first started out, there was
Speaker 2: a young man, probably about seventeen eighteen years of age,
Speaker 2: and I merely I remember him because he was oh
Speaker 2: yeah he I just remember him as a young man.
Speaker 2: So Kevin Henry, I can remember the day that he
Speaker 2: came back from court when he was sentenced to it
Speaker 2: were not sentence convicted of that crime? On duty that night, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was on duty. He came back late that night
Speaker 2: because I was on duty when they when they brought
Speaker 2: him back, it was a late sitting and yeah, it was. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was sort of questions around around that case. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I've known Kevin Henry for quite some time, and it
Speaker 2: was it wasn't until probably oh, I'm trying to think now,
Speaker 2: it's probably about oh, yeah, that was in the old jail,
Speaker 2: so it was quite a few years before there was
Speaker 2: ninety one or ninety two, I think it was, and
Speaker 2: the new jail opened up in two thousand. I think
Speaker 2: it was two thousand, So that's eight years. And there
Speaker 2: was probably another eight years after that, so he's probably
Speaker 2: eighteen years into his sentence. Him and I were I
Speaker 2: was escorting him back to the block one day, and
Speaker 2: so we were just him and I going back into
Speaker 2: the block, and he said out of the blue, which,
Speaker 2: like I said, is not unusual for other prisons have
Speaker 2: done the same thing when I'm just one on one
Speaker 2: with the prisons. And he said, because it stuck out
Speaker 2: in my mind when Amy wrang me or should I say,
Speaker 2: a chance conversation one on one, and Kevin said out
Speaker 2: of the blue, he said that where he's wrongly convicted,
Speaker 2: and he said about the police holding the gun at
Speaker 2: his head to admit to to make a false statement something.
Speaker 2: But that's stuck in my mind because I knew Kevin,
Speaker 2: you know, probably for a long time out there, but
Speaker 2: never really had a real close dealings with him, And
Speaker 2: for him to come out on that day in question,
Speaker 2: that's what struck out because he just said it, and
Speaker 2: I thought, wow, that was just unusual for someone to
Speaker 2: say that.
Speaker 1: And Dad, you mentioned before that you had a lot
Speaker 1: of people who entered prison who would plead their innocence,
Speaker 1: but it was obviously something about Kevin Henry that made
Speaker 1: you believe it was that the reason or were there
Speaker 1: other reasons?
Speaker 2: To me, it was the read. What confused me is
Speaker 2: why would he tell me that? And why would he
Speaker 2: tell me that? You know, I never heard that before,
Speaker 2: Like he didn't go around making a general statement or
Speaker 2: everything everywhere, but Jeeves, it was like a yeah, it
Speaker 2: was just strange, that's what I thought. And I thought, well,
Speaker 2: at the time, I thought, yeah, well that's because he
Speaker 2: sounded pretty convincing when he said it, And I thought, well,
Speaker 2: it's I didn't disbelieve it, so I thought, well, that's yeah.
Speaker 2: I just thought that because Kevin had never really spoken
Speaker 2: to me anything was to say confidential something anything confidential
Speaker 2: like that before.
Speaker 1: Do you think there was a reason he was picking
Speaker 1: you specifically to tell you.
Speaker 2: No, that's what I say. I to this day, I
Speaker 2: wondered why he said.
Speaker 1: That, And you never told anyone else until I brought
Speaker 1: off his name that day.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't because when prisoners said me said certain
Speaker 2: things to me, well, they committed crimes and said they
Speaker 2: did it, and I didn't tell anyone else. That's a
Speaker 2: conversation between that person and me. So I just but
Speaker 2: I always remembered that.
Speaker 1: I think the allegation of someone a police officer, putting
Speaker 1: a gun to a person's head and forcing them to
Speaker 1: confess seems quite I think to other people would be
Speaker 1: hard to believe. Was it hard to believe for you?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to put words either. Well, it's not not
Speaker 2: impossible to believe. So well, like I said, when a
Speaker 2: prison out there told me things like that, that's what
Speaker 2: they said. So it's not for me to say it's
Speaker 2: wrong or right, because I can't make that judgment. But
Speaker 2: so I didn't disbelieve it. You can't can't disbelieve it.
Speaker 1: But I remember when I had that conversation with you
Speaker 1: that day. I remember you were pretty sure.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I always thought there was something wrong with Kevin's case.
Speaker 2: I always thought that there was something.
Speaker 1: To his innocence.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. A lot of people thought that because
Speaker 2: just things in the local newspaper and on the news
Speaker 2: just sort of like didn't add up. So when he
Speaker 2: said that to me that day, I thought, well, yes,
Speaker 2: there's something there, so but that stuck in my mind
Speaker 2: for a long long time.
Speaker 4: One of the interesting things about what Sterlings just said
Speaker 4: is that it mirrors almost every conversation I've had as
Speaker 4: I've rung lawyers, members of the Aboriginal community, members of
Speaker 4: the general community who lived in Rockhampton at the time,
Speaker 4: people across various industries. Was that they all had their
Speaker 4: doubts about Kevin Henry's guilt. There was always something not
Speaker 4: right in their mind. The case stood out, whether it
Speaker 4: was the fishermen that we've spoken to before, right through
Speaker 4: the barristers and others. For everyone, there was this thing
Speaker 4: that something wasn't right, and yet it hadn't really been
Speaker 4: in that disgust in a greater context until we were
Speaker 4: able to dive further in. And you've heard what the
Speaker 4: results of that were.
Speaker 2: Because I've known Kevin Henry or known of him out
Speaker 2: in jail when he before he was, he was on
Speaker 2: a smaller sentence before, he's only young, and then when
Speaker 2: he came in for this one when he was remanded
Speaker 2: for murder or remanded on this case. So I've seen
Speaker 2: him grow from a young man, you know, teenager into
Speaker 2: a well to a virtually a middle aged man. And
Speaker 2: when I see when he started his first part of
Speaker 2: his sentence when he was convicted of that murder, was yeah,
Speaker 2: he was what should I say, he was troublesome. But
Speaker 2: when I look back, and I've put myself in that
Speaker 2: position if I had been in prison for something I
Speaker 2: didn't do, a capital crime, I just don't know how
Speaker 2: I would react. Well, I think when I'm looking back
Speaker 2: through his what I noticed of Kevin and then you know,
Speaker 2: over the years, I think it's a normal reaction of
Speaker 2: someone if they were convicted of a capital crime for
Speaker 2: a long period, and I think it's only a natural
Speaker 2: you know, if they're innocent, that's how people would react.
Speaker 2: Because I thought if I was in that position, I
Speaker 2: would have been exactly the same.
Speaker 4: And you know, having worked on cases around the world,
Speaker 4: it's very a similar experience, whether it's in America or
Speaker 4: cases I've worked on in the Middle East that the
Speaker 4: people that have that reaction when they first get sentenced
Speaker 4: are often the people whose stories you really want to
Speaker 4: listen to because of the potential innocence. It's really an
Speaker 4: unusual phenomenon that the people who are guilty once they
Speaker 4: get their sentence often go quietly into the night and
Speaker 4: don't put up too much of a farce. So again,
Speaker 4: you know, this was something that stood out for me
Speaker 4: hearing these things over time, was that it was very
Speaker 4: consistent with the twenty years of working with people who
Speaker 4: had been wrongly convicted.
Speaker 1: Can I take you back to the night, because I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty interesting that you were on Judy the
Speaker 1: night that Kevin was actually convicted. What was prison like
Speaker 1: back then? What was the prison that Kevin was entering.
Speaker 2: Well, we were in the old prison which has since
Speaker 2: been knocked down, and rightly so, it was an old prison,
Speaker 2: decaying buildings. There was louvers broken or just missing louvers,
Speaker 2: so if it was cold at night or rained, prisoners
Speaker 2: would put blankets or get bits of cardboard to fill
Speaker 2: in the places where the missing louvers. It was just
Speaker 2: very a terrible rundown state and certainly not fit for
Speaker 2: human habitations that way.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just just not a nice place.
Speaker 1: And what do you mean by just not a nice place.
Speaker 2: Where you mean, well, there was a place where a
Speaker 2: lot of assaults had happened, murders had happened, suicides that happened,
Speaker 2: people like things like slash ups. People know whether the
Speaker 2: slash up is it was full of it, and just
Speaker 2: lots of violence. It was very violent.
Speaker 1: So it was a very dangerous place to be even
Speaker 1: for everyone.
Speaker 2: I think it was a dangerous place for everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, just but it's very nature m Yeah, it
Speaker 2: wasn't safe at all. So especially for young prisoners it
Speaker 2: was wasn't. It wasn't very safe for them. As far
Speaker 2: as prison offices you can do so much, but yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't. It was. It was, yeah, like
Speaker 2: I said, a place that I'm glad it's not there anymore.
Speaker 1: Do you remember you mentioned before the night that Kevin
Speaker 1: was convicted. Can you tell me more about that? Do
Speaker 1: you remember a lot about when he was brought back in.
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Was that when they brought him back it was late.
Speaker 2: It was not that long before lock up and lock
Speaker 2: up used to be nine fifteen at night. There was
Speaker 2: he they brought him back to me not long before
Speaker 2: lock up. I think even the and I just can't
Speaker 2: think of the accompanying officers, well wouldn't say anyway, but
Speaker 2: I think they had doubts. Well they well they said,
Speaker 2: so that's all. They had doubts. But anyway, I don't
Speaker 2: know who they were or couldn't say anyway who they were.
Speaker 1: So even from the very first night Kevin was convicted,
Speaker 1: even other prison officers had doubts.
Speaker 2: Well, that is what overhearing certain ones said that yes,
Speaker 2: people that were.
Speaker 1: There, he said, before you knew Kevin for a very
Speaker 1: long time, how would you describe him as a person
Speaker 1: from how you knew it?
Speaker 2: Well, like I said, I didn't know him personally. And
Speaker 2: being from the you know, we had a large number
Speaker 2: of inmates out there or prisoners from Warabinda, so they
Speaker 2: extended to stick close together. So they stick together in
Speaker 2: their own group, you know, obviously because family ties and
Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff. So I didn't really get
Speaker 2: to know them. And from my experience, being of South
Speaker 2: Island descent at that time Aboriginals and Southea Islanders, there
Speaker 2: was a bit of a split between the two groups.
Speaker 2: For whatever reason, I don't know, but there was that group,
Speaker 2: so I didn't sort of get to know. It wasn't
Speaker 2: until years later that I got to know them a
Speaker 2: lot better. So and then everything was got you know,
Speaker 2: everything's changed after that. But around that time the Warabinda
Speaker 2: prisoners tended to stick together and they didn't communicate much
Speaker 2: out of that that I do know from another black
Speaker 2: prison officer who I won't name, he also told me
Speaker 2: that Kevin Henry had told him that, but he hadn't
Speaker 2: said anything. It was only till after all this come out.
Speaker 2: But I won't reveal the name of that black prison officer,
Speaker 2: so he obviously did tell He may have told well
Speaker 2: other black prison office but I don't know, but I
Speaker 2: know of at least one who said, yes, tell him,
Speaker 2: And this was probably around the same time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and from my experience too, I mean, people have
Speaker 4: to understand that prisons are not a place where you
Speaker 4: have casual conversations about these sort of things. And it's
Speaker 4: really common working on cases in the South of America
Speaker 4: with African American inmates who have been wrongfully convicted that
Speaker 4: often it takes the years to build up the courage
Speaker 4: to tell someone. They'll often watch a prison guard for
Speaker 4: years and see who they're going to be able to trust,
Speaker 4: because it really is the biggest thing in their life
Speaker 4: and the thing that weighs heaviest. So I think people
Speaker 4: need to understand that it's not just casual conversations that
Speaker 4: people are going to be having, and that it's quite
Speaker 4: a strategic thing for a prisoner to make that decision.
Speaker 4: Is it even worth telling this person because if they're
Speaker 4: not going to believe me and I'm going to suffer consequences,
Speaker 4: there's no point. So I think for me looking at
Speaker 4: it from afar, it seems quite understandable why Kevin made
Speaker 4: the decision to tell Sterling and another black prison officer,
Speaker 4: because he'd clearly decided that these were people he could trust.
Speaker 4: And in prison, that's all about who we squeaky clean.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're not going to be going to anyone
Speaker 4: who you don't trust because you've observed their behavior. You're
Speaker 4: going to people who do their job and do it right.
Speaker 4: And I can't imagine that would have been an easy
Speaker 4: thing for Kevin either. So I think that's what people
Speaker 4: need to understand, that it's not just something you just
Speaker 4: come out and say randomly on the first day you're there,
Speaker 4: especially not as Sterling's explain that the old prison was.
Speaker 4: It was a rough place, and you know, it's well documented.
Speaker 4: You can look up in the archives that are available
Speaker 4: on government websites about the murders and the suicides and
Speaker 4: the violence that occurred out there. So you're not just
Speaker 4: going to be having casual conversations. And I think that's
Speaker 4: important for people to understand.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the other thing too to remember is that,
Speaker 2: well I've started out there. You know, prison offices weren't
Speaker 2: supposed to fragnize with prisoners. That was just against We
Speaker 2: just weren't allowed to do that. Because when I was
Speaker 2: out there, you couldn't be on first name basis. It
Speaker 2: was they had to call me sir, and I called
Speaker 2: them prisoner so and so. And it wasn't until I
Speaker 2: think nineteen ninety two or ninety three that they dropped
Speaker 2: the you know, they had to call a prisoner prisoner,
Speaker 2: had to call a prison officer sir all the time.
Speaker 2: I think it was about nineteen ninety two ninety three
Speaker 2: they dropped it. I think for a long time before
Speaker 2: I finished, you know, they just called me Stlough. But
Speaker 2: to some of the some of some of white prisoners,
Speaker 2: either the prisoners that come up from Melbourne or Sydney
Speaker 2: or that, Well, they called you chief, and that's like
Speaker 2: a sign of respect. You know, they called you chief.
Speaker 2: And some of the older ones still called your boss,
Speaker 2: but you know it was either stirlo or chief or
Speaker 2: something like that. Yeah, that's how it was.
Speaker 4: And so by the time Kevin tells you what happened,
Speaker 4: you're in the new prison. Did the relations between prisoners
Speaker 4: and the guards improve once you're in better conditions in
Speaker 4: the new prison?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they did. The new jails it's far safer.
Speaker 2: Although there was there's been trouble out there. There had
Speaker 2: been trouble there, but I think overall it was far
Speaker 2: safer because it was that the old jail it was
Speaker 2: like in one big compound, so you had ten accommodation blocks,
Speaker 2: and you know they're all facing each other across a compound,
Speaker 2: five on each side. So anything that happened, if there
Speaker 2: was a incident or an argument or something happening between
Speaker 2: a prison officer and a prisoner, well they're on show
Speaker 2: between the whole block. Everyone can see them. So you
Speaker 2: see what I mean, you're on show. So the prisoner,
Speaker 2: or even if it's a thing between two prisoners, but whoever,
Speaker 2: it's between So you're both on show, so you both
Speaker 2: got a reputation to uphold, you see what I mean?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the new jail, they're all well, each block
Speaker 2: is isolated, so no one knows. Even the block next
Speaker 2: door doesn't really know what's going on in that block.
Speaker 4: So back at the old jail, when everyone was on show,
Speaker 4: it sounds like it would have been almost impossible for
Speaker 4: you to have had that conversation with Kevin because everyone
Speaker 4: would have.
Speaker 2: Seene none none, see yeah, none, none at all.
Speaker 1: Do you think that was part of it? The fact
Speaker 1: is we're alone together in the.
Speaker 2: Air, it's right. Yeah, I say we were alone, which
Speaker 2: didn't doesn't happen a lot. There's always other people around.
Speaker 1: Do you think the same that you're a black prison
Speaker 1: guard was the reason that Kevin might have chosen to
Speaker 1: speak to you that day.
Speaker 2: Oh, undoubtedly, that's why. Undoubtedly. Hey. Oh, but the the
Speaker 2: two detectives, but later on, well you know, will come out.
Speaker 2: The two detectives. I remember them coming in.
Speaker 1: A lot involved in his case.
Speaker 2: I remember them coming in a lot. Yes, in the
Speaker 2: old jail. In the new jail, I've seen them a
Speaker 2: lot coming in interviewing and doing interviews and stuff there.
Speaker 2: Oh but yeah, not aware of what was what was.
Speaker 1: All about m You mentioned before, I mean in our
Speaker 1: past conversations that at one point rock Campton had one
Speaker 1: of the highest rates of Aboriginal interature and the employee
Speaker 1: at the jail, but that has changed a lot now.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's like a difference in the way
Speaker 1: Aboriginal president guards were respected or treated differently.
Speaker 2: Well, I've never worked in any other jail in Queensland,
Speaker 2: so I can't comment on what goes on there. But
Speaker 2: somewhere I think this is after the Fitzgerald Reform. I
Speaker 2: think this is one of the recommendations. They formed a
Speaker 2: ATSY unit in Brisbane and so they'd set up a
Speaker 2: like an Aboriginal staff network or recruiting a network in
Speaker 2: each center. And rock Hampton here we had I think
Speaker 2: at one stage we had the most just quite forget
Speaker 2: of the thing, but we had the most employment of
Speaker 2: average your staff anywhere in Australia at the in Rockhampton,
Speaker 2: and so we had a local staff network and I
Speaker 2: was actually president of there actually till the end of
Speaker 2: it for a while and then oh, as was happening,
Speaker 2: as what happens, the ATSI unit was disbanded. I don't
Speaker 2: know why. So they just withdrew the funds so that
Speaker 2: all stopped. But yeah, I think we had probably about
Speaker 2: twelve or thirteen staff out there and we would meet
Speaker 2: monthly staff network meeting and the head of the ATSI
Speaker 2: unit from Brisbane would fly up and that had a
Speaker 2: big impact because when we had recruitment, well then you know,
Speaker 2: we've got people that came in recruited that had family
Speaker 2: links to warabender and family links to different communities. So
Speaker 2: then that's what made it better, because you had a
Speaker 2: prisoners in there that well, you know what the what
Speaker 2: the Aboriginal South is populations like everyone knows each other
Speaker 2: and they're sort of nearly interrelated. So that sort of
Speaker 2: I thought, quietened a lot of the well, it improved
Speaker 2: the interaction out there because because of that, because of family,
Speaker 2: family ties, and it wasn't it didn't mean that you know,
Speaker 2: someone would be get preferential treatment. It didn't mean that
Speaker 2: at all. It just meant that they get just ran about.
Speaker 2: There was less trouble.
Speaker 1: I thought, this is around the time after the Royal
Speaker 1: Commission into Aboriginal Depths and Custody. Did you see a
Speaker 1: lot of differences and following that commission because it was
Speaker 1: handed down a year pretty much the year that Kevin
Speaker 1: was convicted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was there when when when that when that
Speaker 2: when that when these findings came down, So I was
Speaker 2: sort of there when it when that was playing out.
Speaker 2: So but yeah, funding was Yeah, I don't know, it's
Speaker 2: you know, it took a while for things to get started,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I think it all got rolled back, well
Speaker 2: a lot of it got rolled back, So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't comment on the state of how it is now.
Speaker 2: I haven't been there for a while, but certainly when
Speaker 2: that was implemented, that staff network abageal staff network networks
Speaker 2: were in place around the state, well I know as
Speaker 2: far as rock Hampton goes, and it worked very well.
Speaker 2: And at the same time we had things like family days,
Speaker 2: elders coming in. Really it really I thought stopped a
Speaker 2: lot of trouble.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's important. Over the years, Kevin's talked
Speaker 4: about that as well. I mean, the difference the elder's
Speaker 4: day days had and the changes that enabled for him
Speaker 4: to connect with culture and as we've discussed before, with
Speaker 4: his art work, and be able to be in a
Speaker 4: position where he could discuss a case with someone like
Speaker 4: myself who he's never met, who's a million miles away,
Speaker 4: and he has to trust his story with and his
Speaker 4: life with. And I think one thing we're trying to
Speaker 4: really get home here is that people often ask why
Speaker 4: didn't someone who's innocent say something earlier? Why didn't they
Speaker 4: get lawyers? And why this and why that? And I
Speaker 4: think people really have to understand what's saying about explaining
Speaker 4: the environment in which both the prisoners and the Aboriginal
Speaker 4: guards are working with the fact that you had these
Speaker 4: changes come about slowly as a result of the Royal
Speaker 4: Commission and then for no reason, stripped away, and it
Speaker 4: creates this environment where there is no long term stability,
Speaker 4: and for someone like Kevin, who has to negotiate his
Speaker 4: way out of there, it's part of what creates the
Speaker 4: doubt and part of why it takes so long. We're
Speaker 4: just not in this position where people can make a
Speaker 4: call to a lawyer say I'm innocent, say here's the evidence,
Speaker 4: and I'm home free. The prisoner has to be really
Speaker 4: careful of their own safety and a lot of that
Speaker 4: has to do with the conditions of the prison they're
Speaker 4: in at the time. And so I think what Sterling's
Speaker 4: described and how things have changed over the years, improved
Speaker 4: for a period of time, gone back backwards with that
Speaker 4: funding removed is important both for Kevin's case but also
Speaker 4: this broader issue and there is a big problem in
Speaker 4: Australia that people do not know what goes on behind
Speaker 4: the prison walls and they don't know these environments, and
Speaker 4: so people really have to listen to what they're hearing
Speaker 4: and understand. Too often we put an American perspective on
Speaker 4: things and it's just not the way it is.
Speaker 2: If I can add something into that, and that is
Speaker 2: like with all those funding and all that one was
Speaker 2: these again, I'll say the family days, especially around Christmas
Speaker 2: where they had when they started the first of the
Speaker 2: family day like for Christmas, and the first one they
Speaker 2: had it Atna Creek and it was in the old
Speaker 2: jail when they started. You know, there was a recommendation
Speaker 2: bringing in. There was a lot of pushback from within,
Speaker 2: corrections against it. People in the system didn't want it happening.
Speaker 2: So from personal experience, the very first Family Day held
Speaker 2: at Capricornia Correctional Ethnic Creek Correctional Center was known as
Speaker 2: Rockhampton Correctional Center back then. I was the supervising senior
Speaker 2: prison officer, and I can say this that I had
Speaker 2: no briefing on it beforehand, on how it was to
Speaker 2: be run and all the planning, all the contingency plans
Speaker 2: if anything went wrong. Nothing. So we had total that
Speaker 2: day and a family Day was supposed to be held
Speaker 2: in an open space, in which they did. They held
Speaker 2: it out on a football able under a marquee. They
Speaker 2: had a big, giant marquee. I think we had a
Speaker 2: total of four hundred people come in that day through
Speaker 2: the gates. They didn't shut the main gate to regular
Speaker 2: traffic like supplies coming in, so we had to anyway.
Speaker 2: It was an impediment because we had to stop the
Speaker 2: process while we let trucks in and out. They've got
Speaker 2: to be searching and all that stuff. So four hundred
Speaker 2: people out there, no contingency planning. I received no briefing
Speaker 2: from management, and I actually I didn't even know that
Speaker 2: the Family Day was on that day. I just got
Speaker 2: the roster. My roster I was working that day. I
Speaker 2: was in the acting supervisor pil or senior pill. So
Speaker 2: I didn't think anything of it, and I turned up
Speaker 2: a family day and first one as I said, so
Speaker 2: oh great, this is great. So but everything went off
Speaker 2: without a hitch. I know that there was sixty nine
Speaker 2: actually prisoners up there, sixty nine because I remember doing
Speaker 2: the head count in and out, and I remember congratulating
Speaker 2: the prisoners at the end of the day when the
Speaker 2: visitors has gone out as a well done and there
Speaker 2: was not one sceric of trouble. But again after it
Speaker 2: all happened, when there were no problems at all, no
Speaker 2: debrief from management. So I think it's one thing that's
Speaker 2: been sticking in my ever since. Did they expect it
Speaker 2: to fail? And of course who was the person in
Speaker 2: charge there was.
Speaker 3: Me?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I mean it sounds pretty clear like they
Speaker 4: were hoping, they were hoping it would fail and that
Speaker 4: that would be their reasoning for not allowing those future
Speaker 4: events to take place.
Speaker 2: But as far as I know, over the years, no
Speaker 2: family day, there was never any fail, never any problem
Speaker 2: because the elders and the elders, visits, elders coming because
Speaker 2: of the you know, the respect for elders and the
Speaker 2: family all that. You know, they weren't going to play up.
Speaker 2: They weren't going to play it up. I had relative
Speaker 2: that first day, I had relatives in two I had
Speaker 2: relatives into jail, and i'd relative in there as well,
Speaker 2: and there was never any problem. There was never going
Speaker 2: to be any problem. But then I noticed that years
Speaker 2: down it just got watered down and down. And the
Speaker 2: last one I remember out there, the family Day, I
Speaker 2: saw they cut it from being out in an open
Speaker 2: space and the football label this is the new jail.
Speaker 2: They've cut it down to having it all in a
Speaker 2: small area in the visits area, which doesn't work because
Speaker 2: what you're doing is you well, it's just like having
Speaker 2: anyone closed up in a cage. So yeah, it just
Speaker 2: got slowly watered down and down and down, and so
Speaker 2: don't I don't know what happens now. But the other
Speaker 2: thing with that family days, what it led to is
Speaker 2: that it was for Murray prisoners or ATSI prisoners. The
Speaker 2: white prisoners started to say, well, what's about us. Well,
Speaker 2: in the end, they got their family days, Like there's
Speaker 2: family days for protection inmates and family days for the mainstream.
Speaker 2: So it brought benefits to the whole prison office prison
Speaker 2: prisoner population, not just for the ATSI and say it
Speaker 2: was a good thing for all. There was never any problem,
Speaker 2: never any problems experience on any of them, so because
Speaker 2: you know they're loved ones coming in, so like I said,
Speaker 2: it led, it led to the whole population, not just
Speaker 2: for the ATSY prisons.
Speaker 1: That one of the things I'm like, I know the statistics,
Speaker 1: but I'm shocked at when I've been out to the
Speaker 1: prison is just how many Aboriginal prisoners are inside. Did
Speaker 1: that ever shock you when you saw that? And like
Speaker 1: seeing over the generation.
Speaker 2: Well, the very first day I started there, I see,
Speaker 2: growing up in a regional town, Locker Campton, every we
Speaker 2: knew every black family in rock Hampton and knew every person.
Speaker 2: But when I started out there, I'd never seen so
Speaker 2: many black men in one place before. And I didn't
Speaker 2: know all these people where they all came from. And
Speaker 2: that was a shock to me. I didn't even know,
Speaker 2: like well of them, where did all these people come from?
Speaker 2: And I was shocked the very first day went in there.
Speaker 2: Said well, I've said, grow up in a place in
Speaker 2: rock Hampton where you know, knew everyone. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: A shock because they come from everywhere, that's right.
Speaker 2: It come from everywhere. Yeah, across the you know, everywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it was a shock to me, Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: And I still haven't been in one place where you
Speaker 2: see that many. Yeah, and it didn't.
Speaker 1: Change over there's twenty four years seeing those numbers.
Speaker 2: No, didn't. No. Actually, well the old prison was two
Speaker 2: hundred and forty the maximum, the accommodation level was two
Speaker 2: hundred and forty. The new one, I think is well
Speaker 2: it was five hundred I think. And so you think
Speaker 2: of the proportion, it was more yeah, yeah, yeah, more
Speaker 2: so when you think of that, eh, so it's double
Speaker 2: more than double the population all up, So there was
Speaker 2: more than double the over the years.
Speaker 4: Join us next time on Curtain the Podcast for part
Speaker 4: two of our discussion with Sterling MacGuire.