Alysha Rose was hired to introduce better care to the Ashley Youth Detention Centre in Tasmania. It took only days for the first shocking incident to show her what was really going on.
Just a few days into her job as a clinical care consultant at Ashley Youth Detention Centre, Alysha heard a senior staff member tell a young inmate he would turn him into an owl.
When Alysha asked what this meant, the jail worker said it involved bashing the young man so severely his head would resemble an owl’s concave face.
“I’m going to cave his face in,” she recalls the senior public servant saying.
Alysha started work at the detention centre in northern Tasmania in October 2019. Her job was to help staff rehabilitate troubled child and teen inmates. The owl comment came out of the blue, but she had no time to stay shocked: within weeks, she says she was confronted by a series of escalating incidents.
In her first extensive interview since becoming a key whistleblower in one of Australia’s worst abuse scandals, she has revealed her belief that sexual and other abuse of vulnerable children and teen detainees was systemically covered up or mishandled, including by senior Tasmanian public servants. In paperwork kept in locked cabinets and archived CCTV footage, Alysha discovered allegations that continue to haunt her.
But when she first raised her concerns inside the youth jail, colleagues pulled her aside to offer informal advice. “Snitches get stitches,” was one piece of guidance. “Fit...
Jake Tapper said that CNN would continue to report the news ‘no matter how many lies this administration or the Iranians tell’ Bookmark popover Your support helps us to tell the storyRead moreSuppo...