A shocking culture of abuse by staff towards detainees at Brook House immigration detention centre was described by a whistleblower giving evidence to a public inquiry into widespread mistreatmeant of detainees at the G4S-run site.
The former Brook House officer Callum Tulley described repeatedly witnessing abusive behaviour by officers towards detainees, and told the inquiry that he was so disturbed by it that he had felt compelled to contact the BBC and begin undercover filming at the centre.
Tulley described witnessing a group of G4S staff taunting a naked detainee in his solitary confinement cell, as they attempted to move him to a van before a planned deportation. “They were laughing at him, making comments about his body, about his penis,” Tulley said. “He was completely humiliated, just clearly distressed. It was shocking to see it.”
Tulley, who started work at the centre as an 18-year-old, heard staff boasting about putting on George Michael masks and dancing outside the cell of a prisoner on suicide watch, “to scare him or to freak him out”. Detainees would often be referred by some members of staff as “cunts”. “The word ‘banter’ would be used to justify such language,” Tulley said, adding that staff would modify their language when prison monitors were visiting the centre.
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