“How’s that, that bit alright?”
The child nods.
“There ya go. Alright, you keep chillin’ out, yeah?”
The child quietly responds. “Yeah.”
Chastened, the door closes and the child is left alone to think about what he’s done.
* * *
Without knowing the context, this could be any other scene between a child and an adult.
Maybe they are being sent to their bedroom for being naughty. Maybe they are being tucked into bed after a tantrum, being told there’s no dinner for misbehaving. Maybe they’ll fall into a deep – if not a little bit hungry – sleep until the morning, when they would get a hug and a gentle tap on the nose for acting up.
But this is not your ‘normal’ Australian interaction between an adult and a child.
For starters, the child is in chains. It’s a young boy and, at just 17, he is manacled to the floor by his feet and to a metal chair by his hands. His neck is bound and held to the chair with a black rope.
Is he crying? Perhaps, but you cannot see a face because it is underneath a hood. My guess is that he learnt to stop crying about being treated this way a long time ago.
Topless, his soft, child-like belly rests on the white prison-issue pants, breathing heavily. Without a face, or a voice, all we can see is a young and frightened boy.
This is not a man. This is not a hardened criminal. This is your little brother, your son, your teenage neighbour. This is Dylan Voller, and he is Australian. This is happening to him IN Australia. BY Australians.
Top Comments
Isn't that the case everywhere though? Is there anywhere on this planet where all demographics are on equal footing?
It's interesting that the authour chooses to have empathy for one side here, without considering the other.
It is not mentioned that the time this young boy (Dylan) tried to run down a policeman, he and a group also beat an innocent man to near death with a pole. I have much more empathy for that mans family that now need to look after him due his disability caused by the injury, than the kid in question, Dylan here.
Likewise, the policeman who Dylan tried to run down. The post trauma he likely experiences affects his ability to work and parent.
Placing the blame of Dylan's actions on incarceration since the age of 11 is ridiculous. I can assure you, regardless of how bad it looks it will have provided much more stability and care than his original family offered.
That lack of care from day 1 is primarily why he is in detention, lets not pretend otherwise.
The reality of effective rehabilitation is that it is extremely expensive and not very successful. These issues don't exist though a lack of care by the system, while the story here of kids being abused shouldn't be ignored, the bigger problem (preventing them from offending in the first place) is far bigger.
Ben, his crimes are irrelevant in this case. This is Australia and we should not torture children (or anyone for that matter) who are in the care of the state. This is never okay and it cannot be justified. However I agree with you, preventative measures and early intervention strategies are desperately needed.
You can be as 'lucky' as the author posits: be born into a family that can actually care for you, raise you into a positively-contributing human being and still end up stretched out on a slab because one of those 'unlucky' ones decided your life was theirs to take.
There is no such thing as justice for the victims of crime. It doesn't exist.