Content Warning: This article contains subject matter that may be distressing.
Dylan Voller came to public attention in 2016 when CCTV video exposed the treatment of children in juvenile detention in the Northern Territory.
The final report stated:
It is ... undeniable that force was used against Dylan while he was in detention.
Children and young people like [Dylan] were incarcerated, ignored and deprived of their basic needs.
They were held in conditions some of which were unspeakably bad and treated in a way that meant rehabilitation was impossible.
Unsurprisingly, their mistreatment bred more wrongdoing and more significant behavioural issues.
A child or young person in detention should not be allowed to be treated in this way.
This is Dylan's story, as told to journalist and presenter, Karla Grant:
My life now.....
I want to be free. I want to be able to show my kids, the best things in life.
I'm still in a healing process with my journey, I haven't fully healed. I still suffer with depression and anxiety. But I think, I'm slowly starting to find better things in life.
I'm starting to look to the positive things in life, and let go of the trauma.
I'm a Ngarrindjeri man, which takes in the Murray River. Sitting down near the water and just waiting for that fish to jump on, or even just sitting next to the water you can feel the spirit.
Might see a kookaburra go past, that's a special sign. If I see a goanna, that'll remind me of Alice Springs. Back home we all love goannas. Every time I go out, I try and connect culturally.
You can feel the connection, it makes you feel. It's like the land, it's rehabilitating you and helping you without even having to do anything.
Obviously the trauma, that pain will always stay with me. I'll close my eyes and I can see myself sitting in a restraint chair or being stripped.
Every now and then, I can hear myself screaming in my ears. I can hear myself screaming, crying for help.
Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre
The feeling [of being in custody], knowing that they can do whatever they want to you and nothing will happen, is the worst.
My time just in Don Dale itself, without all the assault and torture, just being in that place, it took my young teenage life away. When you go into those places, it's like it's designed to separate you from your family; to make you lose your love for your family.
Dylan Voller told the Royal Commission, he told the prison officers the restraint was hurting, he was dizzy, panicking and vomited in his mouth a few times. Source: Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children NT
They'd tell me that my Mum didn't love me.
Or every time Mum booked visits to come out and see me, they canceled them and said she's canceling and not coming out. And because they did that, it started separating my bond and it made me not really become as close to my family, as what any young man should be.
The Royal Commission final report stated:
...when he was 15, Dylan spent a period of 210 days in custody. Ninety of those days were spent in isolation or in the Behavioural Management Unit, where no child or young person should ever have been accommodated. ...
Nothing done during that 210-day period resembled anything that could be described as a meaningful attempt at rehabilitation.
I was only 12...
Welfare took me off my mum because of a mistake that I made.
I got kicked out of school and Mum said I had to stay in my room all day, til the school hours were finished. I was only coming out if I needed to go to the toilet, or to get food. I wasn't allowed the TV.
I guess I was a bit of a difficult child and because I couldn't get my way. I rang the police and said my mum was hitting me when she wasn't.
The police and welfare came. Then welfare took me to a hotel and let me stay there for three nights.
Obviously as a young kid, you don't understand when your parents are trying to discipline you for the right reasons. Now, looking back as an adult, that's probably the best way a parent could punish someone.
I ended up getting kicked out of school again. And I did it again, because the last time I did it, I had this fun experience. I went to a hotel near the casino in Alice Springs and asked for ice cream, room service, stuff like that.
Dylan Voller, just before he went into juvenile detention. Source: Dylan Voller
After the third time, it was no more hotels and fun - it was foster houses and group houses.
It's pretty much saying that if you're a parent and you're trying to discipline your child, that is not [your] right. But if you work for the government, then you can do what you want, you can punish how you want and you can treat people how you want.
When I made complaints [about Don Dale] saying that officers were stripping me naked, choking me, bashing me, nothing happened for that.
The Royal Commission final report stated:
Dylan Voller said that, in October 2010 at the former Don Dale Youth Detention Centre, youth justice officer:
‘… lifted me up by my neck, carried me into my cell and threw me maybe two metres, so that I landed face first on my bed. After he assaulted me, I lay on the ground in my cell in pain and started crying.’
The Commission accepts that Mr Voller was restrained in the neck area and was forcibly thrown onto a mattress.
CCTV image of Dylan Voller age 13, lifted & carried by the neck, then thrown by an officer at Don Dale Youth Detention Centre. Source: Royal Commission Protection & Detention of Children NT
Hip-Hop Healing
I wanted to get my story out by writing music.
I was in Casuarina prison for an incident in Perth that was well publicised a few years back.
In prison, I saw the hip hop program. I saw Scott Griffiths, he goes by the name . I met him a few years ago through , a First Nations rapper in Perth.
Scotty remembered my face straightaway. He walked in there, he looked at me, big smile. He said, 'Hey, how you been? What are you doing here?'
He was disappointed because even he sees the potential that I've got; not only in rapping, in being a role model for young people. But I was wasting that, getting caught up with the fake shit and ending up back in jail.
So he started working [with me], just doing some hip hop. And then Scotty said to me, 'when you get out, if you want me to do anything for you, even if you just want to come hang, if you don't want to do music, I'm happy to help you with whatever you need. I don't want anything from it. I just want to help. I just want to see you grow.'
I said, I might try and give rapping a go. I like it. I'm not the best but it's fun. We made our first song called Trauma and we released it just on , just as a little bit fun.
And then I went back to do another song with Scotty. I laid this freestyle verse down to 'Always Was'.
A week later I met at Scotty's studio. I said, "can I show you one of the songs that me and Scotty's been working on? If you like it, maybe you should jump on it." Just trying to be a little cheeky trying to get him to jump on one of my songs!
Then me and him hit it off from there. Flewnt MC said to me a week later, "oh bro, you're not going to believe it. I like that song that much, it's the quickest time I've ever heard a verse. I wrote it the next day. You want to hear it?"
And he starts spitting it to me. He wrote that from when I was telling him about the whole Royal Commission, the only time I was about to cry, is the time that they made me repeat how they used to tell me, that my Mum didn't love me.
That's why he put in his lyrics, 'you cannot tell me that my mama didn't love me.'
I get asked a lot "How did you make it out?"
I'm not going to lie, I did try commit suicide a fair few times, but it just didn't work.
Why I'd say I'm still here today, is once all the stuff came out on the TV, the amount of support I've seen through people protesting.
The amount of people that showed up in the protest and said "Free Dylan Voller, shut down Don Dale".
It made me cry. When I sat in jail, I seen one of those first protests, I literally cried.
That's the first time in my life that I actually felt cared about, felt loved.
I now have a son and a beautiful daughter and I just want to be, try and be the best that I can.
My sister "she's a real inspiration"
My big sister Kirra was like my dad, my brother, everything. She's my protector, being my big sister.
I never really told my family about what was going on with me in jail. I didn't want to put that stress on them and make them feel even worse by telling them.
I held it, until my mum and sister seen all the video footage, the same way everyone else did. That's how they found out what was going on with me in jail.
When Kirra saw what happened to me it took a really bad toll on her. She went down hill with her mental health. But it also drove her and now she's the woman she is, with beautiful kids, their amazing mum and also still fights for justice.
She's getting her music out there. One of her songs, , it's about being a strong black woman. I take my hat off to my sister, she's a real inspiration to me.
Dylan Voller with his sister Kirra. Source: NITV
Activism to Shut Don Dale
One of the recommendations in the Royal Commission was to shut Don Dale.
I think it's about a hundred and something million dollars a year to have all those kids locked up. Instead of putting that money into a locked facility where it's just making kids worse, they should knock down the fences, take the jail environment out of it, leave the beds and all the accommodation that's already there.
And the government should invest that money into a mental health team, doctors, nurses, someone in there that can train, help, do workshops for resumes, or even get white card certificates. Have a little gym there.
I'd call this place a healing centre.
And all of those beds, put the locks on the inside of the door. So if a kid doesn't feel safe at home, and he's walking the street, they know that they can go to that facility.
If that young person's going in there and saying, "I don't want to go home. Everyone's been drinking and stuff", instead of having an organisation that would go, "Oh, let's get welfare." they could have Elders go around to see his mum or dad or uncle, whoever it may be. Sit down with them and go there in a respectful way.
It would be more culturally appropriate to sit down and say, "Look, we want to be able to support you guys as a family as well. Maybe if you want help with... it might be drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, whatever's going on in the home."
Not just try and take them [kids] off the family. Because at the end of the day, all they're doing is taking a kid, putting him in welfare and he's going to get worse.
And then the mum and dad, or whoever the guardian is, they might have their drug and alcohol problems or domestic violence, they're just getting worse, they're going to end up in jails.
It's not really solving the situation. It's fixing one problem and creating another one.
Breaking Out
I don't want to just be known as the boy in a restraint chair.
I want to be known as a young man, a survivor, that broke out of a system like that and continues to fight.
My dreams are to have a full time job, live a normal life. I don't care about being rich. I don't care about being famous.
I just want to be stable. Have my mental health, have my own house with my family, have a job, play sport and continue doing the work that I'm doing, spreading awareness.
Broken systems make broken kids, and our youth are our future.
I started making clothing. This design and the picture in it, is obviously a picture that everyone's seen of me in a restraint chair... stuck and rejected.
So I got [that image] remastered. As you can see, one hand ripping out of the restraint chair and going to rip my spit-hood off. And the other hand's slowly breaking out, the straps are slowly breaking, showing that my fight's not over.
I'm still fighting. Eventually I'm going to end up being free of the system.
Dylan Voller wearing image of himself removing the spit-hood and breaking out of the restraint chair, in Don Dale. Source: John Janson Moore
What makes me a man?
I can sit here and I can take responsibility.
Even though most of those officers have stripped me, bashed me, pretty much tortured me and done the worst of the worst. I can still sit here as a man and say that, "I'm sorry to them".
And I guess that's the way I got brought up. That's the way our people are. We know what we have to do, we know who we are.
We are strong.
Dylan Voller is an activist, artist, survivor, youth advocate, poet. Dylan has started a record label .
If you or someone you know is effected by this story, please contact:
Lifeline 13 11 14
Editor: This is Dylan's story as told to journalist Karla Grant, produced by Julie Nimmo.
: Indigenous Incarceration, produced and presented by NITV & SBS, airs Tonight, 8.30pm on SBS.
