Allegations of a long-standing culture of misogyny and bullying at prisons near Ballarat by Corrections Victoria officers have been made by former staff, who have spoken exclusively to The Courier.
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Stuart Thomas was among the prison officers sent to control the 2015 riot at the Metropolitan Remand Centre, the full details of which have never been made public.
Entering the prison, he was told a prisoner was suspected of secreting himself in a roof-space. He ran to the location with a Victoria Police Special Operations Group member.
"You're lighter than I am," he says he was told.
"You'll go in." With that he found himself being given a leg-up into the ceiling, without lighting. Informing the police officer below he was unable to see a thing, a torch was found for him and passed up.
"What do I do if I find him?" Thomas asked.
A police baton was thrown up to him. Telling the officer he was untrained in its use, he says he was told, 'Hit him in the head. Later, if there are questions, tell them I did it.'
Stuart Thomas joined Corrections Victoria in July 2013. He was 24. Following his six-week induction, which involved walkthroughs at Hopkins Correctional Centre, he was placed full time at Langi Kal Kal prison. While he says the training offered to the potential officers couldn't be faulted, the suitability of the people who were looking to be employed as guards was a concern to him.
Aside from the mental preparedness of some of the candidates for the role, Thomas says others were not physically suited either.
"It became evident during 'tactical options' training (hand-to-hand combat and similar) that - it wasn't size in any way, or a male or female thing - it was the fact that they weren't capable of performing some of the tactical options that were needed: taking down a prisoner from hand combat; protecting themselves, that sort of thing," he says.
"They were pushed through with the extreme, bare minimums. If they looked like they were passing it, then it was, 'They'll be right'."
From the start of his employment, Thomas says he's at a loss to understand how he got off on the wrong foot with the management of the prison.
He says even if he was making mistakes, it could not excuse the treatment he endured and the way criticism was delivered about his performance by his supervisors and seniors.
"It was a personality clash perhaps," Thomas offers.
"I was pretty confident person; rather I came across as a pretty confident person. I managed to hide my insecurities pretty well. But I stood up for what I thought was wrong and right, as well. Which wasn't appreciated."
He says his work and role was undermined from the beginning of his time at Langi Kal Kal. His work reports were criticised relentlessly, without regard to providing effective and positive feedback.
Instead, he says, the criticisms were delivered publicly in front of colleagues.
"It was, 'You're f**king shit, your work's shit, your ethics are shit', and it would be said during handover, when you have all the morning staff and afternoon staff in the one room," Thomas says.
He says a supervisor would call him out in front of other staff, saying, 'this is absolute crap; don't ever come to me with rubbish like this again.'
Another incident involved the discovery of pills in a prisoner's cell. Thomas said he was suspicious of what they were, as they were pitted and had no readily recognisable markings.
He confiscated and sent them for medical testing; when the nurse's test was inconclusive but raised suspicions he reported it to his seniors, providing the tablets as evidence.
The nurse said the appearance of pitting suggested the pills were 'diverted medicine' - medication a prisoner had been prescribed, had put into their mouth, but was secretly not taking.
Thomas says he was again berated in front of other staff for his actions.
"I was told how stupid I was; how anyone could see they were Panadol; that I should know that and I should shred my report and return the tablets to the prisoner.
"I was screamed at, in front of other staff, and was really taken aback. (She was) finger-pointing, red-faced; not in control of her emotions."
Returning for a night shift the same day, Thomas says another supervisor was so appalled by what had taken place, she came to check on Thomas to ensure he was able to work.
READ OUR OTHER STORIES ON THIS ISSUE HERE: Corrections Victoria's toxic culture near Ballarat - staff speak out
He says a lack of induction processes and general introductions to work practices added to the difficulty of the workplace.
"When I first started, no-one told me what you can do or can't do, how many hours you could work. In my first week there I did a 6.30am shift to 3.30 in the afternoon, and then rolled into an afternoon shift because someone called in sick.
"So you do 3.30 in the afternoon to 11.15 at night, and then back again at 6.30 in the morning. I think I did that two or three days straight and there was no structure to say, 'Hang on you're working too much, you can't do this.'"
Thomas says when management did discover his hours, it seemed they were more concerned about how much it would cost for overtime than his safety.
He says, as silly as it sounds, small things such as simply overtaking a fellow worker on the drive to work in his vehicle would set off repercussions.
Asking for leave on his sister's birthday was the beginning of the end for his time at Langi Kal Kal, says Thomas.
Some background: Thomas's sister was killed when his father drove into another vehicle during an access visit in 1993, in Drysdale near Geelong. Stuart Thomas was critically injured and left in a coma. He has no doubt his father's actions were deliberate, although police did not press charges.
Understandably, the occasion of the birthday was significant to him, but his senior manager's response shocked him.
"She basically said words to the effect of, 'I don't care what day it is; I don't care who or what.'
"'You will turn up to work because you haven't given me enough time or enough notice, and if you even think of calling in sick, I'll have your guts for garters.'"
Thomas said the episode drove him to tears. Another guard negotiated with the manager to get Thomas the shift off, but he was still required to turn up the next morning, his sister's birthday. On that day, the same manager called him a 'shit caseworker' in front of a prisoner and another senior Corrections manager during a meeting.
It was, Thomas says, what he thought was the last straw. He admits picking up the prisoner's file and throwing it at the senior manager, telling them to "stick their f**king job; I've had enough."
Thomas says he told the staff members the stress wasn't worth him losing his life.
Placed on stress leave and suicide watch, when he returned to work he was moved to another section of the prison, where Thomas says the bullying continued as senior staff there were either related to or friends with his previous managers.
He says he was also pressured to change a report he made wherein a prisoner was injured during a physical transfer.
"This was the kind of thing they did," Thomas says.
"I was told, 'Do you really want to write that? Do you really want to put that in there?' I was pushed and pushed to change it so there was no sign of staff knowing the prisoner had received an injury.
"Then, even if the prisoner did complain, there was 10 of us saying the same thing against one prisoner playing up."
After this, Thomas transferred to Corella Place, the residential facility for released sex offenders who have been assessed as requiring monitoring as they transition back into society. He worked at all three sites of the facility, which are spread across Ararat and Trawalla.
Again, he says, the culture of management affected the workplace as senior staff were replaced. One manager who saw Corella as a place of rehabilitation was replaced with another who saw it as a prison, he says.
Staff were chosen on the basis of who the new manager wanted and who supported him, rather than their suitability for the job of dealing with transitional residents.
One female staff member assaulted by a prisoner at Corella was ordered to write a report directly following the incident, and was then abused by a senior for its poor quality, Thomas says.
"Again, it was the same response - 'this is a piece of shit, it's the worst report I've ever seen' - directly after a confrontation with a prisoner."
He says he stood up for his colleague, raising the matter with a manager and arguing she should have been sent to a debrief counsellor on site. After returning from leave after the birth of his child, he found his colleague had been dismissed and was undertaking legal action against the department and Corrections Victoria.
Stuart Thomas was named as a support for the officer in the paperwork, as someone who had stood up for her after she was bullied.
Shortly after, Stuart Thomas was alleged to have been asleep on the job, while escorting a prisoner to a case management meeting in Ballarat.
"It's a serious charge, it could cost me my job; falling asleep while supervising a serial sex offender. It's a big charge," Thomas says.
Stuart Thomas was in St Kilda on the day of the alleged infraction, and had evidence to support his whereabouts.
"They were in such a hurry to throw mud at me, they just grabbed any date," he says.
"Then while that's being investigated, they came back saying they had a second allegation; they said they had the correct date."
Thomas says his managers told him he was under investigation; when he contacted the People and Culture unit of the Department of Justice, they told him there was no investigation. He rang his manager asking if there was an investigation ongoing or not.
"Leave it with me," was the response, Thomas says.
The next day the investigation paperwork was on Thomas's desk. The investigation ran concurrently with the first and took 12 months. Thomas says he was refused access to any evidence of his alleged breaches, which included falling asleep at the Ballarat Community Correctional Services (CCS) offices and falling asleep while driving.
When finally confronted with the findings after 13 months, he was given seven days to respond.
Thomas says he was denied support people and warned not to speak to anyone about the investigation. One was still ongoing at the time Stuart Thomas resigned from his position six weeks ago.
"It's been six years of my life. I couldn't get away, because where was I going to go?"
Stuart Thomas says part of the cultural problem is an ineffective debriefing process, and the fact so many staff were in relationships within Corrections Victoria.
Prison officers and other staff tended to socialise and be in relationships with each other, he says, because it was so hard to explain the stresses of the work to anyone outside of the system.
"If your partner is not within the walls, it's hard to explain what you do to someone who doesn't see it, doesn't get it," he says.
"The Boy's Club culture of that prison - It didn't matter if you were male or female so much, as long as you were willing to look the other way.
"You're taught one thing in your training,and then you get into the prison with these staff members and it's a whole new ballgame, because that's not how it's gonna happen."
WorkSafe Victoria has now served an improvement notice on the Department of Justice over the manner of its handling of misconduct inquiries.
The Courier acknowledges that the majority of staff working in our prisons, male and female, do an outstanding job in some of the most fraught situations imaginable. They are confronted daily with the extremes of human behaviour, and with offenders who have may have committed atrocious crimes. The staff of our prisons deserve a workplace that supports them fully and makes no allowance for bullying, harassment, or any form of sexual abuse.
- Lifeline: 13 11 14; Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636
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