A man paces the caged courtyard attached to his secure unit. There are bits of tinsel strewn around it – an attempt to bring colour into his world.There's no date for his release. He's never been convicted of a crime.Loading...
"The uncertainty of the period that you'll be held like that is incredibly damaging to people," she says.'Warehoused' Some of these people have committed horrendous acts of violence, upending the lives of their victims. Wendy Hoey, who is the chief executive of NSW's Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network, says some patients are so difficult to treat and rehabilitate that they shouldn't have a fixed release date.
"The majority of forensic patients are actually living in the community. They're not in any of those forensic high secure hospitals or medium secure hospitals … they're leading safe and productive lives.""His childhood was extremely traumatic. There were a number of things that have happened to him as a child that have moulded who he is," says Ian McKeown, who has known Adrian since he was a teenager.
Despite this isolation, Ian says he and a small team of workers were able to give Adrian some normality with weekly trips into the community."He had done something and achieved something. It was good for him."In 2012, after Ian had stopped working with him, Adrian was left unsupervised on an outing in the community.
He's sought legal representation from specialist whistleblower lawyers to protect him from any potential reprisal for speaking out. "It breaks my heart. He wants the door locked because he doesn't want to hurt you and the fact that he's conditioned, has been institutionalised, for that to be his belief, that is a really, really, really confronting and damaging thing to, to believe," he says."He loves a competition; we'll make paper planes. He's on one side of the fence, I'm on the other.
In a statement, Ms Van Schie said the service's highest priorities were the safety and welfare of the community, its clients and staff. It called for Australia to "stop committing persons with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities who are considered unfit to stand trial or not guilty due to 'cognitive or mental health impairment' to custody and for indefinite terms or for terms longer than those imposed in criminal convictions".
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