Latest news with #abuse
ABC News
13 minutes ago
- ABC News
Commission of inquiry into child safety in Queensland will focus on children leaving care
A woman who alleges she was abused while in the care of the Queensland government has called for significant changes to the child safety system. It comes as a powerful commission of inquiry into Queensland's child safety sector held its first public hearing on Wednesday, promising to review the hundreds of children reported missing from placements. Georgie Djuricic entered the residential care system at seven years old. She she was placed in an emergency facility with several teenage boys and alleged she was abused over a year and half. "A boy had severely bashed me to the point where, it had been so dangerous for me to live there anymore, they had to put me in a hotel for two weeks," she said. "I was moved into another resi immediately because they had too many cases of me having been hurt too much in that house." The now 19-year-old Aboriginal woman went to four different out-of-home placements over a decade and battled mental health and behavioural issues. She wants young people's voices to be heard as part of the 18-month inquiry. Ms Djuricic now works as a Youth Advocate for CREATE Foundation and said the system was broken. "If you wouldn't treat your children like that, why are you treating us like that?" she said. "The reality is the system has not really changed in the past 40 years. "We deserve to be heard, we're the ones that have been hurt." Queensland's Commission of Inquiry into Child Safety held its first hearing on Wednesday, led by former Federal Court Judge Paul Anastassiou KC. Reports of almost 800 children "self-placing" will be reviewed as part of the inquiry's broad remit, the commissioner said. "Self-placing" refers to children leaving a child safety placement for any reason, including to visit family or friends. However, advocates worry children who self-place may also be exposed to unsafe or dangerous situations. Government figures showed the number of children self-placing had grown to 780 in March 2025 – a figure the state's child safety minister said was unacceptable. "Allowing one vulnerable child to self-place in Queensland is unacceptable to me, let alone 780 young people," Minister Amanda Camm said in a statement. "That's why I have ordered a full audit of the kids in care who are self-placing, to understand how the current system can be improved." Queensland has the most children in residential care in the country, with the state paying more than $1 billion for their care. In this system, children live in group homes which are staffed by youth workers. Senior Counsel Assisting Robyn Sweet KC said residential care was designed for children over 12 years old. She said despite this, one in three children in these homes in Queensland is under 12. "This is a phenomenon unique to Queensland, with no other state experiencing this explosion of children in residential care," she said. "There are scores of children under the age of five … There are even reports of infants placed in residential care." The commissioner said "the paramount aim of this inquiry" was to "improve the lives of and outcomes for these children and young people". "If that aim is achieved … it will benefit not only these children, but all of the community of Queensland." He said "the skies" over the department had been "blackened" by a "fog of notices" for information, with the commission legally empowered to compel witnesses and force organisations to produce documents. The inquiry's broad terms of reference also include reforming the residential care system, reviewing the decline of foster care, child placement breakdowns, the resourcing of workers and "the ministerial accountability of the child safety system". Following an ABC investigation, the commissioner said the inquiry will prioritise reviewing the complaints system for carers and accelerate submissions on that subject. Reporting by the ABC in July revealed the violence and chaos inside some residential care homes, with workers saying they feared reprisals for speaking out. More than 60 submissions by foster carers, former child safety workers, academics and parents of children in care have already been received by the inquiry. Tom Allsop, chief executive officer of PeakCare, said he hoped the inquiry would bring significant change. "We know we sit at a moment in time where we can set up a system that Queensland deserves when it comes to supporting children," he said. "We know we need this inquiry to shine a light on parts of this service system … that aren't operating how we need." The inquiry will deliver a final report to the Queensland government by November 30, 2026.
CBC
38 minutes ago
- Politics
- CBC
Shackled, abused and humiliated: Report paints grim picture of life in ICE detention
Starving men with their hands tied behind their backs, forced to eat out of Styrofoam containers "like dogs." Women incarcerated alongside men and denied access to showers or medical care. Dozens of people shackled and left on buses for days on end. These are just a few of the stories documented in a new report on the conditions at three migrant detention centres in Florida amid U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. "I would say the key phrase that would come to mind is, you know, fundamentally abusive," Belkis Wille of Humans Rights Watch (HRW) told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams. The report by HRW, Americans for Immigrant Justice and Sanctuary of the South paints a gruesome picture of abuse, overcrowding and denial of medical care at the Krome North Service Processing Center, Broward Transitional Center and Federal Detention Center. The U.S. government vehemently denies the allegations, and says it is, in fact, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers who are being victimized. In an emailed statement, Tricia McLaughlin, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary, accused the report's authors of contributing to a political environment that's creating uptick in assaults against the "men and women of ICE who put their lives on the line every day to arrest violent criminal illegal aliens to protect and defend the lives of American citizens." Massive surge in detentions Since being elected to his second term in the White House, Trump has enacted a program of mass deportations from the U.S. Acting on a presidential executive order, ICE agents, often masked, have been conducting raids all over the U.S. and clashing with protesters in the process. As of April, 45 out of 181 authorized detention facilities across the country have exceeded their contractual capacity, the HRW report says. The detained include dozens of Canadians. The Trump administration has characterised ICE detainees as violent criminals. But ICE's own data shows that of the nearly 58,000 people in detention nationwide, 71.7 per cent have no criminal convictions and 47 per cent have no pending criminal charges. Some of the detainees interviewed in the report, Wille says, came to the U.S. legally under recently cancelled Temporary Protected Status programs and were arrested while attending their annual immigration appointments. Detainees describe being shackled on buses Wille's interviews with detainees at Krome took place in a small visitation room that she described as clean and organized. But each detainee she spoke to told her that, just a few weeks prior, that room was being used as a holding cell. "This was a tiny room with just a desk and two or three chairs," she said. "People were held there for a week or more because the processing cells were so full." Overcrowding, the report notes, is a major problem at all three facilities. Cells designed for 66 people, she said, are instead crammed with as many as 140. People are being kept for weeks in processing cells that are only meant to hold them for a couple of hours. Those waiting there, she says, are forced to sleep on concrete floors with "frigid air blasting." That's if they're lucky enough to get a cell at all. "Many of them were arriving at a time when Krome was so overcapacity that they were actually kept shackled in buses for, you know, in some cases, days," she said. "No access to a shower, barely any access to the bathroom, very limited access to food and water." Because of overcrowding, the report says women are being held at Krome, a men's facility, in rooms with exposed toilets visible to men in the adjacent cells. "When they asked to get access to medical care, to their much-needed drugs, they were told by the staff at the facility, 'We can't give you any medical support because this is a male-only facility. And we can't give you access to the showers or to outdoor spaces for recreation time because this a male-only facility,'" Wille said. DHS told CBC women at Krome are kept separate from male inmates and provided with medical care "like all detainees." Diabetes, HIV medications allegedly withheld Denial of medical care, the report found, is not limited to women. "I spoke to one man who needs four insulin shots a day because of his diabetes," Wille said. "He was given less and less access to his insulin and finally was stripped of all access to this insulin for a period of five days, and then he collapsed and ended up in the hospital." The report's authors also spoke to HIV-positive men who say they were denied their medications until the virus, long kept under wraps, became detectable again. This can't be blamed on a lack of resources, Wille said, noting that ICE just saw a major funding boost. Nor, she says, is it a matter of detainees falling through the cracks. "These are prisons that do have medical staff there. They have individuals who have diagnosed conditions, where they have all of this on record," she said. "Denying them their access to medical care, that is a choice." Forced to eat with their hands tied The same is true, she says, of the abuse detainees say they're subject to. Two of the detainees interviewed described being moved, along with other men, from one facility to another, and kept for hours in a transfer cell with no food, their hands tied behind their backs. When their lunch arrived in Styrofoam containers, the men begged the guards to let them eat. "But the guards refused to unshackle them," Wille said. "So the men had to, with their mouths, basically lean over and eat from these boxes on chairs with their hands tied behind their backs." In the report, both men described the incident as dehumanizing. "We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs," Harpinder Chauhan, a migrant from Britain, said in the report. The report says the abuses documented at the facilities are violations of international conventions as well as ICE's own policies. It called on the Trump administration to dramatically reduce the number of people in custody. But McLaughlin at DHS called the report's claims "lies" and said all detainees are provided with meals and medical treatment.
Irish Times
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Whether the abuse happens in Rathfarnham or west Belfast, the story is the same
Last weekend Máiría Cahill left a Belfast hospital bed and drove four hours to speak in the Galway Arts Festival 's First Thought series. As her interviewer, I expected moderate audience interest. It's been 15 years since she first went public in the Sunday Tribune about her alleged rape and abuse as a 16-year-old child by an IRA member and the heinous IRA 'investigation' which forced her to confront her abuser. Eleven years since a pivotal Spotlight BBC documentary on her case. Ten years since the former DPP for England and Wales, Keir Starmer, was asked to review the case and said he was sorry the Public Prosecution Service had let her down, soon followed by the NI Chief Constable's public apology to her and the other two victims after a shambolic trial. Seven years since the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman revealed how as far back as 2000 CID and Special Branch had intelligence that her alleged abuser, Martin Morris - who had denied all wrongdoing - was abusing children and the IRA were investigating it. READ MORE Two years almost, since her book, Rough Beast: My Story and the Reality of Sinn Féin – described as 'shocking, important and unputdownable' by Roddy Doyle – was published. Yet such was the power of her quiet, measured, devastating delivery to a packed theatre on Saturday that the audience, visibly stunned, rose at the end to give her a thunderous standing ovation. To any other speaker, that visceral response would have been energising, but backstage she was drained to the point of speechlessness. It was a telling insight into the price that abuse victims continue to pay. Part of what continues to make her story so compelling after all this time, of course, is the involvement in that so-called 'investigation' of people with high status in the national political mainstream since that smart, funny 16-year-old girl was groomed, violated, isolated and often terrified for her life. She continues because she believes Sinn Féin leaders have never properly addressed the brutality of those investigations nor the generational reach of that savage misogynistic culture into the communities they ruled. But a larger part of her story is common to almost every case of abuse. It's in the context and the detail. The physical pain, confusion and humiliation, the gaslighting, the sudden shocking hostility of the family or tribe or institution closing ranks to protect itself, the urge to save other potential victims, the sense of a young, innocent mind and body being tested almost to destruction. One of the most agonising elements for any listener is the isolation invariably forced on the victims. No one is coming to help. It wasn't Cahill herself, but women – older Republican women – who 'reported' her complaints to the paramilitaries, despite the fact that they must have known the repercussions for her. Cahill – whose great uncle Joe Cahill founded the Provisional IRA – herself knew what happened to people who gave evidence against the IRA. The resulting sense of isolation for such a child is unimaginable, the damage unfathomable. How such children endure is a mystery. The case of the three remarkable Brennan sisters , Catherine Wrightstone, Paula Fay and Yvonne Crist, finally reached an endpoint in the criminal courts last week when the second of their brothers, Richard Brennan, was jailed for sexual offences against them in the 1970s and 1980s . They describe a childhood of suffocating fear: fear of unstable and violent parents, of their two abusive brothers, of revealing their terrible secrets to outsiders and not only jeopardising the family's reputation but Richard's aspirations for the priesthood, and fear of a wrathful God. In Máiría Cahill's case, her isolation was not rooted in fear of her parents – who still can't bring themselves to read her book – but rational terror of the larger tribe's vengeance. For the Brennan sisters in leafy Rathfarnham, Dublin, their isolation was about protecting reputations. When they tried to advocate for themselves they were failed at every level – by their parents, by the school, by the failure of state bodies to follow up. In 1984, when 12-year-old Catherine disclosed her abuse at Richard's hands to a trusted school connection, her parents were informed and raged at the child in disbelief. Family therapy meetings, organised following a referral by a hospital unable to diagnose the source of Catherine's lower limb disorder, were cut short by the parents. Lash marks on her body were noted by a teacher, but nothing was done. A poignant detail of the sisters' story all these years later is the harrowing internal battle common to many abuse survivors; that they should have found a way to speak out to protect others, even in the face of conditioning from the cradle. How do they endure? In that context it's important to remember the hundreds, maybe thousands, of vulnerable abused girls who are now no more than pawns in the Maga civil war over the Jeffrey Epstein files. Virginia Giuffre , the most prominent Epstein survivor who turned vocal anti-sex trafficking activist, was first abused by a family friend at the age of seven. Then at 15 while working a summer job at Mar-a-Lago was spotted by Ghislaine Maxwell and 'passed around like a platter of fruit' among her and Epstein's friends. Giuffre's multimillion dollar payouts from Prince Andrew, Maxwell and the Epstein estate brought no closure. Amid accusations of mental instability from her estranged husband – whom she accused of violent possessiveness – Giuffre lost custody of their children. She was just 41 when she took her own life in April. And of the long list of names associated with Epstein, Maxwell happens to be the only one serving time.
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
FKA Twigs and Shia LaBeouf reach settlement in abuse lawsuit
British singer-songwriter FKA Twigs and Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf have reached an agreement in her 2020 abuse lawsuit. FKA Twigs, whose real name is Tahliah Debrett Barnett, had accused her former partner of physical, mental and emotional abuse. In a joint statement, their lawyers confirmed the settlement, but said the details would "remain private". LaBeouf previously said many allegations against him are untrue but apologised for the hurt he had caused. The settlement puts an end to a case that has dragged on for five years with little progress. According legal documents seen by Us Weekly, Barnett asked the court to dismiss all claims against LaBeouf with prejudice, meaning that she cannot refile them in the future. A trial had been initially set for last year but was later postponed. On Tuesday, Barnett's lawyer Bryan Freedman and LaBeouf's lawyer Shawn Holley said both parties wished each other well. "Committed to forging a constructive path forward, we have agreed to settle our case out of court," they said in the statement. "While the details of the settlement will remain private, we wish each other personal happiness, professional success and peace in the future." The pair met on the set of the movie Honey Boy in 2018 and dated for nine months, before splitting in 2019 citing conflicting work schedules. But in legal documents filed in 2020, Barnett accused LaBeouf of "relentless abuse" including "mental and verbal harassment" that eventually turned into "physical violence". She detailed incidents of LaBeouf waking her up in the middle of the night and "strangling" her, throwing her against a car during an argument and becoming angry when she spoke to other men. In a 2021 interview with Louis Theroux on his BBC Radio 4 Grounded podcast, Barnett said she felt "scared and intimidated and controlled" by LaBeouf, and was left with ongoing mental trauma from their relationship. "I was left with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] from that, which again is just something that I don't think we really talk about as a society just in terms of the healing when leaving, and how much work that has to be done to recover, to get back to the person that you were before," she said at the time. LaBeouf previously told The New York Times that many of Barnett's allegations are not true but said he owed her and Karolyn Pho, another woman whose claims featured in the lawsuit, "the opportunity to air their statements publicly and [for me to] accept accountability for those things I have done". "I have been abusive to myself and everyone around me for years. I have a history of hurting the people closest to me. I'm ashamed of that history and am sorry to those I hurt. There is nothing else I can really say," he added in another statement. Barnett released her latest album Eusexua earlier this year and has received multiple accolades including two Brit Award nominations for best British female solo artist. LaBeouf's latest film was this year's crime drama Henry Johnson. He is known for the Transformers franchise and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. FKA Twigs 'left with PTSD' by Shia LaBeouf Shia LaBeouf denies abuse accusations FKA twigs sues ex Shia LaBeouf over alleged abuse
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
From the archive: how two BBC journalists risked their jobs to reveal the truth about Jimmy Savile
We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2021: listening to the women who alleged abuse, and fighting to get their stories heard, helped change the treatment of victims by the media and the justice system By Poppy Sebag-Montefiore. Read by Caroline Wildi
