Teen inmate Dylan Voller has spoken publicly for the first time about his experience in youth detention in the Northern Territory, telling a royal commission he was starved by guards, regularly strip-searched and was forced to defecate into a pillowcase.

The 19-year-old is a key witness before the royal commission into youth detention and child protection in the NT and said at one point in the Don Dale Youth Detention Centre he “felt like I was going to die”.

Images of him hooded and shackled to a chair in an ABC Four Corners program were beamed into households across the country and pushed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to call for the investigation.

Watch footage from the original report below (language warning):

Currently an inmate at the adult prison at Holtze in Darwin, Voller finally began giving evidence on Monday morning after several hours of legal argument during which the NT government’s counsel tried to block him from naming corrections officers or other government staff in his testimony.

Voller said his schooling ended when he was about 10. He had ADHD but was not permitted to attend school unless he took medication, which he said made him physically ill.

He was first sent into care at around the age of 10 in Alice Springs, where he said older boys introduced him to smoking marijuana and encouraged him to commit crimes with them.

He described small, institutional rooms with painted-over windows.

“It was disgusting: cockroaches, dust, you felt trapped, you couldn’t really talk to anyone else,” Voller told the court.

“The only bit of the outside world you got was when you were driving to court or yelling out at the top of your lungs to young people next door at the school.”

He said when he and five other detainees were gassed, he “felt like I was going to die”.

“My heart was racing … my eyes were burning, couldn’t hardly see properly.”

‘He didn’t agree with them starving me’

Voller also described several incidents in youth detention in Alice Springs and Darwin when he was denied food and water by the guards.

Dylan Voller was hooded and strapped into a mechanical restraint chair in March 2015 for almost two hours. Photo: Supplied/ABC

He said once in the Behaviour Management Unit at Don Dale, a youth justice officer came in to offer the inmates water.

“Because that officer didn’t really like me, he asked me, ‘do you want water, Voller?’ and I said ‘yes’, and as he was walking out he threw it on the ground and said ‘there you go’, and walked off.”

Sometimes inmates would be forced to wait hours before a guard would let them out of their cells and escort them to a bubbler for a drink, he said.

He also described being starved as a punishment after becoming frustrated that he was being kept in his cell, and swearing at staff.

“Because I was swearing they would punish me, they wouldn’t give me dinner, I had to wait for the next day, or they wouldn’t give me breakfast, or lunch, depending what time of the day it was,” Voller said.

“One time one youth justice officer could see how hungry I was and he chucked fruit and muesli bars through the cell door and said, ‘here, eat’. He could see how hungry I was and he didn’t agree with them starving me, I guess.”

Voller also described a prison economy where detainees could earn money through good behaviour which they could then use to buy things including underpants, deodorant, and CDs.

“The max you could earn was $4.50 a day and they’d take $1.50 off us every day for rent,” Voller said.

He also described a period of regular strip-searches, including after every family visit, court trip, or trip to the toilet.

‘They wouldn’t let me go to the toilet’

Voller said that while in youth detention in Alice Springs he was forced to defecate into a pillowcase.

“I’d been asking to go to the toilet for four or five hours and they kept saying no, and I ended up having to defecate into a pillowcase because they wouldn’t let me go to the toilet,” Voller said.

“There’s been other times I had to urinate out the door or back windows because they wouldn’t come down.”

He said other detainees also had to urinate into water bottles and then throw them out the next day when staff wouldn’t let them out of their cells to go to the toilet.

He also detailed a transfer from detention in Alice Springs to Darwin, a 1500-kilometre journey during which he was kept handcuffed in the backseat.

He tried to choke himself with his seatbelt in order to prevent being transferred so far away from his family, he said, and during the trip he threw up because the guards smoked heavily the whole way.

“I was vomiting, vomiting, I couldn’t get up, I was laying down in the chair and I was trying to break the chair so I could lay down flat,” he said.

“There was no windows I could open or look out… I couldn’t get any air, there was no air-con, no water I could drink.”

He said there were no toilet breaks and guards told him to urinate out the door. He told the commission he had to defecate into his shirt, and then sat shirtless in the car for the rest of the journey.

Stripped of clothes and bedding

Voller also said that while in detention guards would often strip inmates and empty their cells as punishment for things such as ringing the intercom.

Dylan Voller was put in a mechanical restraint chair on “at least three occasions”.

“There was a time they left me in there with no clothes, no sheets, no mattress, no nothing all night, and they turned the air-con on full blast. I was crying, asking for a blanket,” Voller said.

“It was a punishment for them to take our mattress or our clothes, if we blocked our camera… if you got kicked out of school they’d take it out so you didn’t get to lay down and be comfortable.

“Once they left me with the mattress and nothing else… and I tried to wrap myself up with the mattress.”

He also described guards leaving the lights on all night in his cell so he couldn’t sleep.

But he told the commission that during his time in youth detention there were three officers that took an interest in the inmates and tried to talk to them and their families, but he didn’t want to name them in case they were subject to retribution.

“Most of them didn’t make an effort to make sure family relationships were strong… they just came to work to get paid and go home, they didn’t care about what was happening with the young people in there,” Voller said.

“They would say to me that my family didn’t really care about me, stuff like that. For a long time I started believing it, I guess.”

https://twitter.com/ABCNews24/status/808170048137199616

Multiple self-harm attempts

Voller told the commission that he often threatened to self-harm so he would be placed into isolation away from bullying guards and inmates.

“I cut my wrist on one occasion, I tied sheets around my neck at least five times to the point that I passed out and had to be taken to hospital,” he said.

“I was depressed and I didn’t know how to handle it… I kept being bullied by officers and other inmates and they [the authorities] weren’t doing anything about it.”

During the 210 days of his previous sentence, from July 2012 until February 2013, Voller spent 90 days in the Behaviour Management Unit (BMU), including 24 days immediately prior to his release from prison.

He said there was “not really” any access to therapy or education while in the BMU, and when asked how that period prepared him for release, he said: “It didn’t.”

‘I was panicking’

Voller acknowledged that he had a reputation for spitting on staff while at Don Dale.

“It’s a disgusting thing I did, I do regret it. But the things they did to me, I was defenceless, I couldn’t stand up and push them off me,” he said.

He said it was his way of fighting back, and was a habit he grew out of as he matured.

“I was panicking, I had three or four officers holding me down, hurting me… if you tell them to stop they just go harder,” Voller said.

“To them they pretty much thought it was a game as well, restraining us.”

The commission continues.

Read Dylan Voller’s handwritten notes here:

-ABC