Images of alleged mistreatment at Townsville’s Cleveland Youth Detention Centre have emerged, prompting calls for the royal commission into Northern Territory juvenile detention to be extended to Queensland.

One series of CCTV images obtained exclusively by ABC TV’s 7.30 shows a boy, 17, being held face down by five adults. He was handcuffed, ankle-cuffed, stripped naked then left alone in isolation for more than an hour.

The incident was prompted by the boy refusing to have a shower.

Images from another incident caught on CCTV footage show a girl in a swimming pool being threatened by security guards with an un-muzzled dog.

Footage shows a girl in a swimming pool being threatened by a dog. Photo: ABC

The disturbing images are contained within internal government reports written in 2013 and 2015 by the Queensland government’s own Youth Detention Inspectorate. 

Amnesty International received the reports under Freedom of Information laws.

The allegations are part of a joint investigation by 7.30 and Lateline  into the Cleveland detention centre.

The investigation follows the Four Corners report that exposed abuse at Darwin’s Don Dale detention centre and prompted a royal commission into youth detention in the Northern Territory.

“It’s clear that this is a national issue, children in detention are being mistreated and they are predominantly Indigenous children,” Roxanne Moore, Amnesty’s Indigenous rights campaigner, said.

“Amnesty International has documented the use of dogs to instil fear and intimidation into prisoners as a method of torture around the world. It is completely unacceptable that this is being used on children.”

‘This type of practice is humiliating’

The boy refused to take a shower. Photo: ABC

The incident involving the boy occurred in January, 2013. He had been placed on high suicide alert and had an extra youth worker allocated to support him after attempting suicide five days earlier. 

Russell Johnson, 17, says he was the victim of regular violent “takedowns”, as well as mental abuse, while inside the Cleveland Youth Detention Centre.

The boy was asked to go to his room and have a shower and refused.

The report said the boy, who was sitting on a table with his arms folded, did not appear to be abusive or physically threatening, but there was no audio on the CCTV recording.

Staff used physical force to move the boy from the table to the floor, the report said.

He was held face down, his hands placed in handcuffs behind his back and his feet in ankle cuffs.

The after-hours on-call manager said the boy “was extremely aggressive”.

The manager advised that staff should “place him in separation, remove his clothes and leave him with his SR [tear resistant] shorts”.

The video footage shows that while being restrained a “centre-issued Hoffman Rescue knife” was used to cut his T-shirt, shorts and underpants off, leaving him naked on the floor.

The report said his clothing was removed as it was considered there was a risk he might harm himself with it.

Boy left naked for more than an hour in isolation

This boy’s clothes were forcibly removed. Photo: ABC

“This type of practice is humiliating and has the potential to cause emotional, psychological as well as physical harm to the young person,” the government report said. 

The Queensland inspectorate found the force applied to the 17-year-old was a potential breach of the law and could have caused psychological harm to a teenager who was already at high risk of suicide. 

It demanded Cleveland conduct an investigation of the incident, but that review never happened because the detention centre said it did not have enough staff to conduct it.

‘It’s disgusting’

Shayleen Solomon, who knows the boy well, said: “No kid deserves to be treated like that at all, it’s disgusting.”

She worked at Cleveland Youth Detention Centre and claims she witnessed the same young person being treated with excessive force a year earlier in 2012.

“They had him face down on the ground, trying to put handcuffs on him. You could not move for men. I was kneeling on floor in front of him with my hands underneath his forehead, because he was headbutting the ground, asking them to stop because they were hurting him, and they didn’t stop,” she said. 

Dog used to threaten children

A 2015 Youth Detention Inspectorate report raised major concerns about the use of private security and guard dogs.

Three Aboriginal girls ran away from staff and jumped into a swimming pool when they were not meant to. One girl refused to get out of the pool.

Two private security guards attended the pool with an unmuzzled dog on a long leash.

The unmuzzled dog was used in an “aggressive manner”. Photo: ABC

When she wanted to leave the swimming pool, the dog handler released a sufficient length of leash to allow the dog to closely approach the girl “in what would be perceived an aggressive manner and stopped her from withdrawing from the swimming pool”, the report said.

At least eight staff were around the pool. The dog was up on its hind legs and barking aggressively at the young girl.

“This type of response is concerning as the security officers have no legal authority to physically touch or restrain a young person who is in the legal custody of the department,” the report said.

– ABC