Cornelia Rau - lost in a black hole

Public outrage over the detention and ill-treatment of mentally ill woman Cornelia Rau - six months in the Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre and three in immigration detention in Baxter - is both cheering and frustrating for prisoner and detainee advocates.

We are cheered because this humane reaction shows that our community can still be outraged by inhumanity.

We are frustrated because the same, systemic inhumanity is meted out daily to thousands of mentally ill prisoners and detainees and most of their shocking and heartbreaking stories will never come to light.

As Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone so rightly points out, we have an agenda.

Our agenda is to shine a light inside hundreds of solitary confinement cells so the community can see the ill and disturbed people huddling there in pain and terror. Vanstone is determined to thwart us. But here we go again.

All women's prisons in Australia are filled with mentally ill women. In 2003 the NSW Corrections Health Service found that 86 per cent of women entering prison were suffering some form of mental illness and that 12 per cent had psychotic disorders.

Considering the numbers of women who are screaming for help in Australian prisons, it's no wonder Rau wasn't heard.

In 2004, after years of fruitless efforts to get appropriate care for hundreds of mentally ill women in prison, Sisters Inside decided to take a systemic approach and lodged a human rights complaint with the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission.

At the core of that complaint was the "treatment" of mentally ill women with powerful doses of solitary confinement and physical and pharmacological restraint - and the absence of non-disciplinary mental health services.

Fearing an unwelcome flood of light from an external source, the Queensland Department of Corrective Services decided to pre-empt any human rights busybodying and, in June 2004, launched what the Corrective Services Act euphemistically calls an "independent investigation" into themselves.

Cornelia Rau, then an inmate of Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre known as "Anna" and regularly confined alone in her cell or in the "Detention Unit" as punishment for her odd behaviour, gave a one hour tape-recorded interview to the department's investigators complaining of her treatment.

She told them, as she had been telling anyone who would listen, that she had committed no crime and should not be in prison. No doubt the investigators had heard that one before.

The extraordinary, final report of the Independent Investigation into Allegations of Prisoner Abuse, Neglect and Mistreatment at the Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre makes no mention of an immigration detainee housed with the mainstream prison population who appeared ill, agitated and distressed.

It does, however, mention another woman interviewed in the Crisis Support Unit (a purpose-built unit for long-term solitary confinement) who "appeared light-headed at the interview, speaking quickly and jumping from one topic to the next".

According to the report this woman "relayed her tragic story of previous sexual abuse and abusive relationships" and alleged that a correctional supervisor had sex with her in her cell.

When questioned by the investigators the correctional supervisor reportedly denied the allegation and commented that the woman was a "tragic case" who "should not be in prison but was in need of extreme psychiatric care".

"Accordingly the investigation team found that the evidence did not support the claim made by this prisoner," the report stated.

After 10 pages of this calibre of crack investigative work, the report concludes "there is no evidence which corroborates or supports complaints of systemic neglect, abuse and or mistreatment of prisoners" at BWCC, or of mental health abuses, or that the BWCC could in any way be compared to the Abu Grahib jail in Iraq, or that strip searching of women prisoners constitutes sexual assault. "The BWCC is managed and staffed by a well-qualified and trained team of professional correctional personnel," the report said.

The report also delivered a swift kick to Sisters Inside, accusing them of "soliciting complaints" and "playing prisoners off against each other".

Sisters Inside counsellors and support workers subsequently were banned from entering the prison, a ban that largely remains in place today.

Before the ban, Sisters Inside were visiting Cornelia Rau weekly and trying to get her case reviewed.

The only response they got from the department was that an immigration detainee was "not in Sisters Inside's brief" - so butt out. After the ban was imposed Rau wrote regularly to Sisters Inside. She missed their visits and still needed their help. They were powerless to do anything.

The Queensland Government, under Peter Beattie, seems content, like Vanstone, to leave the grubby business of prisons to the prison warders and the less interference from "advocates with agendas" the better.

He lets Corrective Services investigate themselves and even lets them write their own legislation. That is a recipe for black holes where no one can hear you scream.