Paul Oboohov
German-born, Australian permanent resident Cornelia Rau was abused by jailers, and immigration detention officials knew about her mental condition, ABC TV's Four Corners revealed on April 4. Rau, a former Qantas flight attendant, was locked up in the Brisbane women's jail and immigration detention in South Australia for 10 months before authorities discovered she was a missing person with a psychiatric condition.
The ordeal started when the immigration department (DIMIA) heard reports of a German woman without papers who claimed in some of her stories that she had arrived by boat with the assistance of people smugglers. She said that her name was Anna Schmidt. It was DIMIA that asked Queensland police to arrest Rau. Neither the Queensland police nor the Brisbane women's prison consulted any missing persons list. They simply assumed that she was an illegal immigrant.
When Rau requested from prison that the Brisbane advocacy group for women prisoners Sisters Inside contact DIMIA for her, which they did on at least five occasions, the bureaucrats responded that the German national ID card system did not list her and that they would continue to detain her until she revealed her true identity.
In six months DIMIA officers only visited Rau on three occasions. Prison guards asked why Rau, having committed no crime, was in jail, but were told by superiors that she was an illegal immigrant and that DIMIA would deal with her. She revealed her real name to fellow prisoners and guards several times, but this was not investigated. The obvious decline in Rau's mental health led prisoners to put in a group request that she be seen by a doctor.
After a prison psychiatrist suggested that she was suffering from a psychotic disorder and recommended her for assessment, Rau was taken to Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital. She was discharged after six days. The hospital concluded that while she had some odd behaviour, this did not fulfill any diagnostic criteria for mental illness.
A prisons investigator looking into general allegations of abuse was bewildered by the severity of Rau's treatment and raised her case with the prison general manager, but was told that DIMIA would be moving Rau to a detention centre shortly.
On October 6, 2004, Rau was given Valium, her first medication in six months, and taken to the Baxter immigration detention centre. Right from the start, the Baxter psychologist wrote that Rau had at least a severe form of personality disorder, and that she exhibited attention-seeking behaviour. Detainees could see that her behaviour was completely abnormal and commented to visitors that she was "crazy".
Later, the Baxter psychologist noted her increasingly inappropriate behaviour, including standing naked before males. However, he concluded that no treatment was likely to be effective, though he recommended that she be moved to a female compound in the Villawood immigration detention centre. Baxter management then increased their punishment of her behaviour, locking her in solitary confinement in the so-called Management Unit. Visiting church leaders could see that this only exacerbated her symptoms.
By November 2004, Dr Andrew Frukacz, the visiting Baxter psychiatrist, wrote that she was suffering from either schizophrenia or a personality disorder and that the former was more likely. He acknowledged to Four Corners that placing a schizophrenic in a contained area could make them very frightened.
As Rau's behaviour worsened, and despite Frukacz warning not to put her in the Red 1 compound due to the presence of males, she was moved to this area, which is reserved for troublemakers.
By January 2005, Rau was going to the toilet on the floor in people's rooms and she was always screaming. This worried the Baxter psychologist, who wrote to the State Mental Health Service (SMHS) in South Australia and called twice about getting Rau assessed in a hospital.
However, Learne Durrington, the executive director of the SMHS, said that Baxter's management would typically downplay the urgency, suggesting no immediate transfer.
In the end, Baxter authorities only scheduled (and forcibly hospitalised) Rau as a mental patient when it became clear that she was indeed an Australian citizen on a missing persons list, despite the SMHS and refugee activists such as Pamela Curr having previously contacted DIMIA about her.
On February 3, Rau was taken from her shower in Red 1, naked with only a sheet to cover her, and admitted to Port Augusta Hospital. The next day she was transferred to Glenside psychiatric hospital in Adelaide.
Dr Howard Gorton, a former Baxter psychiatrist, told Four Corners: "The people I saw and treated at Baxter were the most damaged people I've seen in my whole psychiatric career. Up until that time, I'd never met an adult-onset bed wetter. I'd never met someone with psychological blindness. And there were also a few physically crippled people who believed they were unable to walk, and this was probably psychological too."
From Green Left Weekly, April 13, 2005.
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