For the first time, the story of the second teenager to end his life in WA's troubled youth detention system can be revealed. Hundreds of pages of court transcripts obtained by the ABC paint a picture of the teenager's final years as stints in detention failed to break his cycle of offending and address his underlying needs. Three months before he died, he pleaded for help and a final chance to turn his life around.
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00:00Born in 2006, the court transcripts show the boy, who we're calling Ben, had an extraordinarily
00:08difficult time as a child, with a lot of trauma, and was sometimes without his parents.
00:14Ben told a law firm he first went into detention around age 11, he stopped going to school
00:20altogether around age 12, and two years later was in state care.
00:25The teenager's offending continued and escalated, but things started to look up by
00:29late 2022, and with an out-of-home care provider, he has a safe place to live for the first
00:35time in years.
00:37He was focused on his future, and a bright future.
00:42But when a friend came to visit, he offended again, racking up more than a dozen charges,
00:47including terrorising a woman who was home with her three-year-old child, armed with
00:52a metal pole.
00:54He went back to detention, where the offending continued as he participated in a major riot
00:59on New Year's Eve 2022.
01:02They threatened the staff with violence.
01:06He's granted bail, but a few days later, offence again, breaking into several properties in
01:11one night.
01:12Ben's sent back to detention, where conditions are tortuous, according to his lawyer.
01:17It fuels an even bigger riot a few months later.
01:22It's totally, utterly unacceptable.
01:25It's a form of terrorism they're engaged in.
01:27Ben's one of the final seven to be caught as officers point guns at the group's heads.
01:35When he was in court a few months later, things were looking up again, and the judge gave
01:40him a message.
01:41You can do a lot with your life.
01:42You can get out, get a job, work, lead a good life, or you can spend the rest of your life
01:48in jail or dead.
01:51After offending again shortly after his release in April of 2024, Ben wrote to the Children's
01:56Court.
01:57I need to change my ways before I turn 18 in September, because I don't want to enter
02:01or experience the adult system.
02:04Your Honour, I am asking for one last chance today.
02:07The magistrate was impressed, but didn't want to release him, because...
02:11I don't want to set you up to fail.
02:13A month later, his lawyer continued to argue for him to get bail, explaining why he kept
02:18re-offending.
02:19He obviously relapsed when he got out of jail because he was spending a lot of time in detention,
02:24and then couldn't go back into a community, couldn't focus on people who were supposed
02:29to be there to support him.
02:31But he has now got that support.
02:33Eventually he found a place in a rehab program in mid-August and was granted bail, but he
02:38ran away.
02:39It's not clear why.
02:41He was found and put back into detention, his fifth visit in just two years, which takes
02:47us to Thursday, August the 29th.
02:50That afternoon he was out of the cell most of the time until the evening, and over the
02:55course of the evening we know he was checked 10 times by my staff.
03:01On the 11th occasion, just prior to 10pm, he was found unresponsive.
03:05Sadly we couldn't revive the young man.
03:08The ABC's been told by people familiar with Ben's case, but not allowed to speak publicly,
03:14and those involved in his care did as much as they could, but they were let down by the
03:19systems they were working in.
03:21Systems made more complicated as he approached adulthood and aged out of juvenile supports.
03:27They're systems the government is promising to improve, and eventual coronial inquest
03:32might shed light on whether that's happening fast enough.