Brisbane man Jandamarra Cadd spent two years as a teenager inside one of Queensland's most notorious youth detention centres and he today wants everyone to know it.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
For weeks at a time, he was a frightened 15-year-old boy in isolation in Toowoomba in a three-metre square cell with no bed, no water and no toilet.
But more importantly, he said, he now wants a royal commission announced into youth justice in the Northern Territory to be extended nationwide.
"When I watched that program [Four Corners] the other night, I was surprised that this was still going on," Mr Cadd said.
"I was surprised, but not shocked," he said.
"Because, this has been happening to our families for years and years and years."
Mr Cadd said he spent two years inside Toowoomba's Westbrook Detention Centre in 1988 and 1989.
"Twenty seven years ago, I took off from home because I was a very angry young man," he told a crowd of about 1000 in Brisbane's King George Square.
He spent time on the streets of East Brisbane as a fairly wild 14- and 15-year-old youth.
"We used to get beaten quite regularly and when we fought back against the police we were charged with assault," he said.
He ended up in Westbrook before it was closed down.
"This place was closed down in 1994 because they held an inquiry – the Forde Inquiry – which found rampant sexual, emotional and physical abuse," he said as the crowd shouted "Shame, shame."
"I was 15 years old. We had no culture. We were not allowed to have elders come in and speak with us and be with us. And the more we called out for that, the more we were beaten down."
He told of the humiliation of being sprayed with powder for lice.
He and several friends broke out and were chased by "hundreds" of police, before being recaptured three days later.
"We were taken back and we were put in what was known as "The Pound".
"This was a three-metre by three-metre concrete cell, with no toilet, no beds. No water.
"You were given a bucket. We were left in there for weeks to rot."
He said it was obvious indigenous prisoners were treated poorly at that time.
"We were treated like animals. Eating rotten, half rations for weeks, just outside of Toowoomba."
He urged authorities to take a protest to Canberra to pressure politicians to extend the youth detention centre inquiry to Queensland.
"This cannot continue to happen."
Anglican prison chaplain the Reverend Alex Tater said she was shocked to learn the Aboriginal children in a Northern Territory Youth Detention Centre were originally locked up for "stealing lollies".
"I'd like to remind these governments - past and present - you are all living on stolen land," Ms Tater said in a powerful speech to loud applause.
"What happened in the Northern Territory is a national disgrace."
A grandmother of one of the boys kept in the Northern Territory's Don Dale Youth Detention Centre made her feelings known to the crowd.
"How are our kids supposed to be rehabilitated when they are treated like scum?" the grandmother's recording said.
"You governments should be ashamed of yourselves.
"Shame on you governments for putting our kids through this."
Brisbane's Sam Watson called on Indigenous people to send a delegation to Canberra to insist the royal commission be extended to Queensland.
A 2015 study found just over half (54 per cent) of youth in detention centres on any one night were Indigenous, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2015.
