News

Indonesian teen works alongside adult sex offenders in Perth jail

Mon June 20, 2011 11:02am

AUSTRALIAN police have not attempted to verify the age of a 16-year-old Indonesian boy who has been working alongside sex offenders in a high-security adult jail in Perth.

The Age has confirmed through relatives and school records the boy turned 16 on March 17, meaning under federal government policy he should have been flown home without charge last year.

But federal police, relying on an 80-year-old wrist X-ray technique that has been widely discredited, have charged the boy with people smuggling, which carries a mandatory five years' jail as an adult.

Lawyers say the boy is "spooked" and scared in Hakea adult remand centre in Perth where lawyers say he works in a laundry alongside the sex offenders.

The boy's brother, Heriyandi, told The Age the boy left school at 14 and went to stay in Jakarta with relatives, saying he "wanted to make some money''.

In April last year the boy was found to be a deckhand on a boat carrying 30 asylum seekers that arrived at Ashmore Reef.

Gerry Georgatos, a lawyer and convener of the Human Rights Alliance who met the boy in jail in March, said by telephoning Indonesia he was able to acquire meticulous personal details about the boy whose family is from Batam Island, near Singapore.

"His family did not know what had happened to him or that he had been coerced on to a boat for Australia," Mr Georgatos said. "While in detention in Australia, the Indonesian consulate was not contacted nor was any contact made with his family in Indonesia."

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