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Police and hospital personnel must be sacked for Julieka’s death
by Stephen Hagan Editor, First Nations Telegraph 25 August 2014
“
Please help me tell my story of my partner who died in custody,” came the distressed voice of Dion Ruffin, 39, over the phone from the other side of the country. At first I was ill at ease to continue on with the conversation from a palpably emotional man, but sensing the desperation of his plea and the fact it was from the home
Dion Ruffin, partner of Julieka Dhu, is adamant Ms Dhu died in custody and not in the South Hedland hospital. Image: News Corp Australia
of a friend of mine in Geraldton, I replied for him “to take your time brother”. From the comfort of my office in Toowoomba in southeast Queensland I was taken on a graphic journey by a proud Aboriginal man telling his heart wrenching story of witnessing the excruciating slow death of his partner Julieka Dhu, 22, in the South Hedland watchhouse over three days. The tragic story of Dion Ruffin and Julieka Dhu commenced with an urgent call from a friend who was staying in their house in the Pilbara township, world famous for its port that loads the mega ships with rich Pilbara iron ore destined for China. “Julieka, get out here, the cops
are looking for you,” Dion said in an animated tone of his house-guest to First Nations Telegraph as South Hedland’s officers arrived at around 5.15 pm on August 2. Dion called out for the police, now inside his home, to give them a couple of minutes as Julieka and himself were changing. Dion explained their circumstances weren’t that simple of just getting dressed as he also had to attend to Julieka who was experiencing acute pain from an infection on her toe. “She had this yellow puss stuff on her little toe and it was getting worse and worse over the past couple of days. I even had to carry her to the bathroom as it was that painful,” Dion said. It transpired in the interview that
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Julieka – who had a warrant for her arrest for minor outstanding fines and in lieu had to spend four nights in the watchhouse - wasn’t the only person the police wanted to talk to at that address. Dion too was to be served an arrest warrant by the attending officers for breaking his bail conditions for a domestic violence order against his former partner. “I turned up for my court case half an hour late and the case was all over,” he told First Nations Telegraph by way of background information. “I was told by the Serco Court Security there was a warrant out for my arrest. And as I didn’t want to spend another night in the watchhouse I told them I’d sort in out the next day.” When asked what his expectations were for the court hearing if he’d turn up on time for it on the day in question, he replied the case would’ve been thrown out. “This was a case against my ex and the mother of our son who rings me 24/7 and told me she was going to have it thrown out,” he said. “So if I would’ve been on time there wouldn’t have been a case to answer and I wouldn’t have had a warrant issued for my arrest.” Another sad postscript to the interview was the fact that Dion and Julieka were waiting for a friend to arrive at 6.30 pm at their house to drive them to the hospital to have her infected foot attended to. “If the cops had come a little bit later they would have missed us and Julieka would probably have been kept in hospital for her injured foot,” he said in explaining a favour his friend had promised them because they didn’t own a car. Dion said it didn’t take long for his partner’s sore foot to cause her discomfort in an adjoining cell to his at the watchhouse. On hearing Julieka’s pleas to “help me” he yelled and banged on the cell wall for an officer to do something for her.
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Julieka Dhu’s death has raised serious concerns about the duty of care by police and hospital personnel at South Hedland. Image supplied
It wasn’t too long after the commotion that the sergeant of the watchhouse presented his imposing frame in an incredulous state of mind that gave off the impression, Dion cited, of the commotion not vindicating his attention. “What’s wrong with her?” Dion explained the head of the watchhouse said as his first exchange to him on this issue commenced. “Is she on something? Tell me what drugs she’s taking.” “You know what she’s on!” Dion said the senior officer asserted to him. He immediately responded tersely, “You think she’s on heroin hey”. “It’s got to be something.” In a candid response Dion admitted to the sergeant that Julieka and himself “certainly use speed but we don’t use heroin”. And when asked when they last used it, Dion
told him forthrightly that it was “two days ago”. “But it was clear to us that he thought she was on heroin and that was his view and his judgment for the rest of time she was in the cell,” Dion said. Dion informed First Nations Telegraph Julieka was later taken to the South Hedland hospital “about five minutes away”. “It takes five minutes to get there and five minutes to get back. She was gone for only fifteen minutes at the most,” he said. “When she came back she was still crying. “I said ‘what’s the matter … did you see a doctor?’ “She was so upset she kept crying and saying she was in pain.” It appeared the full extent of the hospital care amounted to a five minute exchange between Julieka and the duty nurse before she was
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sent back to the watchhouse. “She told me she got a big pill and a little pill,” Dion said in explaining the medical assessment of his partner who presented at the hospital in serious pain. “The big pill was for her to come down off heroin and the little pill was a sleeping tablet to make her sleep. “She then slept all night.” Day two in the watchhouse started as badly as it ended for Julieka before the sleeping pill took effect. “The second day it got worse,” Dion said. “She said there was this big red strip … like a vein … running from her toe up her foot just below her knee. “She said it looked like her foot was full of poison. “At lunch time she said she could no longer feel her right leg.” After more “screaming out for help” from officers at the watchhouse to take Julieka back to the hospital, Dion said his urgent pleas fell on deaf ears as no one bothered to attend to her. In Dion’s estimation, “By about sundown the poison started to spread to her stomach and arms”. Dion started to cry during this part of the interview as he recalled Julieka crying out “I’m in pain, please help me”. “At 8 o’clock they finally took her to the hospital again after I yelled and banged the cell with all my force pleading for help for Julieka,” he said. “This time they were gone for about half an hour. I told Julieka before she left to ask the doctor to give her a blood test to find out about her poison foot. “When she returned half an hour later she said a woman did an xray on her sore ribs. I don’t even think it was a nurse. It definitely wasn’t a doctor.” By this stage of the interview I was feeling Dion’s pain and prepared for the worst as he
stoically soldiered on with the chronology of events from within the watchhouse that I knew inevitably culminated in the violent death of the beautiful young woman, the love of his life. “When she returned to her cell the sergeant had a box of pills and said he would give her one every six hours,” Dion continued. “She took a pill but still was rolling around in her cell in more pain soon after. “By now her body was shutting down as she said she was burning all over and wanted to take her clothes off.” Dion said he shouted to Julieka “don’t take your clothes off as the police will see you naked”. “But all I wanted to see was someone helping her to stop the pain and make her comfortable.” The next day Dion said officers opened the courthouse so the presiding magistrate could hear the case against him and another old traditional man who was sharing a cell with him at the time. “Even this old full blood fella who heard the pain Julieka was going through was shouting out: ‘Why, why won’t you help this young girl? Take her to the hospital’.” “I told him that Julieka was my missus.” Dion said he was worried about going into the courtroom as it meant time away from his distressed and seriously ill partner. “I was very worried about leaving Julieka alone in the lockup while we had to go to court because she said she thought she was about to die,” he said. “When I got back about 11 o’clock from the court she was much worse. “‘I can’t move,’ she said to me. I told her to get up off the floor and fight.” “I pleaded for the cops to help her as she started crying and saying she couldn’t feel her chest. “A little time later – which I
now know to be the last hour of her life – she cried out to me that she couldn’t feel her face and thought she was having a stroke.” One can only imagine the pain Julieka was suffering and the forlorn angst Dion was being consumed by at this exact moment in his sad story. I have an eighteen year old daughter who turns nineteen this week and I would be horrified if she ever found herself in the horrible predicament Julieka found herself in – that she should never have been in the first instance for such a minor misdemeanour – and not be afforded the duty of care from serving officers of the law. “I started yelling out to the cops to get down here now as she was having a stroke,” Dion said. “The sergeant came down and had one look at her and told Julieka ‘to shut up … you’re acting like a two year old kid’. “When he walked past my cell he said ‘she’s on something … what’s she on?’. “I said, ‘Please serg, you’re not a doctor, please take her to the hospital.” So desperate was Dion to have his partner taken immediately to the hospital for urgent attention that he pleaded with the sergeant to release her to their care and that he would pay whatever money she needed to pay for the rest of her time in the watchhouse. “I told him I’d pay her fine myself and for him to just take her to the hospital,” he said. “I told the sergeant to ‘please have a look at her face … she’s having a stroke and slurring her words’. “And he said ‘no I won’t’. “After that two young officers – a woman with two stripes and a man with one stripe and an Aboriginal police liaison officer – came down to see what all the noise was about. “When they went in to see Julieka they came out laughing as they thought she was acting with a stroke.
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“I don’t know how they thought she was acting when she was choking on her vomit and having a stroke and slurring her words. “I could hear her begging them to ‘please help me … please’.” Dion explained the officers and Aboriginal liaison officer left his partner’s cell with smirks on their faces but returned not long after in an agitated manner when he caused further commotion from his cell desperately pleading for help. “The three of them came back after I pleaded with them again to take her to the hospital. “They went into her cell and could hear them saying ‘get up … we’re taking you to the hospital’. “I called out ‘her body’s shut down, she can’t get up or move … you’ll have to help her up’. “Julieka was saying ‘please help … please help’.” Dion said he called out for the officers “to put your arms under her arms and help her up”. “The woman copper said she wasn’t going to pick her up as she didn’t want to ‘hurt my back’. “Then the copper woman went towards her in the cell and next thing I heard this loud thud and then it was all quiet.” Dion made an audible sound over the phone by slapping his hands together to demonstrate the thud he could hear from Julieka’s cell. I was shocked and lost concentration at that part of the phone interview as the unexpected thud noise induced the unambiguous sound that violently resonated with me and took me to the unsafe place he was in, both physically and mentally. Yet my sensation was momentary, whilst the coastal warrior from Geraldton, all six-foot-2-inches of him, will hear that indelible brutal thud coming from the direction of his slim 5-foot frame partner’s cell for the rest of his life. “There was no more ‘please help … please help’ from Julieka as it went all quiet,” Dion recalled
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Dr Ray Warner, pictured meeting with students at Wilcannia Central on a recent visit to the NSW western town, said he is appalled at the reporting of the death of Ms Dhu by Hedland Health Campus Regional Director, Ron Wynn. Image: Barrier Daily Truth
painfully. “I then sang out ‘what’s going on in there … Julieka?’ “What the f*%&’s going on in there?” It was the description that Dion recounted next that was hard to listen to but one which I had to hear as part of re-telling his story. “After about fifteen to twenty seconds of screaming out to Julieka and hearing no response I saw the male copper backing out of the cell with Julieka dragging behind him. His hands were in her hands. Her head was on her chest and her eyes were looking blankly downwards,” he said. “My initial thoughts were that they had done something to her and broken her neck. “He was dragging her out very quickly as if he wanted no one to see her. “I said what have you done to her?” “The woman copper said ‘shut up you black c*#@’. “I said ‘get f#@^’”. In a strategic move, Dion said officers went to his cell after the unexplained incident with Julieka and said he was being moved to
Roebourne prison a couple of hour’s drive away to serve out the remaining four days of his sentence. “After she was taken from the cell to the hospital they transported me straight away to Roebourne prison,” he said. Dion didn’t want to think the worse when he was at Roebourne prison, believing that Julieka would be alright now that she was being seen by a doctor at the hospital. “Na, na … I didn’t want to think the worst and hoped that everything would be alright,” he said. “All them old fellas at Roebourne (prison) kept telling me she’d be OK at the hospital.” Dion said he wasn’t notified until midday the following day in Roebourne prison that his partner had died. “I was in Roebourne for four days before they let me out and all the time there I was just thinking why she wouldn’t look at me or talk to me when she was being dragged from the cell,” he said. “I was crying all that time in Roebourne … just hurting. “When I got out I spent two days in Karratha wandering aimlessly and then made my way back to
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Dr Hannah McGlade, Noongar international human rights lawyer, said “This is a shameful indictment on the West Australian justice system and the country health service that failed to treat a dying young woman.” Image supplied
Geraldton.” When First Nations Telegraph informed Dion of the police media release that Julieka died in hospital, Dion was adamant that was a lie. “I know she didn’t die in hospital. She died in that cell.” First Nations Telegraph spoke exclusively to Dr Ray Warner, former member of the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, who was in Hedland working at another health facility on the night of Julieka’s initial consultation at the South Hedland hospital. “I was working in Hedland at another health facility on the 2nd August but not present when Julieka initially presented to Hedland Health Campus,” Dr Warner said. “I travelled to Newman on Sunday 3rd August and on going to work on Tuesday 5th August sadly heard the news of the young woman’s death. “Immediately, I recalled an incident of a couple weeks earlier
of an Aboriginal woman who was unwell told to wait in the waiting room lay on the floor of the Headland’s Health Campus Emergency Department after she was told to wait until a doctor was available to see her. “The patient’s sister took a photo of her sick sister lying on the floor and posted it on Facebook. The incident drew adverse comments from relatives far and wide. “Apparently a meeting with the Aboriginal woman and the Campus’ Manager was arranged … the contents of which I am not privy to,” Dr Warner said by way of leading up to Julieka’s case and of his observation that her medical care at the South Hedland hospital was inappropriate. “On the matter of the situation that has played out and the subsequent death of Julieka Dhu. An appropriately registered nursing sister would have ‘cottoned on’ to what was going on, put her to bed and called a doctor,” he said.
“I can only surmise the nurse under duress decided the best action was to comply with the authority’s request to have the patient return to the cell from whence she came. “A collaborative arrangement seemed to be the situation’s best option to appease the patient and onlookers re: her partner Dion Ruffin. “Regardless of the demands that doctors and nurses endure working in South Hedland there is absolutely no reason to neglect the skills they were trained to do. “It seemed to me that a first aide trained person would surely have recognised the symptoms and signs of Julieka Dhu’s state of health or is this just another ‘lame’ excuse because they are not people they are animals. “They are dismissed as being ‘troublesome’ or ‘do not adhere to treatment anyway’ so why should nursing and medical staff have to tolerate this behaviour. “There seems to be the perception ‘if they are not interested in improving their own health then nor should we be’. On comments made by Hedland Health Campus Regional Director, Ron Wynn that Julieka “received appropriate treatment” as published in The Weekend Australian (August 23) by Michael McKenna under the title ‘Loss signals lessons yet to be learnt on custody deaths’, Dr Warner said he was appalled. “Noted is the Regional Director’s comments ‘that on each occasion she received appropriate treatment’ but from whose eyes is this seen as appropriate treatment. “When an allegedly young healthy woman dies in custody after presenting to the Hedland Health Campus on three occasions seen by suitably qualified nurses and advises the police she is fit to return to the cell. “For all of the Indigenous doctors and nurses who are working in health I imagine this incident is both shameful and embarrassing.
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www.firstnationstelegraph.com South Hedland Police Station. Image: abc
“I am personally appalled to belong to a health system that allows incidents like this to happen. “This is an example of extremely poor medicine that many of us do not want to practice however such practice is difficult to avoid if this attitude pervades the health system we have been trained in,” Dr Warner said. Award winning Noongar international human rights lawyer and renowned author, Dr Hannah McGlade, speaking to First Nations Telegraph, spoke damningly of the West Australian justice system in their handling of Julieka’s case. “This is a shameful indictment on the West Australian justice system and the country health service that failed to treat a dying young woman, depriving her of human dignity in her final days and hours,” Dr McGlade said. “It is a travesty that any Aboriginal people, let alone Aboriginal people from iron ore mining lands that are generating immense wealth for the rest of Australia, are being incarcerated for unpaid fines. “The practice must cease immediately and the use of community service in all cases be implemented. “It was 20 years ago in 1994 that the Chief Justice Taskforce on Gender Bias made important findings and recommendations to improve the situation for Aboriginal women.
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“It was recognised that the imposition of fines indirectly discriminates against Aboriginal women for socio-economic reasons and was resulting in disproportionate number of Aboriginal women being imprisoned. “It was recommended that this system be replaced by culturally appropriate sentencing options, such as work orders to be performed within Aboriginal organisations. “This important recommendation, one which could have saved the life of this young woman, remains unimplemented.” Dr McGlade said Julieka’s case further highlights the fact that Aboriginal women are being systemically criminalized across Australia. “The death of the victim highlights a complete lack of care for the life of a young Aboriginal woman. “Aboriginal women are being systemically criminalised across the nation and represent the fastest growing prison population in Australia. “There is evidence that Aboriginal women are more likely to be locked up than nonAboriginal women. “Aboriginal women have significantly higher rates of victimisation, and related drug and alcohol issues, and yet experience ‘double discrimination’ before the
law,” she said. Dr McGlade called on Prime Minister Tony Abbott to intervene in this case. “The Prime Minister has told us that he is going to be a PM for the Aboriginal people. “I hope he and the West Australia officials care to take a closer look at this case, to talk to the family of the victim and to find what is really happening to the Aboriginal women and young people of this country.” Peter Black, Black and Co Lawyers, Brisbane, told First Nations Telegraph he has received instruction from Dion to commence legal action against WA Police and Health departments. “Mr Ruffin gave instruction to take action jointly against the Police and Health departments in West Australia and all officers and health personnel who came in contact with Ms Dhu for their part in her death on the grounds of a their duty of care failure,” Mr Black said. First Nations Telegraph has sited the Coroner’s seven page report that identified nine summary findings including haemorrhagic consolidation of both lungs with focal abscess formation and bruising on the left frontal scalp. The cause of death by Coroner Dr J. White was undetermined pending investigations. First Nations Telegraph will continue to monitor and report on this case of national significance.