An ex-soldier who blew the whistle on a secretive torture resistance training program described acts inflicted on him as “sexual violence” and says he never would have consented to the course had he been properly warned of what he would endure, court documents show.
Guardian Australia last year revealed disturbing allegations made by former soldier Damien De Pyle about a training course designed to prepare defence personnel for possible capture by enemy forces.
He says he was forced to commit humiliating acts, including sexual acts, at a time when he was hallucinating and losing touch with reality due to prolonged sleep and food deprivation, court documents show.
De Pyle complained to the Australian Human Rights Commission about the program in 2021, but that process could not be resolved and he has since lodged proceedings in the federal court alleging his rights were breached.
The federal government is now seeking to suppress documents De Pyle has filed as part of his case. But, after an intervention by the ABC this week, the court released some of the material in a heavily redacted form.
Much of the detail in the documents has already been published by Guardian Australia. But the material, including Pyle’s complaint to the AHRC, gives some new insight into his alleged experience on the course, known as known as Conduct After Capture Level C, in 2019.
“In the context of the course, where I had been subject to numerous forms of mental and physical fatigue, which left me very vulnerable to manipulation and the fact that he [the instructor] was an authoritative figure within the context of the course, makes it significantly more severe and I would go as far as saying that it amounts to sexual violence,” he said in his complaint to the AHRC.
“There was nothing in the information that we received prior to the course that made any mention of something like this being a possibility. If I had known this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have participated in the course.”
De Pyle also told the AHRC that the combination of stress positions, sleep and food deprivation, hooding, and noise exposure had led many on his course to “suffer from visual and auditory hallucinations”.
“The combination of these techniques led many, including myself, to suffer from visual and auditory hallucinations, extreme distress and led one participant to bleed from digging his wrists into his cuffs and another to jump into a wall due to his hallucinations,” he wrote.
“While some may argue that this course only simulated the process of being captured, these techniques were not simulated. They really happened and we really had to endure them all.”
The documents also reveal that the Australian Defence Force considers information about the course to be “very sensitive” from an operational security perspective.
In an affidavit to the court, the Army’s director general of training and doctrine, brigadier Glenn Ryan, said the training was designed to mitigate the risk to ADF members who were captured or detained and interrogated by enemy forces.
“The training seeks to provide members with the knowledge and skills to survive capture in such circumstances, whilst also protecting vital information relating to military operations, and also to maintain a degree of mental, emotional and physical health.”
Ryan pointed out that De Pyle had agreed to keep information about the course confidential and signed a statement saying he was not to pass information about “any part of this training to any unauthorised person”.
The documents were released in redacted form after a hearing on Thursday, in which the commonwealth sought suppression orders. The ABC intervened to argue that much of the material was already in the public domain and that the orders sought were too broad.
The court will hear more submissions from the ABC at a later date and has not yet resolved whether to enact the suppression orders as sought by the commonwealth. It released redacted versions of the documents on Thursday with the agreement of the commonwealth.
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