Banksia Hill: autistic teenage girl ‘treated like a dog’ at detention centre, class action alleges

A teenage girl detained at Banksia Hill was fed meals through a grille and subjected to seven months of continuous prolonged solitary confinement, a class action alleges. Photograph: David Dare Parker/The Guardian

An autistic teenage girl detained at Banksia Hill Detention Centre was forced to use underwear stained with menstrual blood and sleep on a mattress covered with “excrement and saliva”, according to a legal document filed in support of a class action against the West Australian government.

The affidavit by lawyer Stewart Levitt alleges the girl was fed meals through a grille and was forced to “earn” her bedding. She felt like she was being “treated like a dog” and responded by sleeping on the concrete floor of her cell and pretending she was a dog, the document states.