By Sharon Webb

MORE THAN 100 former detainees from Ashley Detention Centre have come forward to claim abuse by staff or other detainees in the hope of gaining more compensation than the National Redress Scheme would have provided.

Hobart lawyer Sebastian Buscemi will run a class action and individual cases, the first of which may be brought to court before the end of this year

Mr Buscemi, of the Hobart office of Victorian law firm Angela Sdrinis Legal, said the class action claims related to isolation of detainees, use of strip searches and use of a scabies cream that caused burning.

‘Former detainees came forward during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, giving evidence in a private session,’ he said.

‘The individual cases relate to detainees’ claims of specific acts of sexual or physical assault by detention centre staff or residents.’

Mr Buscemi said former detainees have only come forward with claims recently because until July 2018 there was a limitation period to pursue this sort of action.

‘There was a national limitation period of three years from the injury but that has now been removed. In cases of physical and sexual abuse of children we now know that on average it takes 33 years for people to understand the effect of abuse on them.

‘As we’ve begun to prepare the case, the number of people coming forward has grown. We’re now at the stage of building the finer details of the case.’

Former detainees are taking legal action rather than seeking compensation through the National Redress Scheme for institutional sexual abuse because the scheme ‘doesn’t provide the level of compensation of legal action’ according to Mr Buscemi.

Mr Buscemi said his Victorian legal firm is doing the work because Tasmanian firms hadn’t taken on this kind of case yet.

Currently run by the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services, Ashley Youth Detention Centre on the Meander Valley Road outside Deloraine began unsuccessfully in 1914 as an experimental agriculture school. It reopened in 1922 as the Ashley Home for Boys using farm work as a reform method.

In 2000 it was named the Ashley Youth Detention Centre, gaining the high fence perimeter, security measures and staffing of a youth prison.